Account Setup at First Sign-In
1. What it is
Account setup is the short run of steps a person walks the first time they sign in. It collects their profile, how they want to be notified, when they can work, and a password of their own. Until they finish, every page they open sends them back to the steps.
It serves three readers. An employee walks it once. A manager is told when a new report has finished. An admin chooses which steps appear and can see who is still part-way through.
- Enablement: always on. It is part of the platform, not an app, and needs no licence. An admin shapes it in Admin → General Settings → Onboarding.
- What it is not: it is not HR onboarding. The forms, documents and Onboarding Status on an employee record are a separate thing that HR works. A person can finish account setup in five minutes while their HR onboarding is still open, and the two are counted separately everywhere.
2. Standing it up
Account setup works with no configuration. These steps are for an admin who wants to check or change what new people see.
- Go to Admin → General Settings, find the Onboarding card and click Manage Onboarding. The page is titled Onboarding Settings.
- In the Onboarding Steps card, read the badge on each step. Auto resolves to: Shown or Auto resolves to: Hidden tells you what a new person gets today.
- Leave a step on Auto (recommended), or choose Always Show or Always Hide for it. Read the warning under a step before hiding it.
- If your company signs in through single sign-on, an SSO Settings card appears. Decide whether Lock fields provided by organization stays on.
- Click Save Settings.
- Add and invite your people in Admin → Users. Each one meets the steps at their first sign-in, on a computer or a phone.
The pairing that catches people out: the Go-live date at the top of the same page does not switch account setup on, off, or change who walks it. It belongs to HR’s alerts. Section 3 explains the split.
3. How it fits together
The four steps, in order. A person sees only the steps that apply to them, and the progress panel beside each step lists exactly those.
| Step, as the person sees it | What it asks | When Auto shows it |
|---|---|---|
| Your profile | First and last name, profile photo, phone number, time zone, language | Always |
| Notifications | Email and SMS on or off, and an optional phone number to verify. In-app notifications are always on | When Shift Marketplace, On-Call Management or Calendar is enabled |
| Availability & shifts | Minimum and maximum hours per week, maximum consecutive days, extra shifts, weekend and holiday availability | When Shifts & Scheduling is enabled |
| Security setup | A new password, entered twice | For people who sign in with a password |
One step, three names. The same step is labelled differently depending on where you read it. Knowing this saves a support call.
| The person’s progress panel | Onboarding Settings | “Last reached” on an admin profile |
|---|---|---|
| Your profile | Profile Completion | Complete Your Profile |
| Notifications | Notification Preferences | Notification Preferences |
| Availability & shifts | Availability & Shift Preferences | Availability & Shift Preferences |
| Security setup | Security Setup | Security Setup |
No step can be skipped by the person. There is no skip button. A step that is shown must be saved before the next one opens, and steps open in order. What a person may leave empty is inside a step: the phone number on Notifications is optional, for example. Only an admin removes a step, by hiding it for everyone.
Auto, Always Show, Always Hide. Auto decides from what your company has enabled, as the table above shows. Always Show shows the step whatever is enabled. Always Hide removes it, with two limits:
- Hiding Your profile is ignored for anyone missing a first or last name. They still see the step.
- Hiding Security setup leaves people on the temporary password they were given, unless your password policy expires it.
When Notifications is hidden, no Email or SMS choice is recorded for the person. Each notification category keeps its normal default.
Who is not asked for a password. Two groups pass over Security setup however the step is set:
- People who sign in through single sign-on. They have no password here to set.
- People who have already chosen their own password. That covers someone who joined from a team invite, used a set-password link or a password reset link, or replaced an expired temporary password when they signed in. They are not asked for one again, unless an administrator sets or resets their password before they finish; then the step asks them to choose their own.
A Super Admin who is shown the step gets a Keep my current password box, ticked to begin with, and can leave it ticked instead of choosing a new one.
The go-live date is HR’s, not account setup’s. The Go-live date in the Onboarding Tracking card decides which employees HR tracks. For people hired on or after it, the Missing I-9 and Onboarding task HR alerts can fire, sent to the recipients chosen for each alert, and they are counted in the statistics panel. People hired earlier are treated as pre-existing records. Account setup ignores the date entirely: anyone who has not finished is held at the steps, whenever they were hired, and whether or not a date is set.
