Help CenterGetting Started

Build an Onboarding Flow with AI

The fastest way to build a complete client onboarding flow in 360Onboard is to describe your business to the AI and let it scaffold the entire system for you — intake forms, service agreement, payment, calendar booking, even the emails. This guide walks you through that workflow end-to-end.

What You'll Build

In about five minutes, you'll have a complete client onboarding flow that includes:

  • A welcome tutorial step
  • An intake questionnaire for business and goals
  • A generated service agreement ready for signature
  • A Stripe payment step (one-time or subscription)
  • A calendar booking step
  • Email and workflow automations between every step
  • A custom-branded, publishable URL you can send to clients

Step 1: Start a New Flow

Open 360Onboard. From the dashboard, click the blue + Create Flow button in the top-right corner (next to Send Onboarding Link).

You'll be asked whether you want to build a client flow or an employee flow. 360Onboard works for both — the underlying mechanics are identical. For this guide, choose client flow.

Pro Tip: You can toggle dark/light mode at any time from the top-left of the screen — there's a small sun/moon icon right next to the 360Onboard logo. Hover it and you'll see a "Cycle theme" tooltip. Pick whatever's easiest on your eyes — the choice doesn't affect what your clients see.

Step 2: Describe Your Business to the AI

The next screen is the AI builder. This is where you tell the AI what your business does and what you want to onboard clients into.

A short, specific prompt works best. The more context you give, the better the generated flow. A good prompt covers:

  • What your business does
  • Who you're onboarding (new clients, leads who just paid, etc.)
  • What deliverables or services they're signing up for
  • Your pricing model (one-time, monthly, per-unit)

For example: "We're a marketing agency that helps companies get AEO (SEO for AI). We're onboarding new clients who just signed up. We write blogs for them and charge $500/month."

By default the builder uses Anthropic Claude as the underlying AI. You can switch models from the settings page.

Step 3: Let the AI Build the System

Press enter. The AI will propose a complete flow structure with three to six steps depending on what you described. A typical generated flow looks like:

  • Welcome tutorial — sets expectations and explains your services
  • Business goals intake — collects business name, website, industry, target audience, goals
  • Service agreement — auto-generated contract for client signature
  • Payment — Stripe checkout configured to your pricing
  • Calendar booking — embed of your scheduling tool

You'll see the structure appear in the builder as the AI works. When it finishes, every step is fully configured — no manual field-by-field setup needed.

Step 4: Generate Your Service Agreement

The contract step deserves special attention. When the AI generates a service agreement, it produces a complete contract with placeholders for client signature, date, company name, title, and email.

The signature fields sometimes land slightly out of place on the document. You can drag each field — signature, date signed, email — to the exact spot you want it on the contract. Click Preview to see exactly what your client will see when they open the signature step.

Pro Tip: Auto-generated contracts are a starting point, not legal advice. Have your own counsel review any AI-generated agreement before sending it to real clients.

Step 5: Connect Payments and Calendar

If you've already connected Stripe in your 360Onboard settings, the payment step will be ready to go — your client sees a Stripe checkout with the amount you specified, paying you directly.

For the calendar step, paste your Calendly link (or any scheduling tool URL). 360Onboard supports three modes:

  • Embedded — Calendly and similar tools render directly inside the flow
  • Button link — Opens the calendar in a new tab
  • Custom embed code — Paste your own iframe code for any tool

Step 6: Design and Brand the Flow

Click the Design tab in the top tab bar (the row that reads Build / Design / Workflows). From here you can:

  • Pick a theme that matches your brand colors
  • Change the font (custom fonts are supported)
  • Switch the hero layout (full bleed, editorial, etc.)
  • Switch the overview layout (timeline, card grid, list, accordion)
  • Personalize the welcome message with merge tags like "Welcome to your onboarding, {first_name}"
  • Pick a language for default UI text (the message widget, button labels, etc.)
  • Position the chat widget anywhere on the screen
  • Add your logo, company name, and brand colors
  • Enable celebrations — confetti, fireworks, emojis, or branded GIFs on step or flow completion
  • Set up a redirect URL so clients land on your website when they finish

For a deeper walkthrough of design options, see Design Your Onboarding Flow in 360Onboard.

Step 7: Add Workflows for Automation

Click the Workflows tab in the top tab bar (right of Design). This is where 360Onboard becomes a full automation platform.

You can add an action between any two steps:

  • Send email — uses your email templates, sent to the client or to your team
  • Send SMS — via Twilio (requires Twilio account connection)
  • Fire webhook — fully custom; send the client's payload to any URL with optional signing secret
  • If gate — conditional logic so workflows only fire when a client's answers match a value

For example: if the client's business size equals "enterprise," send the deal to your team's Slack via webhook before showing them the payment step.

For more on workflows, see Workflows in 360Onboard — Trigger Emails, SMS & Webhooks.

Step 8: Publish and Share

When everything looks right, click the Publish button in the top-right of the builder (rightmost in the row with Preview / AI / Draft). You'll get a sharable link.

You can customize the URL slug to anything you want — for example, acme-onboarding or q2-clients. If you've set up a custom domain in settings, the link automatically uses your domain (e.g., onboarding.yourcompany.com/acme-onboarding).

From the same screen you can:

  • Copy the public link
  • Generate a personalized link for a specific client (pre-filled with their name and email)
  • Print or scan a QR code

For sending personalized invitations to specific clients, see Generating Personalized Client Links.

Test Your Flow End-to-End

Before you send the link to a real client, walk through it yourself in a private browser window. You'll see exactly what the client sees:

  • A first-time visitor enters their name → personalized welcome
  • They progress through the tutorial, intake, signature, payment, and calendar steps
  • They can pause and resume — there's a built-in Save and continue later that emails them a resume link
  • Any workflows you configured fire in the background

If something looks wrong, jump back into the builder, make the change, and publish again — any change made after publish needs to be republished to go live.

What's Next?

Now that your first flow is live, the natural next steps are:

Last updated on 2026-05-23

Contact Support