What is Onboarding and how is it helpful?

Chetan Agarwal

Modified on: Thu, Aug 15, 2019 at 4:09 PM

What is Onboarding used for?

User Onboarding is a powerful tool for creating a set of tasks for new users to get accustomed to the features and procedures offered by the hosting application. The list of Onboarding tasks may consist of going through previously created Workflows or referring an end user to a piece of related Knowledge Content (such as a video or a link to an external article). User Onboarding feature acts like a tutor that guides an employee through a set of exercises necessary for completing initial training, forming consistent usage patterns of a hosting application, and helping them to focus on their key responsibilities without triggering anxiety of not being able to cope with technical specifications of the system they use.

A new employee may start the onboarding process with watching a couple of educational videos followed by step-by-steps instructions on how to complete tasks related to their daily activities. An example of an Onboarding procedure for a Data Analyst starting to work with a new platform my consist of the following components: a couple of introductory videos, Importing Data Workflow, Generating a Graph Workflow, Setting Alerts Workflow, Generating Reports Workflow, and links to more articles that may contain more details that are not covered in other resources. As a powerful product adoption feature, onboarding accelerates training pace and helps end users focus on their primary goals.

Dependencies with other Apty Assist features

Workflows:

User Onboarding is essentially a list of instructional materials put together in a consistent way to help an employee to comprehend how specific elements of a hosting application function or remembering the sequence of steps required for achieving specific results; for example, steps for exporting data from a system, generating specific types of reports, etc. Workflows guide a user through each step required to achieve the required result by pointing to the elements of a hosting application and giving instructions on how to interact with them.

For more details refer to: What is a Workflow?

Knowledge Store:

Knowledge store links an end user to external knowledge content in the form of videos and URLs to articles or other instructional resources.

For more details refer to: Add Knowledge Content

User Segmentation:

Combined with User Segmentation which allows delivering instructional materials to specific user groups with respect to their scope of responsibilities, User Onboarding becomes more targeted and organized by distributing various sets of training elements to various types of users.

For more details refer to: What is Segmentation and how is it helpful?

Apty Analytics:

Analytics tracks and compares the amount of started onboarding procedures vs completed, shows the dynamic of their usage, and creates a list of tops used onboardings. These insights allow polishing the onboard procedures for smoother trainings, retrieve the feedback on how helpful certain onboardings are, and see how many users follow the predefined training steps.

For more details refer to: User Onboarding Statistics

How does Onboarding look to an end user?

Sets of Onboarding tasks are available to the end users in the Assist Client (formerly known as Player) which is displayed as a widget on a hosting application. The list of onboardings also displayes the number of tasks added to each onboarding and user's progress on working their way through the onboardings assigned to them specifically. The progress of tasks is specific to the logged in user and depends on his user ID, machine and local storage along with the browser being used. Once certain onboardings are completed, they are stricken out and new tasks appear in the Assist Client. The progress will persist until any of the above is not changed.

When of the onboarding is clicked, the list of tasks that are part of the onboarding are displayed as shown on the screen below.