Onboarding Hub App Overview

Onboarding Hub

1. What it is

Onboarding Hub manages the journey from “offer accepted” through a new hire’s first months. You build templates that bundle tasks, documents, forms, checkpoints, trainings, and surveys, then assign them — manually or automatically — when someone is hired. New hires can start preboarding before day one through a secure portal, and the app tracks completion, sends reminders, and monitors I-9 and compliance status.

• Enablement: Pay-as-you-go — each new hire’s onboarding draws platform credits once its plan is started (a draft that is never started is free), with no license to buy. An admin enables it from Admin → Apps → All Apps. It is not turned on automatically.
• What it is not: Onboarding Hub covers the inbound journey. Offboarding (structured employee departures) is a separate app. Training courses are authored in the Training app — Onboarding Hub assigns them as plan items, it does not create them. The Forms app builds the form templates — Onboarding Hub pulls them into a plan as enrollment forms.

2. Standing it up

1. Enable the app — go to Admin → Apps → All Apps, find Onboarding Hub, and enable it.
2. Create at least one template — go to Onboarding Hub → Templates → Create Template. A template defines everything a plan contains: tasks, milestone checkpoints, documents to collect, forms to fill, and their day-offset schedule. Set the template type (Standard, Executive, Technical, Custom, or Department-specific), then under Applies to choose who it is for — lifecycle events, an audience, departments, job titles and a location — so the auto-matcher can pick the right one later. Leave a rule empty and it does not limit anyone.
3. Stock the libraries — populate the Tasks, Documents, Forms, and Welcome Content libraries so template authors can pull from a shared catalog. Use Load Default Data under Settings to seed industry-standard items if you want a starting point.
   • For a ready-made set of pathways, use Settings → Load Default Data → Starter Pathways: Hourly and Salaried new hires, a New Leader pathway and an Internal Transfer and Promotion pathway, in a standard or a hospitality variant. Installing again restores any pathway you haven’t changed and keeps one you’ve edited exactly as you left it; library items your libraries don’t have are left out and listed.
4. Set up relationship types — Mentor and Buddy are seeded automatically. Add any custom types your program needs (e.g. Executive Sponsor, Skip-Level Manager) under Settings → Relationship Types. Mark a type as Required if New Plan and Edit Plan must not be saved without someone in it (plans made automatically — on hire, from another app or by Ask AI — are not held back by it).
5. Grant access — admins and managers can create and manage plans. Onboarding Hub’s app admins (granted on the app’s App Admins page in the Apps Marketplace) run every plan and open Settings, as administrators do. Employees see only their own onboarding plan; an employee who leads a team also sees their team’s plans on the Plans list. Settings are for administrators and app admins.
6. Confirm it worked — create a test plan for an employee, start it, and check that the employee sees their tasks under Onboarding Hub → My Onboarding. Verify that the new hire receives the welcome email and that the hiring manager is told the plan is live.

Silent dependency: If you turn on Create onboarding plan from template under Settings → Automation, the auto-onboard needs either a pinned template or at least one active template whose Applies to rules the hire matches. Without a matching template, the automation runs silently and creates nothing.

3. How it fits together

Templates and plans — A template is a reusable blueprint. A plan is a live instance created for one person. Templates hold items (tasks, checkpoints, documents, forms) with day offsets relative to the start date; when a plan is generated from a template, those offsets produce concrete due dates. Plans move through five statuses: Draft → Preboarding → Active → Completed (or Paused at any point after activation). A plan can only be completed when all required items — required tasks, critical checkpoints, required documents, required enrollment forms, required surveys, and required trainings — are finished. Optional items do not block completion.

Template matching and pathways — When you create a plan (or auto-onboarding fires), the system scores every active onboarding template; pre-start experience templates are never picked as the plan’s template. A template can be set up as a pathway: the lifecycle events it is for (new hire, rehire, promotion, transfer, becoming a people manager) and the audience it is for (for example Hourly team members). What happened to the person counts most — a pathway for their event beats a template that names none, and a rehire also matches a new-hire pathway — then who they are (a pathway for an audience they belong to beats one for everyone), then the job title, department and location. A template’s Applies to rules all have to fit: a template limited to departments or job titles is never picked for a hire outside them — the department and job title of the job they are joining, else the ones on their profile, with a typed job title matched by name. A preferred role level, read from the job posting’s Experience Level, only breaks a tie. Location scoping has four modes: Any (business-wide), Specific locations (the hire’s location is one of those chosen), Locations and those under them (one of those chosen is the hire’s location or above it), and Headquarters (employee is at the business’s HQ). The most-specific match wins, with ties broken by most recently created — except that a template with no tasks, checkpoints, documents or forms yet ranks below every template that has some, so a new template takes no hires until it holds something. Admins can also pin a specific template for auto-onboarding, bypassing the matcher. A template’s page shows its rules under Who gets it and, below them, which of the last 30 hires you can see would get it if their plan were opened today — and which would get a more specific template instead. Edit beside Who gets it opens the rules in a drawer that shows who they would reach before you save. Hourly and Salaried audiences read each person’s FLSA status when it is recorded, otherwise their pay basis, which is set from the job when a candidate becomes an employee.

