Employee onboarding can be a tedious and time-consuming process for any organization. It involves multiple stakeholders, paperwork, and coordination between departments to ensure a smooth transition for the new hire. Fortunately, with the advent of no-code automation tools, the process can be streamlined and made more efficient. In this article, we will learn how Google Workspace admins can implement employee onboarding automation with Zenphi.
Zenphi is the only no-code automation tool built specifically for Google Apps like Gmail, Drive, Docs, Forms, and more.
Setting Up a Zenphi Space for Employee Onboarding Automation
Firstly, let’s create a new free Zenphi account or sign in to your existing one. Then, click on the “Create new space” button. A Space is a container for all the assets related to your employee onboarding automation.
Choose the Google Workspace Admin template for the quickest start. When you click on “Use template” you’ll be presented with the Connection configuration. Connections help Zenphi to integrate with your Google Apps for building powerful automations.
To set up a new Connection, click the “+” sign, or choose an existing connection from the drop-down.
Once you’re inside your new Space, you’ll see 6 Flows. A Flow is what we call an automated workflow at zenphi. It involves a Trigger – an event that initiates a workflow execution – and Actions – the steps of the workflow.
Choose the Employee Onboarding Flow and hover over the “Edit Flow” button.
Configuring a Flow for The Employee Onboarding Automation
Let’s take a brief look at how this Flow is set up.
The first step in the onboarding process is to input the information from the new hire. For that, we’ll use a Zenphi Form, a powerful tool to collect any data and seamlessly integrate it within the process, but you can change it to Google Form, Typeform, or any other Trigger type in the future.
Then, we’ll format the date to use it further in the Flow. After that, we’ll generate a password for our new user and create a user in Google Directory. We can also choose if we want to add this newly created user to Google Groups or update their signatures. Finally, we want to send a welcome email to our new hire. Now, let’s see how to configure each step in more detail.
Setting up a Zenphi Form
Click on the Form Trigger icon inside the Flow Designer, and from the right side, you’ll see the configuration panel. To customize the Form click on Form Builder icon, and to preview the Form, switch to the Invocation tab. You can allow anyone at your organization to submit the form and start the onboarding process.
Format Start Date
The next step of the Flow would be adding a “Format Date Time” action. This action will automatically turn the Start Date value from the Trigger into the format that we specify.
To take the dynamic data from the Trigger, we’ll use a Token Picker.
Generate Password
With this action, you can easily create passwords with your special requirements and use this password as dynamic data further in the Flow.
Create User
This action automatically creates a user in the Google Directory. You can insert all the needed data like name, passwords, manager’s email, organization unit, etc. with the help of a Token Picker or even type in the values.
Add to Groups
In the new hire form, it’s possible to choose if we want to add the new user to Groups, and if we do, we need to specify the emails of those Groups.
For that, we’ll use the “If condition” path. Then, with the help of “Foreach Item” action, we’ll take the answer from the form, split it, and add a user to each indicated Group.
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Update Email Signature
Again, as we can choose whether or not to perform the changes in the email signature, we’ll use the “If Condition” action. Then, we’ll generate a unique HTML file for the signature. Here’s how you can set up the Connection for the “Set Gmail Signature” action.
Send a Welcome Email
Finally, we can send the welcome email to the new employee and consider the employee onboarding finished.
Testing and Publishing the Flow for The Employee Onboarding Automation
Once the Flow is fully configured, save the Flow and test it. Here is how you can do it. When you’re satisfied with the test results, publish the Flow. Now, once the new hire form is submitted, the employee onboarding automation will start executing. You can find the info for each Flow execution in the Flow Run.
With zenphi, you can not only automate processes but also track progress and generate reports. Throughout the onboarding process, zenphi can track the progress of each step and provide real-time updates to stakeholders. Zenphi can also generate reports that provide insights into the onboarding process, such as how long it takes to onboard a new hire and where the process can be improved. Learn more about it here.
Conclusion
The employee onboarding process can easily be streamlined and made more efficient with the help of no-code automation tools like zenphi. By automating the onboarding workflow, organizations can reduce the time and resources required to onboard new hires, ensure compliance with regulations, and provide a better experience for new employees.
If you’d like to know more, here’s a recording of our latest webinar about automating even more user management processes on Google Workspace:
