# Customer onboarding — templates with relative-date scheduling > BlueHill onboarding templates store relative dates (Day 1, Day 7, Day 14). Clone to a new customer with one click and every task auto-schedules against their start date. Color-coded stages, milestones, and forms. ## What BlueHill onboarding does Onboarding in BlueHill is a three-level hierarchy: **Templates → Boards → CustomerTasks**. - A **Template** is a reusable onboarding plan you define once. - When a new customer signs up, you clone the template — which creates a **Board** for that customer. - The Board contains a set of **CustomerTasks**, each carrying its own dates, owner, status, and (optionally) a linked form or document. The thing that makes this scale is the relative-date scheduling. Templates store offsets (`Day 1`, `Day 7`, `Day 14`), not absolute dates. When the template is cloned to a customer with a start date of June 12, every task auto-schedules: welcome forms on June 12, kickoff call on June 19, go-live on June 26. You don't rebuild the plan for every customer. ## The data model Each `CustomerTask` carries: - **`start`** — when work begins - **`end`** — target completion - **`due_date`** — hard deadline - **`followup_date`** — when to nudge if not yet started - **`status`** — pipeline state (Not Started, In Progress, Blocked, Done) - **`portal_status`** — what the customer sees (separate from internal status) - **`portal_start`** / **`portal_complete`** — visibility toggles - **`assigned_to`** — owner - **`portal_assignee`** — who the customer thinks owns it - **`form_id`** / **`form_name`** — linked form (if any) - **`color`** — for stage color-coding in Kanban - **`time_estimate`** / **`time_unit`** — for forecasting and billing The Template object stores `name`, `description`, `color`, plus the list of CustomerTask definitions with their relative offsets. ## How a template clone works Step-by-step when you click "Clone to new customer": 1. The Board is created and attached to the customer's record. 2. Each task in the template is instantiated as a CustomerTask with the customer's `start_date` plus its relative offset applied to `start`, `end`, `due_date`, and `followup_date`. 3. Color, owner, time estimate, and form linkages copy over. 4. The customer is automatically notified (if portal-enabled). The whole sequence happens in under a second for typical 20–30-task templates. ## Color-coded stages Stages give you a visual scaffold across an onboarding plan: - **Discovery** (blue) — kickoff, requirements, success-criteria definition - **Config** (purple) — provisioning, SSO, integrations - **Migration** (cyan) — data import, schema mapping - **Training** (amber) — admin enablement, end-user training - **Go-live** (green) — milestone moment + first measurable value Each task carries the stage color, which propagates to Kanban columns and timeline bars. New CSMs ramp faster because they read the board visually instead of clicking into every task. ## Milestones Some tasks are milestones — moments where you'd run a check-in, send a status report, or expect a customer confirmation. Milestone tasks render with diamond markers on the Gantt timeline and surface on the customer portal as "what's next" headlines. Common pattern: every onboarding template has 3–5 milestones at the natural review points (Day 1, Day 7, Day 14, Day 30, Go-Live). ## Forms attached to tasks Many onboarding tasks need data from the customer — billing details, SSO IdP metadata, brand assets, integration credentials. Instead of chasing them by email, you attach a form to the task. The customer completes the form in the [portal](/features/customer-portal), the task auto-progresses, and the data lands on the customer record. ## What this replaces Most teams arriving at BlueHill for onboarding are coming from: - Cloned Monday boards with manual date adjustment - Notion databases that don't enforce sequencing - Spreadsheets that nobody updates after week two - Email-only onboarding where steps fall through the cracks The pattern is consistent: relative-date templates reduce per-customer setup from 30 minutes to under a minute, and reduce onboarding cycle time by 60–80%. ## Built for - [Customer success teams](/use-cases/customer-success) onboarding mid-market accounts - [SaaS implementation teams](/use-cases/saas) running structured 30/60/90 plans - [Agencies](/use-cases/agencies) cloning a proven workflow per new client ## Try it [Start a 14-day free trial](https://app.usebluehill.com/sign-up) — no credit card required.