Tutorial: pre-boarding to a personal email

Goal: every new starter hears from you before day one, at an address they can read, and their manager has a checklist in hand. Time: about 40 minutes. You will end up with one automation, Pre-boarding, with four email steps: three to the new starter’s personal address and one to their manager.

Pre-boarding: trigger, audience and the first email step.

Before you start

• Your HRIS sync provides Personal Email Address and Start Date. Open a recent joiner in Directory to check both fields are filled. Without a personal address, a step to Employee (Personal) has no valid recipient and is marked invalid.
• An email sender is connected under Settings > General > Senders: your People team’s Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 mailbox, or a verified email sender.
• You are an admin or owner.

Chapter 1: create the automation with the Pre-onboarding trigger

The Pre-onboarding trigger runs on Start Date, starts 1 week before and keeps watching through the start date itself. That window is what makes it reliable: a record that reaches your HRIS only three days before someone starts is still picked up, and the steps already due send straight away.

1. In Pyn, open Flows in the left navigation, then Automations, and select Create New.

2. Under Employee Lifecycle, select Pre-onboarding (“Prepare the employee prior to starting employment.”). The editor opens with the trigger drawer on Configure.

3. Select the title (Untitled) at the top left and type Pre-boarding.

4. On Configure, leave This flow starts at 1 week before and the recurrence at just once. The reference date for every step is the start date.

Chapter 2: set the audience to joiners

Before their start date, people are in the Joiner lifecycle stage, not Current. An audience without Joiner enrols nobody.

1. Select the Audience tab in the trigger drawer.

2. Under Lifecycle, select Joiner. Add Current too, so someone whose start date was corrected to today is still enrolled.

3. Under Excluded, add any groups that should not receive the sequence, for example a Contractor demographic group if your HRIS provides one.

4. Check Audience Preview. It lists everyone in those stages and groups today, which for a healthy workspace is your upcoming joiners.

Chapter 3: write the three messages to the new starter

Each step is Send Email to Employee with the recipient Employee (Personal). That option appears only on email steps, because Pyn cannot reach a personal address over Slack or Teams.

1. Select Add a step, then Send Email to Employee under Communication.

2. In the step drawer, set the sender to your People team mailbox, set To to Employee (Personal), and set the schedule to 1 week before the reference date at 09:00 in the Recipient Timezone.

3. Title the step Welcome and what to expect. For the subject, type Welcome to @company.name, @principal.preferredName. A message a good People team would send:

   Hi @principal.preferredName,

   We are so pleased you are joining us on @principal.startDate. Over the next week you will get a couple of short emails from us at this address: what to bring, where to go and who will meet you.

   Your manager is @manager.preferredName. They will be in touch before your first day, and they are the right person for any question about your role or team.

   If anything about your start date or paperwork changes, reply to this email and we will sort it out.

   See you soon, The People Team

4. Add a second Send Email to Employee step to Employee (Personal), scheduled 3 days before at 09:00, titled Your first day plan. Cover the practical things: arrival time and address (or the video call link), what to bring for identity checks, dress code, where to collect equipment, and lunch. Open the step’s Advanced tab and turn on Skip if overdue at enrollment: a first-day plan that arrives after the first day is noise, so a late enrollment skips it.

5. Add a third step to Employee (Personal), scheduled the day before at 15:00, titled See you tomorrow. Keep it to four lines: the time, the place, the name of the person meeting them, and a warm sign-off.

Tip

Select the preview icon in the editor toolbar, pick an upcoming joiner, and use Send a test to yourself. The test uses that person’s data, so you see exactly how the tokens resolve.

Chapter 4: nudge the manager

1. Select Add a step, then Send Email to Employee.

2. Set To to Manager, schedule it 1 week before at 09:00, and title it @principal.preferredName starts in a week.

3. Write the checklist, for example:

   Hi @manager.preferredName,

   @principal.preferredName joins your team on @principal.startDate. Three things to do this week:

   1. Confirm their laptop and accounts are requested.
   2. Book a 30-minute welcome for 9:30 on their first morning and a lunch with the team.
   3. Send them a short personal note; their personal address is on their profile in Pyn.

   Pyn has already sent them our welcome email and will send the first-day plan three days out.

4. Add a button or acknowledgement to the message and open Reminders to add a reminder 2 days after send, so a manager who has not actioned it is nudged once.

Chapter 5: publish, verify, then automate

1. Select Publish.

2. Select the mode button, then Change Mode, then Verification.

3. Over the next week, open Activity > Enrollments > Needs Review as joiners are enrolled. Open one, select Verify, read the four messages with their dates, and select Unpause.

4. When two or three have gone out as you intended, return to the automation, select the mode button, Change Mode, then Automated.

What you should see

Each upcoming joiner appears under Enrollments with their start date as Reference Date and four steps: three to their personal address and one to their manager. A joiner whose record arrived late shows the welcome delivered within minutes of enrollment, the first-day plan skipped, and the remaining steps on their dates.

Next steps

• Add a Start of Onboarding automation for the first day and first weeks, to the work address this time, and attach both to the Pre-onboarding and First day moments on your Journey map.
• Add the buddy nomination from the Buddy programme tutorial as a step to the manager.
• Read Handle late enrollments for the other ways to treat overdue steps.

Related

• Configure a date trigger for offsets and windows.
• Set the audience for an automation for lifecycle stages.
• Handle late enrollments for Skip if overdue at enrollment.
• Steps and messages for senders, tokens, reminders and previews.