Setting Up Your Sunsama Account

What to expect when you first sign up for Sunsama.

Visit sunsama.com and click Sign Up to start your 14-day free trial. You can log in with Google, Outlook, or enter your email and password.

Starting your trial

After logging in, you’re directed through a one-time onboarding and planning flow.

Guided onboarding flow

Pick your task management tools

Let Sunsama know what other task management tools you use day-to-day. You’ll connect these accounts later during your first planning session.

Task management tool selection

Connect your calendars

Link your external calendar accounts — Google, Outlook, and/or iCloud — to see and import meetings and events. You can also timebox tasks to those calendars.

When do you plan your day?

Pick the time you want Sunsama to remind you to plan each day. At that time, you’ll receive a daily email reminder (during your trial) and the app transitions to guided planning.

Daily planning time picker

What time should you select?

Morning planners — Choose a time before 3 PM, ideally before you sit down at your computer.
Evening planners — Choose a time after 3 PM, ideally when you’re wrapping up work. Planning tomorrow should be your final task.

Guided daily planning flow

Next, you’ll go through Sunsama’s guided daily planning process. This first-time flow is slightly different from the normal daily planning — it’s customized to help you learn Sunsama and understand the core daily planning principles.

Progress tracking bar

Walkthrough video

Watch the video below for a full walkthrough of the account setup process.

Video chapters

0:00 Plan today or tomorrow 0:31 Adding tasks for today 1:42 Time estimates 2:58 Fill in tasks from other tools 4:43 Push back non-essential tasks 5:46 Finalize your plan 7:07 Share your plan and get started 8:02 Workspace view

Plan today or tomorrow
Select whether to build your task list for today or tomorrow. Choose Plan Tomorrow if it’s afternoon or near end of day.
Add tasks for today
Click Add task and type in the tasks you want to work on. You can create multiple tasks at this stage, then click Next to advance.

ℹ️ Note

Sunsama is designed to help you focus on your most essential tasks for just today. Think of this list as everything you need to get done today — not everything you want to do someday. For tasks without a date, use the backlog.
Set time estimates
Add planned times to each task — estimate how long each will take. As you add estimates, you’ll see the total planned time accumulate. Sunsama warns you if you’re planning too much work relative to your workload threshold.
Fill in tasks from other tools
Connect your calendar to import meetings and events. You can also import to-dos from integrated tools by clicking the + button in the right panel to reveal available integrations. Drag items from your connected tools into today’s column.

💡 Tip

Later in your settings, you can configure Sunsama to automatically import relevant meetings and events from your calendars, so you don’t need to do it manually each day.

ℹ️ Note

Sunsama’s integrations let you create tasks from items in your other tools, like emails. Tasks created from integrations include links back to their source, and you can set up automations to sync status changes back to the original tool. See our integration guides for more.
Push back non-essential tasks
Bump tasks you won’t complete today by dragging them to the Tomorrow or Next Week columns. To move a task to a day not shown, click the calendar icon on the task card and select any day.

ℹ️ Note

Sunsama helps ensure you aren’t trying to do more work than is reasonable. You can set your workload threshold in settings so Sunsama knows how much time you should be working each day. For this to work well, always add time estimates to your tasks and import all your meetings.
Finalize your plan
Reorder your task list in your preferred work sequence. For better visibility of when you’ll work on things relative to meetings, timebox tasks by dragging them onto the calendar, or hover over a task and press X to auto-schedule.
After ordering your tasks, set your Shutdown time — when Sunsama will prompt you to wrap up for the day. Click Looks good to advance.

ℹ️ Note

When you timebox tasks, you’re creating calendar events. You can control which calendar these events appear on, their privacy, and other settings. The auto-schedule feature places tasks around existing events according to your schedule settings.
Share your plan and get started
In the final step, review your day’s task list and jot down any anticipated obstacles. Optionally share your plan to a connected Slack or Microsoft Teams channel. Click Get Started to complete the planning flow.

ℹ️ Note

The auto-generated summary is editable — click Customize to change what’s shown. If you don’t need this step, click Skip this step in the future at the bottom to remove it from daily planning.

Workspace view

Once you complete the guided planning flow, you’ll arrive at Sunsama’s main workspace — your Daily Kanban. From here you can freely manage tasks, explore settings, and finish setting up your integrations.

You’ll go through the guided daily planning flow at your next scheduled planning time for the next two days.

Onboarding resources

Once you begin using Sunsama, you’ll receive brief daily emails with advice and reminders during your trial. If you have questions, reach out via the support chat bubble in the bottom right corner of the app — we respond within one business day.