Finishing has four effects.
- The person is let into the rest of the product. The finished page offers Continue where you left off when the steps interrupted them on the way to a page, and Go to Dashboard otherwise.
- Their manager gets one notification, titled with the person’s name and “is set up and ready”. It links to the person’s profile.
- If HR’s Onboarding Status for the person was blank or Not Started, it moves to In Progress.
- The person is emailed that their account is set up, the first time they finish. No email goes when your company has turned that email off or the person has no email address.
The manager is told once. The notification goes to the person’s manager in your company. If that manager has left, it goes to the next manager up the reporting line and says why. If the person has no manager, nobody is notified. A person who starts over and finishes again does not trigger a second notification.
Computer, phone and mobile app share the same steps. A person on a phone gets the same steps in the phone layout. A step already answered in the mobile app is not asked again on the web.
4. Running it
See who has signed in but not finished
- Go to Admin → Users.
- Open More filters.
- In the activity filter, choose Signed in, account setup not finished.
The list shows people who have signed in at least once and are still held at the steps. People who have never signed in are under Never Logged In in the same filter.
Check one person
Open the person from Admin → Users. Under their invitation status, a line beginning Account setup: reads one of:
- finished, with the date
- hasn’t signed in yet
- not finished — last reached and the name of a step
- not finished
Someone you have invited shows Invited, with the date the invitation was sent for invitations sent since the date began to be recorded. If the invitation email could not be delivered, the profile goes back to Pending Invitation and says the invitation could not be delivered, so you can check the address and send it again. “Last reached” can name a step you have since hidden, which is why it does not say “is on”.
The Onboarding section of the employee’s profile shows the same fact as Account setup finished with the date, or Account setup: not finished yet. It is shown, not typed: the product sets it when the person finishes.
Read it beside HR onboarding
Open the New Hires Report. Each person listed carries HR’s status and, underneath, Account setup done with the date or Account setup not finished. The CSV export has an Account setup column reading Done with the date, or Not finished.
The statistics panel on Onboarding Settings counts Finished account setup (the steps above) and Not yet finished account setup apart from HR onboarding incomplete. Those counts appear once a go-live date is set.
Let someone walk the steps again
The person does this themself. On the finished page, they click Start over? and confirm. The steps reopen with their earlier answers already filled in, and they are held at the steps until they finish again. Their password is not asked for again.
Look at the steps as someone else
Viewing as a person does not walk their setup for them. The step forms are shown disabled, nothing can be saved, and Start over? is refused. An admin viewing as someone is not held at that person’s steps.
5. Settings
All of these are on Admin → General Settings → Onboarding → Manage Onboarding.
| Setting | Where | Default | What it changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Profile Completion | Onboarding Steps | Auto (recommended) — shown | Whether new people see Your profile. Always Hide is ignored for anyone missing a first or last name |
| Notification Preferences | Onboarding Steps | Auto (recommended) — shown when Shift Marketplace, On-Call Management or Calendar is enabled | Whether new people choose Email and SMS at first sign-in |
| Availability & Shift Preferences | Onboarding Steps | Auto (recommended) — shown when Shifts & Scheduling is enabled | Whether new people enter hours and weekend and holiday availability |
| Security Setup | Onboarding Steps | Auto (recommended) — shown | Whether people who sign in with a password must choose a new one. Never shown to single sign-on users |
| Lock fields provided by organization | SSO Settings (appears when single sign-on is configured) | On | Profile fields filled in by single sign-on are read-only on Your profile. Fields that were not pre-filled stay editable |
| Go-live date | Onboarding Tracking | Empty (tracking off) | Which employees the HR alerts and the statistics panel track. Does not change account setup |
6. More help
- Account Setup FAQ — questions from employees, managers and admins: changing an answer later, why someone is stuck, the limits each answer takes.
- Users, Roles & Permissions — adding people and sending invitations.
- Security & Sign-On — password policy and single sign-on.
- Mobile — What Employees Get — signing in on a phone.
- Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about account setup from these articles.