Onboarding Wizard

The Onboarding Wizard is a core feature of Baseplate designed to simplify, unify, and accelerate the process of setting up a newly created customer. By guiding users through a series of clear, step-by-step screens, the framework ensures that all critical configurations—such as customer settings, branding, and any application-specific parameters—are properly established from the start. This addresses a key business problem: new customers and administrative users often struggle with scattered settings pages, incomplete configurations, or a slow, manual approach to customer setup. By reducing this complexity, the Onboarding Framework helps new customers become productive much faster.

The first user customer is led through a wizard flow. The steps of this flow are defined and configured on a per application basis. They could include steps like confirming company information, defining customer-level preferences, adding users, and defining inputs for essential workflows. By providing validation checks and context-aware suggestions, the framework prevents incomplete or invalid information from slipping through. For instance, if a certain step requires an integration with an external service, the wizard prompts the user for relevant credentials or configuration keys. This design reduces confusion and ensures every customer starts off aligned with best practices.

Beyond initial creation, the Onboarding Framework can be re-run or accessed at any time by users with system reserved roles - System Administrators, Customer Success, or Customer Administrators. This allows for quick reconfiguration if the company changes a core concept that the application utilizes. Instead of digging through multiple settings screens, administrators simply launch the onboarding wizard again to adjust configurations in a structured, user-friendly way. This ability to “reset” or “re-run” also helps with training or re-training new administrators by letting them walk through each step methodically.

The onboarding wizard will be built out for each application and the logic is highly application specific. The feature we're describing here is a standard framework for that wizard that can be extended and customized by each application built on Baseplate. The goal is to give developers something "out of the box" they can quickly adapt to their specific domain while ensuring consistency of user experience with Baseplate default look and feel.

Developers looking for inspiration can examine popular SaaS platforms that offer a unified onboarding process, such as Stripe’s “Quick Start” wizard or Shopify’s store setup workflow. These solutions employ guided steps, embedded tooltips, and integrated validation to keep users on track. The key takeaway is that a well-designed onboarding experience reduces user friction, promotes confidence in the software, and leads to higher long-term engagement and customer satisfaction.

Role Access and User Stories

System Administrator

System Administrators can initiate or reset the onboarding process across any customer in the system. They can also do this on behalf of a specific customer or proactively setup a customer for the purposes and support a customer specific demonstration.

Reset Customer Onboarding - As a System Administrator, I want to reset the onboarding wizard for a specific customer so that any configuration errors can be corrected through a guided process rather than manual changes scattered across different settings pages.
Force Customer Re-Onboarding - As a System Administrator, I want to require a customer to re-complete the onboarding process as new regulatory requirements arise, ensuring that all customers remain compliant.
View Onboarding Progress - As a System Administrator, I want to see how far along each customer is in their onboarding process so that I can proactively provide help or escalate issues as needed.”
Troubleshoot Onboarding Errors - As a System Administrator, I want to access logs for any errors encountered during the onboarding flow so that I can diagnose issues and improve the system’s reliability.
1. Note that this would be aligned with the “View Onboarding Progress” screens pulling all the data for customer specific onboarding into one view

Customer Success

Customer Success representatives use the Onboarding Framework primarily as a support tool. They need to walk new customers through the wizard if they get stuck or have questions about configuration. They may also re-run the wizard on behalf of the customer to adjust settings related to subscription tiers, user role assignments, or other setup details that the customer might not fully understand.

Guide Customer Through Setup - As a Customer Success representative, I want to walk a new customer step-by-step through the onboarding wizard so that they can configure their customer seamlessly and start using the platform quickly.
Answer Onboarding Questions - As a Customer Success representative, I want to access the customer’s current onboarding step and see any relevant data so that I can answer questions about required fields or available configuration options.
Re-Run Onboarding for Issue Resolution - As a Customer Success representative, I want to initiate the wizard again if a customer discovers they’ve configured something incorrectly, enabling them to fix errors easily.”
Track Onboarding Completion - As a Customer Success representative, I want to monitor whether the customer has finished all the steps in the wizard so that I know when they are fully set up and ready to use the product.
Receive Alerts for Stalled Onboarding - As a Customer Success representative, I want to be alerted if a customer hasn’t progressed in the wizard for more than a week so that I can proactively reach out and offer assistance.

Customer Administrator

Customer Administrators are the primary beneficiaries of the Onboarding Framework. They use it to perform the initial setup of their environment, but they can also re-run the wizard at any time to adjust system standard settings. Because they have autonomy over their own customer, they need a straightforward, foolproof method for making changes as their organization evolves.

Initial Customer Setup - As a Customer Administrator, I want to be guided through essential steps like branding, domain settings, and user roles so that my organization is ready for immediate use of the product.
Invite Team Members - As a Customer Administrator, I want to invite other team members to use and interact with the application from the onboarding wizard so that I’m not the only one responsible for these configurations.