Standalone vs. recruiting mode — Plans can be created in two ways. In recruiting mode, the plan is linked to a Job Board candidate — the candidate’s job, hiring manager, and offer data carry over. In standalone mode, you pick any employee directly, fill in the job title yourself, and say what the onboarding is for — a new hire, a rehire, a promotion, a transfer, or someone becoming a people manager — so the suggested template is the pathway for that event. A promotion, transfer or new leader’s plan is an internal move: the new-hire paperwork (I-9, W-4, employment agreement, direct deposit, benefits enrollment) is not added, and Analytics counts it as a move rather than a new hire.

Internal moves — With Create an onboarding plan for promotions, transfers and new people managers on (Settings → Automation), a plan for the new role is created automatically when a promotion, a move to another department or location, or a move into management (a job title marked as a leadership position, or being marked a people leader) is recorded. It follows the same start and welcome-email choices as a plan created on hire.

Task assignment roles — Every task in a template is assigned to a role: New Hire, Hiring Manager, Mentor, Buddy, HR Team, IT Team, or Admin. Tasks can also be assigned to a group, which either fans out into one task per group member or assigns to a single lead. Role-based assignment resolves to the actual person when the plan is created.

Preboarding — Plans in Preboarding status give new hires access to a secure, token-based portal before their start date. The portal shows only items scheduled as Before start — day-one and post-start items stay hidden until the start date. When the Activate the plan on the start date automation is on (it is off by default), an hourly job activates preboarding plans at 06:00 in the company’s time zone on their start date, transitioning them to Active and sending the day-one welcome notification.

Relationship types — Beyond the built-in Mentor and Buddy columns, admins can create custom relationship types (e.g. Department Lead, Executive Sponsor) and mark them required or optional. Each plan supports one assignment per type. System-default types (Mentor, Buddy) cannot be deleted; any type that is already in use on a plan cannot be deleted until removed.

4. Running it

Creating a plan manually

1. Go to Onboarding Hub and click New onboarding plan.
2. Choose Recruiting mode (select a hired candidate) or Standalone mode (select an employee, enter the job title, and choose what the onboarding is for).
3. The system suggests a template — the pathway for the event and the person, then by job title, department and location. Accept the suggestion or pick a different one.
4. Set the start date, hiring manager, and optionally a mentor and buddy.
5. Save. The plan is created in Draft status with items generated from the template.

Starting preboarding

1. Open a draft plan and click Begin Preboarding. The plan moves to Preboarding status.
2. The new hire receives an email with a link to their preboarding portal — this reaches their personal email before they have a company account.
3. In the portal, the new hire can complete before-start tasks, fill enrollment forms, upload documents, and view welcome content.

Managing documents and e-signatures

1. Each plan lists the documents it requires (ID, tax, benefits, background check, etc.). New hires upload files through the portal or the app.
2. Documents that need a signature can be sent through the native e-signature flow or a connected provider (DocuSign or HelloSign / Dropbox Sign). Onboarding packages are signed with the built-in signer.
3. After upload, an admin or manager verifies or rejects each document. Rejected documents send a notification so the new hire can re-upload.

Reviewing I-9 compliance

1. Go to Onboarding Hub → I-9 Compliance Report, under Analytics (admin or HR admin only).
2. The report’s tabs list employees Without a complete I-9 (filter to Missing a section — started here with Section 1 or 2 still to do — or Not started — no I-9 record here yet), work authorizations Expiring soon (within 30, 60 or 90 days), authorizations that have already Expired, and I-9s and Section 3 reverifications completed in the last 7 days (Recent). Every tab pages through everyone in it. Service accounts (such as Approvals, AI Agent and Ask AI) are not employees and are never counted.
3. Start a reverification with Start reverification (Section 3) on the Expiring soon or Expired tab — from 90 days before a work authorization expires, for any employee with a completed I-9, whether or not they have an onboarding plan. This opens the I-9 Section 3 form (on their onboarding plan when they have one) and makes it due the day the authorization expires, or 3 days on if it has already expired. The employee is notified and asked to bring HR their new document. Once a Section 3 is open, its row shows the due date and Open Section 3 takes you to the form to complete it.
4. Export downloads everyone on the report as CSV or Excel — their I-9 status, Section 1, 2 and 3 dates and when their work authorization expires (never an SSN, an A-number or a document number). Print prints every tab; a list longer than one page prints the page you are on and says so.

