The onboarding form takes the Member Properties built and allows you to prompt profile questions to the members when they complete their profiles. The sign-up form and the onboarding form are managed together from Members → Sign-Up & Onboarding Forms, on separate tabs. What appears on a member's profile is managed separately under Members → Profile Fields. See Member profile fields.
Reminder: Users can see and engage with some components of your community before onboarding, or completing their profile, but must fill out all mandatory fields to message other members, chat in events, comment on content and connect over video in events, roundtables, and networking matches.
If you'd like to make profile completion mandatory to attend virtual events outright enable that requirement in Events → Event Settings → 'Onboarding Required to Join Events'.
If enabled, members without complete or confirmed profiles will be prompted with the profile completion pop-up when joining virtual events.
You must start in the member properties settings as they are used to build the onboarding or profile questions in your community. Reference this resource to build and edit member properties.
From the Onboarding Form page, you can customize the questions in their format, if they’re required or optional, public or private to others, and if they are filterable from the People page.
Sign-up form
The sign-up form is the set of questions members answer when they create an account. You can customize it from Members → Sign-Up & Onboarding Forms, on the Sign-up Form tab, then select Edit.
The form has two parts:
Preset questions — each one has a Required or Optional setting and an Enabled checkbox. First Name & Last Name and Job title & Company are always required and cannot be turned off, so their controls are greyed out.
Custom questions — questions built from your member properties. Questions whose answers are private to the member are marked as private.
To add a question, select + Add Question, choose one or more properties, then select Add Questions. The panel shows whether each property is already used in the Sign-up, Onboarding, and Profile forms, so you can see where it appears before you add it. You can also create a new property from that panel with + Add a new property as the question.
Whether a question's answers are public or private is set on the property itself, under Members → Member Properties.
To see where every property is used, select Property Usage at the top right of the page. Member Property Usage Check lists each property with a mark for the sign-up, onboarding, and profile forms.
If your community was set up before the sign-up form, onboarding form and profile fields were separated, nothing changed for your members. Your existing sign-up fields were kept as they were, and your existing onboarding questions were copied into both the onboarding form and the profile fields. You can now edit each one independently.
Types of Questions
Preset Questions
These questions are standard and appear on all profiles in Gradual. You can opt to make these questions required, but cannot remove them entirely.
Public Questions
These are questions that are prompted to all members and members’ responses are visible to other members. These questions can also be filterable on the People page.
Private Questions
These are questions that are prompted to all members but members’ responses are hidden to other members. Admins can see the answers to these questions in dashboard profiles and member exports.
Secret Questions
Secret questions allow admins to store internal-only information about members, such as private notes or internal classifications. Responses are never visible to members and are only accessible to admins. This makes it easy to track internal context while keeping member-facing profiles clean and private.
Adding Questions
Onboarding questions are built using Member Properties, so the question must be created there before adding to the onboarding form.
Navigate to the section where you’d like to add the question - Public Questions or Private Questions.
Select the + Add Question button.
Select a property to use as a question from the drop down.
Select if the question should be required.
Note: Any required questions must be completed for a member to be considered onboarded and allow them to message with other members, engage in event chats, and on video calls in meetings and 1:1 networking.
Save your work by selecting 'Add'.
Filters for the People page are set up separately under Members → People Page Settings. Only public properties can be used as filters, and single select, multi select and location properties are supported.
Editing Questions
From this page, you can edit if a question is required, or filterable on the People page by selecting the edit icon in the upper right-hand of the block.
You can also sort the questions in the order you’d like them to appear by dragging and dropping the hamburger icon at the top of the block. This sorting will change the order of the member properties, too.
If you’d like to change the questions’s text, options, etc. you must make all changes in the Member Properties settings, and all changes will be reflected in the onboarding form from there.
Deleting Questions
Delete questions by selecting the trash icon in the upper right corner of the block. Deleting from this page will take the question off the onboarding form and member profile page, but the data will remain in the Member Properties.