Playbook, SaaS company
The account is open and nothing has been set up yet
There is an order to setting up a team product and hardly anybody publishes it. The structure of the workspace and the sign in method both have to be settled before people are invited, because both are painful to change once forty accounts exist. The questions in that first afternoon are narrow, repetitive and entirely answerable from documents, which makes this the cheapest cell in the set to get right.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for setup and onboarding holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The sequence is the answer. An administrator who invites the team before deciding the workspace structure and the sign in method creates work that has to be undone, and nothing on a signup page warns them.
- Migration is where this stalls, and it stalls on limits rather than on concepts: the size of a file that can be imported, the columns that do not map, and what a second import does to records that already exist.
- Work done during a trial has to survive conversion or the first week was wasted, so whether it carries over is an onboarding question rather than a billing one, and it is asked with real anxiety.
- A sandbox and a production workspace look identical in a screenshot, so material that does not say which one a step belongs to sends somebody to configure the wrong place and then wonder why nothing appeared.
How it arrives
- how do we import our existing data
- is there a limit on the size of the import file
- what should we set up before inviting the team
- does everything from the trial carry over when we pay
- can we test in a sandbox first
- how long does setup usually take
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The import specification, with the limits stated | Accepted formats, the maximum file size and row count, the required columns, and what happens on a repeat import: merge, duplicate or fail. Every one of these is a fixed fact, and together they are the reason a migration stops on a Tuesday afternoon. |
|---|---|
| The setup order for an administrator | What has to be decided before the first invitation goes out, written as a sequence rather than as a checklist of features. Workspace structure and sign in method belong at the top, because those are the two that are expensive to reverse. |
| What converts when a trial becomes a subscription | Which data survives, which settings survive, what happens to members invited during the trial, and whether anything has to be redone. Say it plainly, because the fear of losing the week is what makes people delay converting. |
| Sandbox and production, and what differs between them | Whether a sandbox exists, what it is for, what does not work in it, and whether anything can be moved from one to the other. Where both exist, every instruction you publish needs to say which one it applies to. |
The reply
Before inviting anybody it is worth settling two things, because both are awkward to change later: how the workspace is structured and how people will sign in. Both are covered in the setup guide in the order they should be done [1]. For the import, the accepted formats, the file size limit and the required columns are listed on the import page, along with what a second import does to records that are already there [2]. I cannot see your account or run an import for you, so if you want somebody to look at your file before you start, leave your name, your work email and roughly how many records are involved.
It gives the sequence first, since that is the advice with the shortest shelf life and the highest cost if missed. The import answer leads with limits rather than with steps, because the steps are obvious and the limits are what stop people. Asking for the record count in the handover means the reply can be about their migration rather than a request for more information.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor describes their own file or their existing system and asks whether it will import, or asks for help planning a migration.
I cannot look at your data or tell you whether a particular file will import cleanly. Leave your name, your work email, roughly how many records there are and what they are coming out of, and somebody who can look at it properly will come back to you.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say a particular file, export or system will import successfully, since nothing here has seen it.
- Never estimate how long a migration will take for a specific customer.
- Never say trial work carries over unless your own material says exactly that.
- Never name an import format, connector or source system that is not on your published list.
Questions
- Is onboarding worth answering, given every account is different?
- The differences are smaller than they feel. Import limits, setup order, what converts from a trial and what a sandbox is for are the same for everybody, and they are the questions that arrive in week one. What is genuinely account specific is a migration plan, and that is a handover.
- Can it walk somebody through the setup screen by screen?
- It can quote your guide with references back to it, which is not the same thing. It has no view of what the person is looking at, so it cannot tell them what to click next, and pretending otherwise here is how somebody ends up configuring a sandbox all afternoon.
- What should we write first if we have nothing?
- The import limits and the setup order, in that order. Between them they cover the two places new accounts stall, and both are things your own team already say out loud several times a week.
Keep reading
- Everything for a SaaS companyOne widget serves prospects, trialists and paying customers. What it can answer about plans and limits, and what has to reach a person.
- Handling setup and onboarding in generalMost product material is written for somebody who already understands it. A first run guide has to be ordered, not merely complete.
- The steps do not match what the customer is looking atSupport questions on a subscription product where the documentation lags the interface, and the fault may be the plan rather than a bug.
- Will it work with what we already haveWill it work with our sign in, our browsers and the tools we already pay for. Three questions, and one is answered by the pricing page.
- We did not mean to renew for another yearAuto renewal, a converted trial and a refund window that has closed. What the assistant may quote, and what only a person can decide.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.