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 well-executed onboarding sequence tailored to your target audience encourages users to explore your app's capabilities leading to increased engagement and retention.

1. 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.

2. Goal setting

Users are provided with an option to set health goals as a starting point and continue throughout their app engagement.

3. Consent or eligibility surveys

Research-based apps can present an onboarding survey to establish user consent or eligibility for study participation.

If you have already a designated activity (or pathway) ready to be assigned as an onboarding, you may skip this step.

Below are the steps to create a basic onboarding activity:

Step 1. Go to the Content tab in the side menu, create or select a Subject and then and create an Activity.

Step 2. Within the Activity's Topic, create your app onboarding experience using content blocks. Once you've added your content, arrange the blocks using page Views.

To launch your onboarding activity, you need to set up a behavior in the Behaviors tab. When configuring your behavior, you'll need to define both the Trigger (the user action that prompts the behavior) and the Result (the outcome of the behavior when the Trigger event takes place).

In the context of this scenario, we would need two trigger, the first Trigger should be when a new user completes the initial sign-up process and second trigger should be when user returns to the app dashboard. This will prompt the presentation of the designated onboarding activity tailored for them.

Step 1. Go to Automation in the sidebar and select Behaviors. Create a new behavior and add a name. We recommend using something simple such as 'Launch Onboarding'.

Step 2. Add a Trigger. For this behavior, you can use the following:

Step 3. Add a Result. For this behavior, you can use the following:

Step 4. Activate your behavior by enabling the Set to active checkbox. Click Save Changes.

Well done! Your onboarding activity has now been created and the behavior will ensure it's launched for new users who open your application for the first time.

If you need your users to complete your onboarding activity then you can make it mandatory to ensure that they complete it before accessing the app. To set this up, you'll need to use Global Criteria.

Step 1. Go to Automation in the sidebar and select Global Criteria.

Step 2. Create a new global criteria and name it "Onboarding incomplete".

Step 3. Select Advanced Editor and click on Proceed. The editor will look like the image below.

Step 4. Copy the JSON code below and paste it into the Advanced Editor, ensuring that you replace the existing code in the editor.

Click Save. The editor will now look like the image below.

Step 5. Next, you will need to update "activityid" in the JSON code with the ID of your onboarding activity. The activity ID can be found at the end of the URL of your onboarding activity within the Content tab.

Step 6. Copy the ID of your onboarding activity and paste it into your 'Onboarding incomplete' global criteria, as shown below. Click Save.

Step 7. Having now generated the rule that will always launch your onboarding activity until it has been completed by a user, you need to create another behavior where the global criteria will be applied to.
​
Go to Automation in the sidebar and select Behaviors. Create a new behavior and name this something easily recognisable such as 'Launch Onboarding again if incomplete'
​

Step 8. Add the first Trigger. For this behavior, you can use the following:

Step 9. Add a second Trigger. For this behavior, you can use the following:

Step 10. Add the Global Criteria rule. Click on the dropdown and select the applicable global criteria.

Step 11. Add the Result. This will be the same configuration used for the behavior to launch the onboarding.

Step 12. Next, open your app and test it to ensure it works as expected. The onboarding activity should now keep triggering until the user completes it.

​
​