Using the analytics dashboard

1. Go to Onboarding Hub → Analytics. The onboarding analytics view counts the plans whose start date falls in the period you pick (7 days to 1 year): Plans started, Tasks done (avg), Avg days to complete plan, Overdue tasks (on every open plan, whatever the period) and Avg days to final check-in. Each card’s info icon says what it counts. It charts new hires and internal moves on their start date and plans completed on the day they were completed, shows the plans by status, and breaks onboarding down by department, location, or template. New hires and moves (promotion, transfer and new-leader plans) are counted separately. Export downloads the figures as CSV or Excel.
2. Avg days to final check-in is the number of days from a plan’s start date to the sign-off of its final milestone check-in, averaged over the plans signed off in the period you pick.
3. The executive analytics view (administrators) shows new hires and exits, the same plan averages, how each figure changed from the previous period of the same length, and Challenges and Next Steps: each figure that missed its target, with the step to take and a link to where to take it.
4. For a single plan, open it and choose Compliance Audit — a per-employee trail of every form, document, communication, and compliance item with timestamps. It exports to CSV or PDF.

Automated background operations

Several jobs run without admin intervention, each at your company’s own time (its time zone):

• Preboarding auto-activation — when Activate plan on Day 1 (Settings → Automation, its Day 1 card) is on (off by default). Plans in Preboarding are activated at 06:00 on their start date, and each new hire receives a day-one welcome.
• Form and document reminders — every morning at 08:00. Your configured reminder triggers (3 days before, on due date, etc.) are evaluated and reminders sent.
• Checkpoint reminders — every morning at 08:00. Each check-in’s owner (else the hiring manager) is reminded about check-ins scheduled for the next day.
• Overdue alerts — checked every morning at 08:00, and sent at most once a week per plan. Hiring managers are told about plans with overdue items; items more than 90 days overdue stop generating alerts.
• Weekly digest — every Monday at 09:00. Each hiring manager receives a summary of their active plans’ status.
• Scheduled preboarding emails — every morning at 07:00. Sends admin-authored preboarding email campaigns to new hires based on a configured schedule.
• Department notifications — every 30 minutes. Processes and sends pending department notification alerts (e.g. notifying IT about equipment setup).

5. Settings

All settings are at Onboarding Hub → Settings (admin only).

General

Setting	Default	What it changes
Pre-start portal (preboarding)	On	Lets new hires access the preboarding portal before day one. When off, they see a “see you on day one” page instead.
Enable Onboarding Agent (AI Features tab)	On	Enables the Onboarding agent in Ask AI. New hires check their own tasks, documents, equipment and first day and complete their own tasks; managers see and start, pause or resume the plans of the hires they run; admins and HR can also set up plans, assign tasks and training, and send reminders. Every change asks for confirmation first.
Enable Onboarding Admin Agent (AI Features tab)	On	Enables the admin agent in Ask AI that drafts a 30/60/90-day plan for a role. The draft is not saved — use Templates → Draft with AI to save one as a template.
Require identity re-verification for document downloads	Off	When on, downloading onboarding documents requires the user to re-authenticate first.

Automation

Setting	Default	What it changes
1. Create employee account on hire	Off	Automatically creates an employee record when a Job Board candidate is marked hired.
2. Create onboarding plan from template	Off	Automatically generates an onboarding plan from a matched (or pinned) template when a candidate is hired.
Start plan in preboarding immediately (Plans created automatically card)	Off	When on, auto-created plans start in Preboarding status instead of Draft.
Email the new hire their welcome (Plans created automatically card)	On	Sends the plan-created notification to the new hire when auto-onboarding fires.
Activate plan on Day 1	Off	Moves every plan in preboarding — however it was made — to Active on its start date (06:00 company time) and sends the day-one welcome.
Create an onboarding plan for promotions, transfers and new people managers	Off	Creates a plan for the new role when a promotion, a transfer, or a move into management is recorded — from the pathway set up for that event when there is one. The new-hire paperwork is not added.

Notifications

A master Automated Reminders switch (on the Workflow tab, default On) gates all reminder delivery. On the Notifications tab, individual toggles control each notification type — all default to On:

Welcome Email · Checkpoint Reminders · Completion Notifications · Overdue Alerts · Weekly Digest · Document Verification Alerts · Mentor Assignment · Buddy Assignment · Team Task Assignment.

Reminder timing for forms and documents uses four triggers per type: 7 days before (default Off), 3 days before (default On), on the due date (default On), daily once overdue (default Off). The default schedule is low-noise — a 3-day heads-up and a due-date nudge.

Integrations

Setting	Default	What it changes
Copy tasks to the Tasks app	On	Copies each onboarding task that has an owner to their My Tasks when it falls due, and keeps their status in sync. Needs the Tasks app turned on.
Preferred e-signature provider	None (tenant default)	Sets the default provider for sending a single document for signature — native, DocuSign, or HelloSign.

6. More help

• Onboarding Hub FAQ — specific setup and operating questions.
• Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Onboarding Hub from these articles.