Preboarding: Welcome new hires before their first day

Preboarding lets you start welcoming a new hire before their first day, when they don’t yet have a work account or Slack access. Doozy reaches them at their personal email, so paperwork reminders, a warm welcome, and a heads-up on what to expect can land in the weeks before they start. On their first day they move into your normal Slack onboarding automatically, with no manual handoff.

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How preboarding works

A preboarder is a new hire who’s set up in Doozy before their first day. They can’t sign in or use Doozy yet, and they’re not in your Slack workspace. The only way to reach them is their personal email, so everything you send before they start goes there. The handoff to their first day happens on its own:

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How preboarders are added

Preboarders come only from your HRIS. Once preboarding is on for your account, a new hire synced from your HRIS with a future start date is brought in as a preboarder automatically, the same way for any connected HRIS. There’s no way to add a preboarder by hand: a hire who isn’t in your HRIS yet won’t show up as a preboarder until they are. A preboarder’s personal email also comes from your HRIS.

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What you need to turn it on

Doozy turns preboarding on for your account. On your side, two things need to be in place before pre-start content can send:

• A connected HRIS, so start dates are accurate and new hires can be brought in ahead of their first day.
• Email delivery enabled, so Doozy can send pre-start content.

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Preboarding in tracks

Preboarding uses the tracks you already know. There’s no separate preboarding trigger: a preboarding track is a normal first day track with steps scheduled before the first day. When you build the track, you add a day before their first day and put your pre-start steps there. Because a preboarder isn’t in Slack yet, not every step type can reach them before they start. A step can go out before day one only if it reaches their personal email, reaches someone already in Slack (their manager, a channel, specific people), or has no recipient at all: The step picker still shows the unavailable types in a before-first-day section, grayed out with the reason on hover, rather than hiding them. If you drag a step that can’t run pre-start into a before-first-day section, or remove a day in a way that would fold such a step up into one, the builder refuses and explains why. Activating a track that still breaks this rule is rejected, naming the offending step so you know exactly what to fix. Everything from the hire’s first day on runs in Slack as usual, with no restriction.

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Preboarding in cohorts

Preboarders can be part of a cohort, the same as anyone else who starts around the same time. They receive their pre-start content by email, then join the cohort’s Slack channel and group onboarding on their first day. Hand-picking a preboarder into a specific cohort follows the same rule as anyone else whose first day is still ahead: their start date has to fall on or before the day that cohort’s intake closes (see Who’s joining). Once their first day arrives the rule stops applying, even if they’re still waiting on a work email.

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When a preboarder needs help

• No personal email. If your HRIS doesn’t have one on file, Doozy blocks that pre-start step and sends the hire’s manager (or the track’s admins, if they don’t have one) a Slack to-do to add it. The step resumes as soon as the address is submitted.
• Started, but no work email yet. Day-one promotion depends on your HRIS producing a real work email by the time someone starts. If a preboarder’s start date passes and their work email still hasn’t come through, they stay a preboarder: there’s no way to enter a work email for them directly in Doozy. Fix the record in your HRIS and Doozy picks it up on the next sync, then makes them a regular member on its own. They keep the same account, so anything already running for them carries on. Don’t change their role to Member by hand to work around it. That doesn’t give them a work email or Slack access, and it stops your HRIS managing their role from then on.

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