Customise onboarding email sequences

When you add a new employee with Onboarding status, the platform fires a timed sequence of emails to welcome them, prep them for day one, and check in over their first month. The Comms module is where you customise those emails.

The default sequence

Out of the box, the platform schedules 6 emails relative to the employee’s start date:

Email	When
Welcome	Day 0 (the start date itself)
Pre-start	7 days before start
Day before	1 day before start
Day one	On the start date
Week one check-in	7 days after start
Month one check-in	30 days after start

Each email has a subject, body, and merge tags pre-built. The merge tags include {employee_name}, {start_date}, and {manager_name} so the messages feel personal.

Open the onboarding sequence editor

1. Sidebar then HR Hub then Comms.
2. Click the Onboarding sequences tab (or, in the Templates tab, filter by category Onboarding).

You see the 6 emails with their offset and current content.

Edit an email

1. Click an email to open the editor.
2. Adjust:
   • Subject line. What the new starter sees in their inbox.
   • Body. Visual editor or HTML mode.
   • Trigger offset. Days relative to start date (negative for before, positive for after, 0 for the day itself).
   • Active toggle. Untick to disable this email entirely without deleting it.
3. Save.

Changes apply to future new starters. Anyone already mid-sequence sticks with the version they started with.

Disable an email

If a particular touch point doesn’t fit your culture (e.g. you don’t do a “pre-start” message because your industry doesn’t), untick its active toggle. The email is preserved but won’t fire.

Add a custom email to the sequence

The default sequence has 6 emails. If you want more (e.g. a 90-day check-in), you can add custom emails to the onboarding category and they’ll fire as part of the sequence based on their offset.

1. In the Templates area, create a new template.
2. Set the category to Onboarding.
3. Set the trigger offset (e.g. 90 for “90 days after start”).
4. Save.

The new email joins the sequence and fires for future new starters.

Personalising the manager intro

The “Day one” or “Day before” emails commonly include a personal intro from the manager. The platform doesn’t currently support manager-specific email branches (each manager writing their own version), but you can:

• Use the {manager_name} merge tag in a generic intro: “Your manager [Manager name] is looking forward to meeting you on Monday.”
• Bcc the manager on the email so they know what was sent and can follow up personally.

Testing the sequence

Before relying on a customised sequence for a real new starter:

1. Create a test employee with Onboarding status.
2. Set their start date to a few days in the future.
3. Watch the emails fire over the next week or so.
4. Verify the timing, content, and merge tags all work.

You can also use the workflow test-fire feature (admin diagnostic) to run a sequence without sending real emails.

Where these emails connect to the onboarding workflow

The email sequence is part of the broader onboarding workflow (see Customise the default onboarding workflow for your org). The emails are scheduled by the workflow engine when an onboarding record is created. So changes to the workflow can affect when emails fire, not just changes to the email templates themselves.

Permissions

Org admins only.