The panel's front page

Open the panel anywhere that is not a LinkedIn profile, company or search page — the feed, a message thread, any tab at all — and you get the front page instead of an empty explanation. Land on a profile and the panel switches back to the view you know.

Its main action is Update all contacts and companies. Companies are re-read from their own websites, one batch after another, until the workspace is current or the request runs out of time; the result says how many were read, how many changed, how many sites did not answer, and how many are still waiting. Press it again to continue where it stopped.

It cannot refresh a person, and it says so instead of pretending. A LinkedIn page may only be read while you have it open, so the same result counts how many contacts have gone unseen past the re-check window and lists them as links. Opening one is an ordinary visit you make, and the panel then updates that person the way it always has.

The front page also carries shortcuts into the web app: the dashboard, contacts, companies and today's list.