Onboarding

The Barvol onboarding wizard runs the first time you access your workspace. It takes about 5 minutes and significantly improves the quality of AI responses by giving Barvol context about your specific business.

Why onboarding matters

Barvol's AI is not a generic assistant — it reasons about your company specifically. The onboarding step captures the foundational context: what your company does, who your customers are, what stage you are at, and how your team is structured. This context is referenced every time the AI answers a question or generates a synthesis.

Without onboarding context, the AI defaults to generic responses. With it, answers are grounded in your actual business reality.

What the wizard covers

Company basics — your company name, one-line description, industry, and founding year. This is used in journal syntheses and goal suggestions.

Stage and size — pre-revenue, early revenue, or scaling. Team size (just you, or a team). This affects what features Barvol highlights and how the AI frames advice.

Current focus — your primary goal for the next 90 days in one sentence. Barvol uses this as a lens when answering questions and prioritizing what to surface on the dashboard.

First integration — connect at least one tool so Barvol has live data from the start. Gmail or Google Calendar are the fastest to set up if you are unsure where to begin.

Invite teammates — optional. Enter email addresses for any co-founders or team members who should have access to the workspace.

Updating your onboarding context

Your company stage, focus, and description change over time. You can update this context at any time from the Workspace settings page. Changes take effect immediately — the next AI response will use the updated context.

It is worth revisiting your company description and current focus every quarter, especially after a major pivot, a funding event, or a significant change in your customer base.

Re-running onboarding

If you skipped onboarding or want to start fresh, go to Workspace Settings and select "Re-run onboarding." This does not delete any of your existing data — it only updates the AI context fields.

NoteOnboarding context is private to your workspace. It is not shared with other Barvol workspaces or used for training Barvol's models.

TipBe specific in your company description. "B2B SaaS for DevOps teams that need automated incident response" is far more useful to the AI than "software company."