The first-visit intro on a section

What fires, and when

The first time you open a section that onboards itself, a short click-through appears a moment after you land. It shows once per person per section: if you invite a teammate, they get their own first-visit intro on their own first visit, and yours never comes back on its own. Skipping counts as seeing it, so it will not chase you.

You can replay it anytime. Add ?showIntro=1 to the end of the section's address and the intro opens again on demand, without changing whether it fires for anyone else. That is the fastest way to re-read what a section does, or to show it to someone looking over your shoulder.

The header reads Set Up [Section] · 1 of 5, with a Skip link on the right that closes the whole thing. The dots along the bottom are clickable, so you can jump straight to any panel, and Back and Next walk you through in order.

The five panels

For a section you feed directly, the intro is five panels:

1. Here's what [the section] does. One plain sentence on what this part of the platform is for, in your language, not software language.
2. What you'll get. The capabilities that turn on as you add your records, each with what it does for you. Network comparisons appear here too, in a muted style with the note "Appears as more operators contribute," so you know from minute one which items are yours to switch on and which fill in on their own.
3. What to have handy. The documents and answers the section reads, shown as previews, with the note "Type these in or snap a photo of them. Whatever you have is a fine start."
4. A live start step. Not a description of the first step, the actual first step, right there in the intro. For most sections that is the upload lane described below; Margin, Vendors, Team, and Clients open with an instant typed reveal instead (see the Margin reveal, the Vendors reveal, the work-style check, and the carrier lookup).
5. Then keep going. The forward look: "Onboarding IQ is not one upload. It keeps learning as you add more," with the remaining steps listed and a pointer to the Get IQ Up To Speed row on the section home, where you will pick them up.

Sections that are fed from somewhere else, like Forecasting (built from your jobs) or Benchmarks (built from the network), get a shorter three-panel version: what it is, what you'll get, and where to start. Their final button does not just close the intro; it takes you where the work actually happens, reading something like Add your jobs or Start contributing.

The upload lane, end to end

On an upload section, the start panel offers two ways in, side by side: a drop field ("Drop a photo or PDF, or tap to browse") and your personal IQ inbox address with a Copy button, under "Or forward it to your IQ inbox." A line beneath offers the rest: "Rather snap a photo, talk it through, or paste it in?" opens the full capture picker.

1. 1Drop a document. The moment a file lands, the intro gets out of the way: the whole screen takes over with a scanning animation reading "Reading your document" and "IQ is pulling out the dates and details. This takes a few seconds."
2. 2See what IQ pulled out. The result screen reads "Done. IQ is watching this now." with the key fields listed label by value: the holder, the dates, the numbers it read. You are shown the extraction, not sent hunting for it. If the document needs a second look first, the screen reads "Got it. IQ is on it." and the record shows up in the section shortly.
3. 3See what it unlocks. For a certification, the reveal goes one step further than reading the card: it names the work that cert lets you take ("Your Water Damage Restoration Technician lets you take water work") and, where a carrier program requires or prefers it, says so plainly ("It is required by..." or "It strengthens your standing with...").
4. 4Reminders switch on. When the document carries an expiry date, a closing line confirms it: "Renewal reminders are on. IQ flags it 90, 60, and 30 days out, so a lapse never quietly costs you work."
5. 5Land in the section. The final button, "See it in [the section]," drops you onto the live page with your first record already in place.

If a file does not read cleanly, the screen says so ("That one did not read cleanly") and offers both a retry and your forwarding address, so a stubborn scan never dead-ends you.

Data sources