How to set up ai agents for onboarding setup

Have these ready before you configure the agent. You won’t need code or technical experience – it’s all done inside Chatref’s app.

• Your onboarding content. Gather every PDF, help center page, FAQ, and step‑by‑step guide you give new users. Focus on the bits that cause the most friction: clock‑in workflows, project assignments, timesheet approvals, mobile‑app setup, and integrations (payroll, invoicing). Good content makes the agent reliable.
• A Chatref account. If you don’t have one yet, create it at app.chatref.ai. Every new account comes with $50 in free credit – no card required, no expiry. You’ll use it to train and test before you embed anything.
• Admin access to your app or website (for the one‑line widget snippet you’ll add later). The widget lives inside your time tracking software’s interface so users get help exactly where they work.

The whole process takes around 20 minutes. You’ll create one agent dedicated to onboarding, feed it your guides, and set a few behaviours.

1. Add your onboarding content

1. Log into Chatref and click New agent (or open an existing agent you want to repurpose). Give it a name like “Onboarding Helper.”
2. Go to the Knowledge tab. Hit Add source and choose how you want to provide your material:
   • Upload files – drag in your PDFs, Word docs, or text files.
   • Import from URL – point Chatref at your public help center or a set of setup articles.
   • Paste plain text – copy‑paste a step‑by‑step workflow if that’s all you have today.
3. The agent trains on your content in a few seconds. It won’t make up answers; it only uses what you uploaded. If you later update a guide, you can re‑import or edit the source directly – no retraining from scratch.

What to include for a time‑tracking app:

• How to log a time entry (web, mobile, timer mode)
• How to create and assign projects/tasks
• How managers approve timesheets
• How to sync with payroll or invoicing tools
• Common permission issues (“Why can’t I see my team’s time?”)
• Mobile app install and first‑day checklist

2. Configure the agent’s voice and behaviour

Stay in the Settings tab of the agent.

• Agent name & welcome message. The default welcome message works, but a better one sets the tone: “Hey! I can walk you through your first time‑entry, set up your project list, or explain approvals. Ask me anything.”
• Branding. Upload your time‑tracking software’s icon and pick a primary colour that matches your app. This keeps the experience familiar for users.
• Prompt (optional). In the advanced settings you can give the agent a short behaviour rule, for example: “Always explain in a few short steps. If you don’t know the answer, suggest contacting support through the usual channel.” The agent will follow that instruction on top of the content you trained it on.
• Lead capture (turn it off for now). This feature is useful later when you want to collect details from trial users, but during setup, leave it off so the agent focuses purely on getting new users through onboarding. You can enable it later from the Lead Capture section.

3. Embed the widget in your app

1. Go to the Embed tab. Copy the one‑line <script> snippet.
2. Paste it into your app’s HTML just before the closing </body> tag, or use the snippet inside your app’s template system. The widget works inside any web application, whether it’s a SPA or a traditional server‑rendered page.
3. The widget appears automatically as a chat icon. Once you deploy the snippet, the agent is live on your time‑tracking software, ready to guide new users through setup. You don’t need to rebuild anything.

If your app has a native mobile client, the web widget still covers the mobile‑web experience. For native mobile, you can link to the agent’s public chat page from inside your app as a stop‑gap.

4. Enable insights (optional but recommended)

In the agent’s Insights section, turn on the digest emails. Chatref automatically analyses all onboarding conversations and groups them by topic – you’ll see exactly which questions keep coming up (“how to set a project budget,” “mobile timer not syncing,” etc.). A weekly email tells you the top‑three friction points so you can update your guides or tweak the product before users churn.

Later, those insights also power the Conversation Tags panel, where you can see real‑time trend data right inside the Chatref inbox.

Before you announce the agent to all new users, test it yourself.

1. Use the playground. Chatref’s built‑in test panel (the Playground tab) lets you send the same question a new user would ask: “How do I log my first time entry?” or “I can’t find the project I created.” The agent should answer with a step‑by‑step, grounded reply, and cite the source document it pulled from. If it gives a vague answer, go back to the Knowledge tab and add more detail on that specific scenario – training is iterative.
2. Test on a staging environment. If you have a staging version of your app, deploy the widget there first. Walk through a new‑user flow: sign up, open the time‑tracking dashboard, then click the chat icon and ask a real onboarding question. Make sure the widget opens, the answer appears quickly, and the follow‑up questions work.
3. Ask something the agent can’t answer. Try “What’s your phone number?” or a very technical question about a payroll integration that isn’t in your docs. The agent should politely say it doesn’t know and – if you configured it – suggest contacting human support. This is good: a grounded agent shouldn’t make things up.
4. Test on real new users (soft launch). Enable the agent only for a small cohort (for example, add the widget to a /setup onboarding page, not the whole app). Watch the first 15‑20 conversations in the Inbox to spot any gaps before rolling out widely.

Agent gives wrong or off‑topic answers
This almost always happens because the training material doesn’t cover that specific question explicitly. Open the agent’s Knowledge tab, add a new source or paste a short paragraph that directly answers the missing scenario (e.g., “How to adjust billing rates after creation”). Re‑test in the playground.

Widget doesn’t appear in my app

• Check that the snippet is placed before </body> and that the page isn’t cached by a CDN. Force‑refresh the page.
• If your app uses a strict Content Security Policy, you may need to allow the widget’s origin (Chatref’s domain). Reach out via the in‑app chat for the current hostname if needed.

Agent’s answers are too long or too technical
Adjust the agent’s prompt in the Settings tab. A good rule for onboarding: “Keep answers to 3‑4 short sentences. Use bullet points when there are multiple steps. Never mention other features unless asked.” Save and test again.

Users ask for a human and the agent doesn’t hand off
The agent doesn’t automatically escalate. Right now, you handle handoffs manually through the shared Inbox. When you see a conversation stalling, jump in from the inbox and the human operator takes over the same chat thread with full context. This keeps the handoff seamless for the user.

Insights digest doesn’t show helpful patterns
The digest needs at least a handful of conversations to surface meaningful clusters. If you’ve run the agent for a few days but still don’t see actionable topics, check that the agent is receiving genuine onboarding queries (not just “hello” tests). You can also manually tag a few conversations yourself in the Inbox to seed the pattern detection.

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What causes onboarding setup problems for Time Tracking Software?

Most blockages come from unclear first‑time‑setup steps: users can’t find where to log an entry, don’t understand project‑versus‑task structures, or get confused by permission settings that hide their team’s data. Another major source is mobile‑app‑to‑web sync – new users often expect the timer to sync instantly and abandon the tool when it doesn’t. Without real‑time guidance inside the app, those users stall and your support team repeats the same explanations.

How do I improve onboarding setup for Time Tracking Software?

Start by making your setup guides bite‑sized and context‑sensitive – answer the exact question a user is asking at that moment, not the whole manual. Then instrument your app with an AI agent that reads those guides and answers users right where they work. Grounded answers from your own docs prevent confusion, while automatic tagging of support conversations reveals the top three setup failures every week, so you can fix the product or the documentation before the next wave of sign‑ups.