Onboarding a new agency client in the first five days

Day 0: Create the client’s workspace

Create a workspace for the client and set it up from your agency’s onboarding template: the three workflows below, an empty access checklist table, an empty performance table and the dashboard layout. Writing the template down once means every account manager starts from the same place.

A workspace per client keeps their connected accounts, tool connections, files and usage separate. If the client brings their own model provider key, add it under Settings → Model API keys in their workspace, and their generations are billed to their key.

Day 1: Send the access checklist

The access checklist is a table in Tables with one row per system: Google Ads, Meta ad account, Instagram, Shopify, website CMS, Semrush or Ahrefs, and any analytics warehouse. Each row has the access level you need, who owns it on the client side, a status and the date granted.

Workflow 1 runs each morning on a schedule. It reads rows still marked waiting and drafts a short, specific email to the client contact, listing only what is missing and linking the steps. A Human in the loop block pauses the run so the account manager can read and approve the email before the Gmail or Outlook block sends it. One polite, accurate email a day beats a long thread of "just checking in".

Day 2: Build the brand knowledge base

Workflow 2 fills the client’s Knowledge Base. Upload the brand guide, tone of voice notes, product sheets and the last two quarters of campaign reports into Files. Then use Firecrawl, which can crawl or map a site, to pull the client’s own website pages, so product names, prices and claims come from the source.

Add one document your team writes: a "do and don’t" page with banned claims, words the brand never uses, and competitors you must not name. Every brief, caption or report commentary the team later asks Chat to draft is checked against it, because Chat and workflows in that workspace search that knowledge base before they answer.

Test it before day 3. Ask Chat three questions only the brand guide can answer, such as the primary colour, the tagline and the voice for Instagram captions. If an answer is vague, the document is missing or unclear.

Day 3: Connect the client’s tools

Connect each system in the client’s workspace as access arrives, and tick it off in the checklist:

• Google Ads, for read and report: campaigns, ad groups and performance.
• Instagram, for profile, media and insights, and later for publishing.
• Shopify, read access to orders and products for revenue figures.
• Semrush or Ahrefs, read-only SEO reports.
• Meta ads. There is no built-in Meta block. Add Meta’s official ads server under Settings → Tool connections. Tool connections link an AI agent to another product’s tools through MCP, an open standard for that purpose. Chat can then read campaign insights on request. For scheduled data pulls, a workflow calls Meta’s Marketing API with the API block and a token stored as a workspace secret.

Because each client has its own workspace, a connection made here cannot be used by work for another client.

Day 4: Start the dashboard from a template

Workflow 3 runs daily and writes one row per channel per day into the performance table: spend, impressions, clicks, conversions, revenue, with a client column on every row. Backfill the last 90 days on the first run, so the dashboard opens with history instead of a single point.

Start the dashboard from your agency template or from a dashboard template, and point its panels at the performance table. A first version needs four tiles (spend, revenue, return on ad spend, orders), one weekly trend line by channel, and a table of campaigns with the largest changes. Panels update as new rows land.

Day 5: Send the first report

Set a scheduled report on the dashboard: weekly, as a PDF or a link, to the client contact’s email. Before the first one goes out, the account manager asks Chat for three lines of commentary on the week, grounded in the performance table and the brand knowledge base, and edits them into the report.

The first report will be thin. That is fine. It shows the client the shape of what they will get, and it shows the team which data is still missing.

After week one

Keep the access checklist table open for good. Access gets revoked when people leave, and a row turning back to waiting is the first sign a report will break. For the reporting rhythm that follows, see client reporting dashboards, and for creative work in the same workspace, the creative production line.