Onboarding

Onboarding provides tracking and improvement capabilities for new hire onboarding processes. It integrates with development tools like GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Azure DevOps, and Gerrit to automatically measure key performance indicators such as time to first pull request and time to 10th pull request, comparing these metrics against industry benchmarks.

After 90 days, DX automatically sends sentiment surveys through Slack or Teams to collect feedback on new hires’ experiences, including their satisfaction with local environments, task readiness, and clarity of expectations. This feedback feeds into a trackable experience index that provides quantifiable insights into new hire sentiment.

Setup instructions

Navigate to DX → Tools → Onboarding to begin setup. The setup wizard guides you through the following steps:

Step 1: Configure your source control

Onboarding metrics rely on pull request data, which can be ingested via a data connector, or if unavailable, via webhooks.

You can set up multiple SCM integrations if your organization uses more than one.

Step 2: Configure messaging and survey sender

DX sends onboarding surveys via Slack or Microsoft Teams.

For Slack, you can choose to send surveys:

  • From a person: Messages appear to come directly from a team member (recommended for higher response rates). The sender can customize the survey prompt and reminder messages.
  • From a bot: Messages come from a Slack bot you’ve added to your workspace. You can include a personalized welcome message attributed to a specific team member.

You can also configure a Slack channel to receive notifications when new survey responses are submitted.

For Microsoft Teams, surveys are sent via the DX Onboarding bot. To configure:

  1. Navigate to Onboarding setup in DX
  2. Click Set up now under Configure MS Teams bot
  3. Download the bot configuration zip file from the modal
  4. Follow the step-by-step guide to finish configuring the DX Onboarding bot in your Teams admin center

You can customize the welcome message and attribute it to a specific team member.

Step 3: Set start dates and usernames

For each user to appear in Onboarding metrics, they need:

  • A start date to determine tenure and survey eligibility
  • A username matching their SCM identity

For GitHub and GitLab, you can set usernames via:

  • In-app via the Profile editor or CSV upload
  • Directory sync or API

For Bitbucket and Azure DevOps, usernames must be mapped via the user linking page.

Step 4 (Optional): Configure user targeting

Define which new hires are eligible for onboarding metrics and surveys:

  • Exclude by attribute: DX excludes users matching specific attributes (for example, Manager or SRE) from metrics and surveys.
  • Limit by attribute: DX includes only users with at least one of the specified attributes.
  • Exclude individual users: Manually exclude specific users from the Onboarding settings page.

Survey experience

Developers receive a survey approximately 90 days after their start date.

Receiving the survey

Around the 90-day mark, new hires receive a message via Slack or Microsoft Teams inviting them to share feedback on their onboarding experience. The survey takes a few minutes to complete.

Survey questions

The survey asks developers to rate five areas of their onboarding experience:

  1. Local environment setup — “Setting up your local development environment”
  2. Codebase navigation — “Navigating and understanding the codebases you work on”
  3. Getting help — “Getting help from your teammates”
  4. Task clarity — “Understanding what you are being asked to do”
  5. Team processes — “Understanding the processes your team follows”

For each area, respondents select Disagree, Neutral, or Agree.

The survey also asks:

  • Perceived ramp-up: “On a scale from 1-10, how ramped up do you feel?” (1 = Not ramped up at all, 10 = Fully ramped up)
  • Open feedback: “What would have made your onboarding experience better?”

Visibility

Responses are visible to the developer’s manager and organization administrators, allowing them to address team-specific feedback and improve the onboarding process for future hires.

Reminders

If a developer doesn’t respond to the initial survey prompt, they may receive one reminder message.

Dashboards and reporting

Once Onboarding is configured, you’ll have access to comprehensive dashboards for tracking and improving new hire ramp-up across your teams.

