Introduction
App onboarding plays an important role in engaging your users right from the start. It serves as a crucial initial step to introduce them to the app's features, functionalities, and benefits, setting the tone for a positive user experience. Having a properly executed onboarding sequence tailored to your target audience encourages users to explore your app's capabilities and value. This increases their engagement with your app.
Some example use cases:
Basic app introduction: Users are guided through a quick tour of the app's fundamental features, such as introduction content and videos to show what your app is about and how to use it. Additionally, an onboarding survey is also an excellent way to learn about your users and keep users engaged from the start.
Goal setting: Users are provided with an option to set health goals as a starting point and continue throughout their app engagement.
Consent or eligibility surveys: Research-based apps can present an onboarding survey to establish user consent or eligibility for study participation.
How to set it up
Step 1: Create the onboarding activity from the Content
If you have already a designated activity (or pathway) ready to be assigned as an onboarding, you may skip this step.
Below are the following steps to create a basic onboarding activity:
Go to the Content menu and create an Activity (within a Subject)
Within the Topic assigned with the Activity, create the content blocks to build out the entire activity experience. Assign them to multiple Views (pages) if needed
Step 2: Create a behavior and assign the activity to launch as onboarding
To establish the activity created in the first step as part of the onboarding process, it's necessary to set up the configuration in the Behaviors tab. Within this section, you'll be required to define both the Trigger (the user action that prompts the process) and the Result (the outcome when the Trigger event takes place).
In the context of this scenario, the Trigger should be when a new user completes the initial sign-up process. This will prompt the presentation of the designated onboarding activity tailored for them.
Go to the Behaviors under the Automation menu. Create a new behavior
Set up the Trigger
Type = REQUEST
Model = AppUser
Operation = CREATE
Global criteria and Criteria = leave this empty for now
Add a Result
Result = Notification
Type = ACTIVITY_LAUNCH
Title and Text = will not be visible to the user.
Activity = Select the Activity (or pathway activity) that you want as the onboarding
Enable the 'Set to active' checkbox
Save changes when done
The onboarding activity has now been created and will trigger only to new users who open the application for the first time.
To test: log out of your current account and create a new account (the same email can be used) with a different username.
Step 3: Make the onboarding activity mandatory
If the onboarding activity is a compulsory step and needs to be completed by your users, it's important to enforce this requirement. making sure they complete it before progressing through the rest of app. You can achieve this by setting up an activity to be fulfilled through Global Criteria.
Go to Global Criteria under the Automation menu
Create a new global criteria and name it "Onboarding incomplete"
Select the Advanced Editor (Hit Proceed to access the editor)
Copy and paste the below JSON code
{
"names": [],
"label": "Onboarding incomplete",
"conditions": [
{
"names": [],
"importance": "REQUIRED",
"group": 0,
"description": "Onboarding not complete",
"queries": [
{
"sort": "createdAt",
"limit": 1,
"importance": "REQUIRED",
"names": [],
"kind": "COUNT",
"operator": "LTE",
"count": 0,
"query": {
"activity": "activityid",
"completeCount": "{\"gt\":0}"
},
"model": "UserActivity"
}
]
}
],
"archived": false
}
It would look something like this:
Replace the "activityid" with the onboarding activity's ID.
This can be found at the end of the URL of the activity within the Contents page. Copy this ID and paste it to the Global Criteria line as shown above.
Save the Global Criteria.
By doing so, you have generated the rule that will always launch the onboarding activity until this has been completed!The final step is to create a new Behavior from the Behaviors tab, which is set up to rerun the onboarding process if the user has not yet completed it
Create a new Behavior and label this as 'Run onboarding again if not completed'
Set up the Trigger
Type = REQUEST
Model = AppUser
Operation = UPDATE
Add Global criteria = assign the Global criteria you created
Add the Result (this will be the same as the onboarding launch)
Result = Notification
Type = ACTIVITY_LAUNCH
Title and Text = will not be visible to the user.
Activity = Select the Activity (or pathway) that you want as the onboarding
Ensure that 'Set to Active' to enable the Behavior
Save changes when done.
Go to your app and give it a test!
⭐️ The onboarding activity should now keep triggering until the user completes it!
Tip: If your main account has already completed the onboarding activity, create a new dummy account to test the incomplete onboarding flow. You can do this by either closing the onboarding midway or exiting the app and reopening it.