Navigating the Interface

AcaTrove's interface is organized around three main areas: the sidebar navigation on the left, the main content area in the center, and the Research AI Panel on the right. Understanding this layout will help you move efficiently between tasks.

Sidebar Navigation

The left sidebar is your primary way to move between sections. It is organized into four groups that reflect the major areas of academic work:

Work -- Day-to-day research operations.

• Dashboard -- Your personalized home screen with role-specific widgets and quick actions.
• Calendar -- Deadlines, meetings, and milestones across all your projects.
• Projects -- Individual research projects with tasks, documents, and collaborators.
• Labs -- Lab or research group management, including members, resources, and shared documents.
• Publications -- Your publication pipeline, from drafts to published works.

Career -- Professional development and funding.

• Career Hub -- Track career milestones, set goals, and monitor your academic trajectory.
• Grant Finder -- Discover and track funding opportunities matched to your research interests.

Create -- Writing and document tools.

• Write -- The AI-enhanced writing workspace for drafting papers, proposals, and reports.
• Documents -- Your document library with upload, organization, and search capabilities.

Admin -- Available to users with administrative roles.

• Institutional settings, user management, and reporting tools.

The sidebar can be collapsed to a narrow icon-only view by clicking the collapse button at the bottom. This gives more space to the main content area while keeping navigation accessible.

Main Content Area

The center of the screen displays the page you are currently viewing. At the top of the main content area, breadcrumbs show your current location in the application hierarchy. For example, navigating into a specific project might show: Work > Projects > My Research Project.

Most pages include contextual action buttons (such as "New Project" or "Upload Document") near the top of the content area.

Research AI Panel

The Research AI Panel slides in from the right side of the screen. You can open it by clicking the AI panel toggle button in the top navigation bar. The panel is available on every page, so you never need to leave your current work to access AI tools.

From the AI Panel, you can:

• Chat with documents using Paper Chat or Multi-Doc Chat.
• Generate outlines from 33+ academic templates.
• Ask questions about your research with Conversational Q&A.
• Get writing suggestions from the AI Writing Assistant.
• Visualize concepts with interactive Knowledge Graphs.

The panel remembers your conversation context as you navigate between pages, so you can start a query on one page and continue it on another.

Global Search

The search bar at the top of the interface lets you search across your entire AcaTrove workspace. Press Cmd+K (Mac) or Ctrl+K (Windows/Linux) to open it from anywhere.

Search covers:

• Projects, labs, and publications.
• Uploaded documents and their contents.
• People, collaborators, and team members.
• AI conversation history.

Results are grouped by type and ranked by relevance. Click any result to navigate directly to it.

Keyboard Shortcuts

AcaTrove supports keyboard shortcuts for common actions:

• Cmd/Ctrl + K -- Open global search.
• Cmd/Ctrl + B -- Toggle sidebar.
• Cmd/Ctrl + / -- Toggle the Research AI Panel.
• Cmd/Ctrl + N -- Create new item (context-sensitive).

Tips

• Collapse the sidebar when you need more room for writing or reviewing documents.
• Pin your most-used AI tool in the Research AI Panel so it opens by default.
• Use breadcrumbs to quickly navigate up in the hierarchy rather than going back to the sidebar each time.
• Global search is the fastest way to find anything -- build the habit of reaching for Cmd+K first.