Direct REI has a lot of surface area. Ten minutes learning to move around it saves hours a month — especially if you're in it every day.
Cmd+K — the fastest thing in the app
The one keyboard shortcut worth memorising: press ⌘K (Mac) or Ctrl+K (Windows) anywhere, or click Quick search… in the top bar. Start typing and it searches across:
- Every page — Home, Oliver, Inbox, Find Leads, CRM, Email, Texting, Dialer, All Campaigns, Email and SMS sequences, Tasks, Direct Mail, Websites, Analytics, Settings, Direct University.
- Your contacts — type a name and jump straight to their card.
- Properties and deals.
- Actions — common things you'd otherwise navigate to.
Arrow keys move, Enter opens, Esc closes. If you learn one thing here, learn this — "seller called, what's their story" becomes ⌘K, three letters, Enter.
Reshape the tables to your workflow
Buyers, Sellers, Other, Deals, and the Dialer's focus card each have a Customize layout control (the Fields button on the dialer card). You choose which columns and which filters appear, and drag ⋮⋮ to reorder them. Reset to defaults undoes everything.
Worth doing early: hide the columns you never read. A table with five meaningful columns is faster to work than one with fifteen you scan past.
Choose what shows in the left menu
Don't use every tool? Hide the pages you don't need. Go to Settings → Profile → Sidebar menu (or click Edit next to Workflow at the top of the menu) and uncheck them — for example, untick Team if you work alone, or Voice Outreach if you don't run AI calls. Show every page brings them all back.
- Hiding only removes the menu item. The page keeps working — open it any time with ⌘K or a link, and anything it runs (campaigns, reminders, automations) carries on.
- A hidden page's badge won't show (like the Inbox or Tasks counts), so keep the pages you rely on for alerts.
- Home is always shown.
- It's yours, not the account's. Each teammate picks their own menu, and your choice follows you to every device you sign in on.
Dark mode
The toggle sits in the top-right of the top bar. It's remembered per device, so your laptop and your phone can differ. Cold callers on evening shifts tend to prefer dark; anyone working off printed comps usually prefers light.
On a phone
The whole app is responsive — the sidebar collapses, tables become scrollable cards, and dialogs slide up as sheets. It's genuinely usable for the things you do away from a desk: taking a callback, checking a contact before you knock, marking a task done, approving a draft reply.
The things that want a real screen are the ones that are genuinely wide: building sequences, the Analytics dashboard, and the Websites editor.
Small things that save time
- Every list has bulk select. Tick the header checkbox and act on the whole filtered set — tag, set status, enrol, skip trace, delete.
- Filters are honest about counts. When a filter is on, the counts you see describe the filtered set, not your whole database.
- Export from any list as CSV or Excel — exports respect the filters you have applied.
- Undo exists for the destructive-feeling things: completing a task, moving a deal, removing a widget.
- Esc closes dialogs, and if you've typed something it asks before discarding it.
What's next
Set up the data behind the columns with Custom fields, or go straight to the daily loop in Your Home dashboard & daily workflow.