Getting Started
Workspace onboarding
How the QuoteNode setup wizard takes a new workspace from first login to a ready-to-use quoting environment.
Workspace onboarding
QuoteNode includes a guided setup wizard for the first admin session. Its purpose is simple: get a new workspace into a usable state before the team starts creating real offers.
The wizard is not a cosmetic checklist. It defines the initial commercial defaults that later appear in offers, PDFs, emails, and public-link pages.
What onboarding covers
The current onboarding flow walks through five practical areas:
- Company identity and brand settings
- Locale and tax defaults
- Email delivery readiness
- Launch review
- Completion and first-run handoff
If you skip details here, you can still change them later in Admin > Settings, but the setup wizard is the fastest way to get a clean baseline.
Step 1 - Company and branding
The first step establishes the commercial identity of the workspace.
You can define:
- legal and trade name,
- tax ID,
- contact email and phone,
- website,
- address,
- brand name and brand initials,
- logo upload.
This information feeds multiple surfaces at once:
- offer headers,
- PDF documents,
- public offer pages,
- outgoing email presentation.
If you plan to send offers immediately after deployment, this is the most important step to complete carefully.
Step 2 - Locale and VAT defaults
The setup flow also captures workspace defaults that shape later quoting behavior.
This includes:
- workspace locale,
- country context,
- VAT defaults,
- commercial formatting baseline for later offer work.
These settings matter because QuoteNode is not only storing records. It is producing client-facing documents. Currency formatting, VAT expectations, and locale-sensitive rendering affect both operator experience and customer-facing output.
Step 3 - Email readiness
QuoteNode can work with built-in email delivery, but it does not require you to enable email on day one.
The onboarding flow supports two valid outcomes:
- configure SMTP and test delivery,
- continue in a no-email mode and share offers through public links and PDFs instead.
This is important operationally. A team can start creating and sharing offers even if SMTP is still waiting for DNS, provider approval, or security review.
If you want the safer secret-handling path, configure tenant SMTP later or during setup through the application interface rather than hardcoding mailbox credentials into deployment env files.
Step 4 - Launch review
Before the wizard is finished, QuoteNode shows a readiness-oriented summary instead of simply asking the admin to trust that setup is complete.
The launch step helps confirm:
- which setup areas have been completed,
- whether branding looks ready,
- whether email was configured or intentionally skipped,
- whether the workspace is ready for the first real offer.
This matters for small teams because onboarding is often done once and then forgotten. The launch summary gives the admin one last chance to catch missing basics before sales activity starts.
Sample data
The setup flow can also seed sample data into an empty workspace.
This is useful when you want to:
- understand the product before importing real data,
- show the system internally to colleagues,
- review product images, sample offers, and template families,
- validate the flow from catalog to offer to public-link view.
Sample data is not just filler. It is a guided demo layer that helps a fresh workspace feel operational much faster.
What happens after completion
When onboarding is completed, QuoteNode redirects the admin back into the main workspace with first-run context.
In practice, that means the product can immediately hand the user into the next operational jobs:
- import or review products,
- create the first offer,
- review template settings,
- continue with admin configuration in the settings module.
The wizard is therefore best understood as a launch sequence, not a detached “welcome” experience.
When to revisit setup
Return to the related settings when:
- the legal entity changes,
- branding is updated,
- default VAT or locale expectations change,
- email delivery moves from “manual sharing” to full in-app sending,
- the team wants to refresh demo data in a still-empty environment.