Build Employee Onboarding Workflow

Duration: ~25 min · Level: Intermediate · Template: #98 Employee Onboarding Workflow · Deployment: Cloud

Prerequisites: Your First Workflow and familiarity with Approvals. Azure AD credentials if you enable the invite step.

Learn how to build an employee onboarding workflow from the built-in template: create HR tasks, store welcome documents, route IT access for approval, and provision an Azure AD account when approved.

What this template does

Template #98 — Employee Onboarding Workflow (Business Process) chains:

Create Onboarding Checklist — task for HR with employee details.
Upload Welcome Pack — copy a welcome PDF into an onboarding folder.
Request IT Access — business approval for IT admin.
Wait → Check → Switch — poll approval status and branch on outcome.
Invite to Azure AD — provision account when IT approves.

Step 1 — Load the template

Open Studio → Templates.
Search for Employee Onboarding or filter by Business Process.
Click Load on template #98. Studio opens the full graph on the canvas.

Step 2 — Configure input data

The workflow expects placeholders such as {{employeeName}}, {{department}}, {{startDate}}, and {{employeeEmail}}. Start it with a Manual or Webhook trigger upstream, or pass test data in Dry Run:

{
  "employeeName": "Alex Morgan",
  "department": "Engineering",
  "startDate": "2026-08-01",
  "employeeEmail": "[email protected]"
}

Step 3 — Customize tasks and storage

Select Create Onboarding Checklist. Set Assignee to your HR team or {{$var.hrAssignee}}.
Select Upload Welcome Pack. Point Source file to your real welcome PDF and set Base path (e.g. hr/onboarding).
Replace hard-coded approver it-admin in Request IT Access with a real email or role from Global Variables.

Step 4 — Approval loop

The template uses Request Approval → Delay → Check Approval → Switch. Decisions appear in Jobs → Approvals in Studio (or on a runtime agent at /approvals if exported).

Approve or reject the IT access request while testing.
On rejected, the workflow logs a warning and stops provisioning.
On approved, execution continues to Azure AD invite.

See Approvals Explained for Studio vs runtime behavior.

Step 5 — Azure AD (optional)

Select Invite to Azure AD and fill Tenant ID, Client ID, and Client Secret (or store them in global variables).
If you do not use Azure AD yet, disconnect this node or replace it with a Notification node for v1 pilots.

Step 6 — Test and activate

Run Dry Run with sample employee JSON.
Validate, then move through lifecycle to Active.
Trigger with Manual run or connect a webhook/HRIS integration upstream.

What you learned

Loading and adapting a business-process template from the library.
Chaining tasks, file upload, and approval gates.
Branching on approval outcome before a provisioning action.