Turn meetings, notes and to-dos into work that actually gets done

StoneOS Business Core is the everyday workspace of every team: nine apps for writing, meeting, sharing and organizing — Notes, To-do, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Calendar, Chat, Drive and People. They share the same organization, the same people directory, the same search and the same notifications, so a document, a meeting and a conversation all know who they belong to. Business Core is the common base that every other StoneOS suite and industry edition builds on, and it is where much of an organization’s daily work is first written down before it becomes something someone has to do.

Business Core is where work is written and discussed; Mi Retail is where it gets done. When something in a Business Core app turns into a commitment — a to-do that matters to the team, a document that needs approval, a budget that needs confirmation — it is sent into Mi Retail as an Operational Work Item with an owner, a state, a due date and a link back to the original note, document or sheet. From there it follows the organization’s rules: it appears in the owner’s My Work, the coordinator sees it in Team Operations and it closes with evidence. The apps keep the content; Mi Retail keeps the work moving.

A to-do lives in the To-do app and belongs to a person: it is a quick, personal reminder with an optional checklist. A work item lives in Mi Retail and belongs to the organization’s operation: it has an owner, a normalized state, a due date, a workspace, a trail of who did what and, when needed, evidence. Not every to-do needs to become a work item. When one matters to others — someone depends on it, it needs approval or it has to be followed — you convert it, and its checklist items become child work items. The to-do keeps its link, and both stay in sync.

The meeting is scheduled in Calendar and its notes are taken in Notes, where commitments are written with the person responsible and a date. Each commitment can be sent to that person as a to-do and, when it matters to the team, converted into a work item that lands in their My Work. The operations lead then sees every commitment from the meeting by owner and state, without asking in the next meeting. When the work item closes, the result is linked back to the notes, so the history of the decision and what came out of it stays together.

Yes. Mi Retail does not require you to change the tools where your team writes and meets. Business Core is the option that ships ready to send commitments into Mi Retail, but any application that publishes its work through Mi Retail’s work item contract can take part: it declares the kinds of work it produces and sends each item with an owner and a link to its source. Many organizations start by keeping their current suite for documents and email and using Mi Retail for the work that has to be owned, followed and closed with evidence, and then adopt Business Core apps where they fit.

Instead of asking for a “looks good” in a comment, the author sends the document for approval as a work item that lands in the approver’s queue with a due date. The approver opens the exact version, approves or rejects it from the work item and records the reason. The decision is attached to that version of the document, so there is no doubt later about what was approved and when. If the approver is unavailable, the coordinator can reassign it, and if it is overdue it shows up as at risk instead of silently waiting in someone’s inbox.

Files live in Drive, organized by the organization’s folders and permissions, and a work item links to the files that prove its result: a signed agreement, a photo, a final report, a spreadsheet. The link travels with the work item, so anyone reviewing it later — a manager, an auditor, a new team member — can see not only that the work was completed but what supports it. Evidence is not copied into Mi Retail; it stays in the app that owns it and is referenced from the work, which keeps a single version of every file.

People is the directory of your organization inside StoneOS: who works there, in which team and location, what they do and how to reach them. It is what lets every other app — and Mi Retail — assign work to real people and teams instead of free-text names. When a work item needs an owner, the options come from the same directory; when someone changes teams, their work can be reassigned without hunting through spreadsheets. People does not create a second identity system; it presents the organization’s existing identity and structure in a way everyone can browse.

Business Core apps share search and navigation, so a person can find a document, a note, a conversation or a work item from one place without remembering which app it lives in. Notifications work the same way: an app raises an alert when something needs attention, and when that something is work — an approval, a request, a blocked item — it arrives as a work item in Mi Retail instead of one more message to read. The result is that people start the day from Today, with what is theirs already gathered, rather than touring apps to discover whether something needs them.

Yes. A five-person team can use Business Core as its entire workspace — notes, documents, chat, calendar and files — and send the few commitments that matter into Mi Retail, where the experience stays simple and nobody sees hierarchies that do not exist. A large company uses the same apps across many teams and locations, with the organization’s structure defining who sees what, and Mi Retail distributes the resulting work across operators, coordinators and owners. The apps and the model are the same at both ends; what changes is how many people and responsibilities they connect.

Business Core covers what every team does regardless of industry: writing, meeting, talking, planning and sharing. The business suites add the apps of a function, such as finance, procurement or people management, and the industry editions add the apps of a sector, such as hotels, restaurants or construction. All of them sit on the same base — the same organization, directory, files, search and work item contract — which is why a finance approval, a hotel relocation and a meeting commitment all arrive in Mi Retail in the same shape and can be handled by the same people in one place.

Start with one recurring meeting whose commitments keep slipping. Take its notes in Notes, send each commitment to its owner and convert the ones others depend on into work items in Mi Retail. After a few weeks the team will stop starting meetings by asking who was going to do what, because the answer is already in Team Operations. From there, move document approvals into work items, keep evidence in Drive and bring in the rest of the Business Core apps as the team adopts them. Mi Retail is free to start, and Business Core comes with StoneOS.