DocumentationOnboarding and probation
Onboarding plans and journeys
Build the reusable task plan every new hire gets — stages, task types, owners, due rules, critical blockers — publish it, and see how journeys start when an offer is accepted.
Documentation (17)
An onboarding plan is the list of tasks a new hire’s journey starts with, from preboarding to probation. A journey is that plan in action for one person: created once, when they accept their offer. HR and admins manage plans under Templates → Onboarding plans.
Create a plan
- Choose New onboarding plan. Under Start with, choose a sample plan or An empty plan. Each sample shows who it is for, how many tasks it has per stage, its critical blockers and check-ins; open All … tasks to read every task.
- Give it a Name (required) and, if you like, a Description (optional).
- Under Applies to, leave Department and Location on “Any” for a plan for all new hires, or pick one or both. Then choose Create template.
The standard plan has 22 generic tasks you can adjust: the new hire’s details, documents, handbook and first-day information; HR’s contract, equipment and accounts; the manager’s first-week plan and buddy; the welcome meeting, day-one handover and safety briefing; team introductions and probation goals; and a first-month check-in, the probation final review and recording the outcome.
Every sample asks the new hire for the same documents, named generically because every country has its own:
| Step | Required | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Upload your identity document | Yes — a critical blocker | National identity card (if the country issues one), passport, driving licence, or another government-issued photo ID. |
| Upload your residence card or work permit | No | Only for people who are not citizens of the country of work; HR skips it otherwise. |
| Upload your tax ID document | Yes | A document showing their tax identification number. |
| Upload your experience letters | Yes (not for interns) | One per previous employer. HR skips it for a first job. |
| Upload your education certificates | No (not for interns) | The highest qualification. |
| Upload your signed employment contract | Yes — a critical blocker | The signed copy of the contract HR sends; HR marks it done if you sign another way. |
| Sample | Tasks | Built for |
|---|---|---|
| Standard onboarding | 22 | Every new hire: a general plan to adjust. |
| Office-based employee | 25 | A desk, building access, an office tour and the health and safety briefing. |
| Remote employee | 26 | Home setup, shipped equipment the new hire confirms, remote access and video calls. |
| Engineering or technical role | 29 | Security policy, access to code and tools, a technical buddy and a first change in week one. |
| Sales or customer-facing role | 28 | CRM access, product training, shadowing customer conversations and a ramp-up plan. |
| Intern or graduate | 24 | A mentor, a learning plan and project, and midpoint and end-of-programme reviews. |
| People manager or leader | 27 | A team handover, key people to meet, a people-management briefing and one-to-ones. |
| Frontline or shift worker | 25 | The rota, uniform, a site safety induction and a first shift with a buddy. |
Samples assign tasks to the new hire, HR or the manager. Where IT or facilities usually does the work, the task says so: after creating the plan, change its Done by to Specific member and choose the colleague. Check-in timings are suggestions — move them to suit your probation periods.
Duplicate a plan
To build a variant of a plan you already have — for a department, a location or another kind of role — choose Duplicate next to it under Onboarding plans. The copy gets the tasks of the plan’s current version (or its draft, if it was never published) as a new draft. Give it a name and choose who it applies to: each active plan needs its own combination of department and location, so pick one the original does not use. Then choose Create copy. The original and the journeys started from it do not change.
Add and arrange tasks
The draft lists tasks by stage. Each has Edit, Up, Down and Remove; Add task opens the form. It is a form and a list — there is no drag-and-drop workflow canvas. A version can hold up to 100 tasks.
| Field | What it means |
|---|---|
| Title (required) | What needs doing, up to 200 characters. |
| Description (optional) | Instructions for whoever does it. |
| Link (optional) | A web page for the task, for example for Link tasks. New hires open it from their portal. |
| Stage | Preboarding, Day 1, First week or Probation. |
| Task type | Action, Form, Upload, Acknowledgement, Meeting, Link or Review. |
| Done by | New hire, HR, Manager, or Specific member (then choose the member). |
| Due | A number of days before or after offer acceptance, the start date or the probation end. 0 days means on that day. |
| Critical blocker | The new hire is not ready to join until this is done. Critical blockers are always required. |
| Required | Counts towards joining readiness. Untick for optional tasks. |
Due rules can be up to 365 days before or 730 days after their anchor, so any rhythm works — for example “7 days before start date”, “On start date” or “14 days before probation end”. A specific member must be an active member of your organization.
Task types
| Type | How it is completed |
|---|---|
| Action | Marked done by its owner (a new hire uses Mark as done in their portal). |
| Form | For the new hire: submitting Your details in the portal completes it. |
| Upload | For the new hire: uploading a file on the task completes it. HR then checks the document — see Documents below. |
| Acknowledgement | The new hire ticks “I have read and understood this” and confirms. |
| Meeting | Marked done by its owner. |
| Link | Points to a web page; marked done by its owner. |
| Review | A check-in. It becomes a review the reviewer fills in and is completed by submitting it. Cannot be given to the new hire. |
Equipment, accounts or training are modelled as tasks of these types — DayOneFlow does not track assets or run courses itself.
Publish
A plan has at most one draft and one current version. When the draft is ready, choose Publish version 1 (the number follows the version). The published version becomes Current for new journeys, and the previous one is marked Replaced.
- Published versions never change. To edit, choose Start a new draft: it starts as a copy of the current version. A draft you don’t want can be removed with Discard draft.
- Journeys keep the version they started from. Publishing never changes a journey that has already started.
- The version history keeps read-only copies of earlier versions.
- Archive plan stops a plan being used for new journeys; Restore plan brings it back.
Which plan a new hire gets
When an offer is accepted, DayOneFlow picks the most specific published plan that is not archived: one for the new hire’s department at their location, then one for their department, then one for their location, then the plan for all new hires.
How a journey starts
As soon as the candidate accepts, DayOneFlow creates their journey exactly once: it copies the plan’s tasks, works out each due date in your organization’s time zone, gives each task its owner, notifies named owners and the HR team by email, and moves the new hire to Preboarding.
- A manager task goes to the new hire’s manager. Without a manager it is kept as an unassigned task — never silently dropped.
- A due date tied to the probation end waits until there is a probation end date.
- If no published plan applies, the new hire’s Tasks tab says so. Publish a plan, then choose Start the onboarding journey there. DayOneFlow also retries pending journeys automatically.
Want to build one now? Follow Build and publish an onboarding plan.