Overview tab

The Overview tab provides a high-level summary of your onboarding performance:

  • Hires per month — Track hiring velocity over time
  • Total hires and feedback responses — See overall participation metrics
  • Ramp-up time metrics:
    • Time to first PR — Days from start date to first merged pull request
    • Time to 10th PR — Days from start date to 10th merged pull request
    • 90-day sentiment — Self-reported ramp-up score from surveys
  • Onboarding experience metrics:
    • Experience index — Aggregate score from survey responses (0-10 scale)
    • Top friction areas — Breakdown of which onboarding areas need the most improvement

All metrics can be compared against industry benchmarks (P50, P75, or P90).

All hires tab

View a sortable list of all new hires with their individual metrics:

  • Start date
  • Time to first PR
  • Time to 10th PR
  • Survey sent date (admin/privileged users only)
  • Experience index
  • 90-day sentiment score

Note: Individual-level time to 1st/10th PR data is only visible to admin and privileged users. Other users see aggregate metrics only, with the individual columns and scatterplot view hidden.

Click on any hire with a submitted response to view their detailed survey feedback.

Responses tab

Browse all survey responses with full details including:

  • Ratings for each of the five onboarding areas
  • Perceived ramp-up score
  • Open-ended comments

Use this view to identify patterns and gather qualitative insights.

Settings

Configure various aspects of Onboarding:

  • Survey experience — Customize survey prompt messages and sender
  • Notification channel — Set a Slack channel for response notifications
  • User targeting — Manage attribute-based inclusion/exclusion rules
  • User exclusions — Manually exclude individual users
  • Integration setup — Review webhook configuration status
  • Backfills — Run historical data imports

FAQs

If you are not using the Data Cloud connector and want to use Onboarding, you will need to configure webhooks so DX can track pull request and onboarding activity. This is supported for GitHub and GitLab.

To set up onboarding with webhooks:

  • GitHub: Follow the GitHub webhook setup guide
  • GitLab: Follow the GitLab webhook setup guide
  • Bitbucket: Webhook-based onboarding is not supported; use Data Cloud for Bitbucket integration
  • Azure DevOps: Webhook-based onboarding is not supported; use Data Cloud for Azure DevOps integration
  • Gerrit: Webhook-based onboarding is not supported; use Data Cloud for Gerrit integration

Once webhooks are configured and enabled in DX, DX does not populate historical metrics (such as ramp-up time) automatically. To see onboarding metrics for existing hires, run a backfill from the Onboarding settings page. This requires an API token with appropriate permissions.

Users appear in onboarding when they have a start date and at least one merged pull request. If users aren’t showing, they are missing a start date or haven’t had any pull requests matched with their username.

DX invites a user to participate in the onboarding survey if:

  • They have a start date set.
  • Their tenure, based on the start date, is between 85 and 120 days.
  • They haven’t been prompted by DX to take the onboarding survey before.
  • They have merged a pull request.
  • They are not excluded from onboarding via settings or user exclusions.

You can exclude engineers individually or by custom attribute from your Onboarding settings page. DX recommends excluding user personas that aren’t expected to contribute heavily via pull requests (for example, SREs and managers), so that your ramp-up time metrics aren’t skewed.

Ramp-up time metrics are inaccurate until DX backfills historical data. Contact your DX Account Representative to run or re-run a backfill.

Respondents are asked to rate five statements about their onboarding experience:

  1. “Setting up your local development environment”
  2. “Navigating and understanding the codebases you work on”
  3. “Getting help from your teammates”
  4. “Understanding what you are being asked to do”
  5. “Understanding the processes your team follows”

Each area is rated as Disagree (0 points), Neutral (1 point), or Agree (2 points). DX sums these values to produce the experience index, ranging from 0 to 10.

DX calculates the experience index by summing the point values for each of the five survey areas:

  • Disagree = 0 points
  • Neutral = 1 point
  • Agree = 2 points

This produces a score from 0 to 10, where higher scores indicate a more positive onboarding experience.

DX provides industry benchmark comparisons at the 50th, 75th, and 90th percentiles:

Metric P50 P75 P90
Time to first PR 11 days 6.4 days 3 days
Time to 10th PR 50 days 43.6 days 28 days
Experience index 7 7 8
90-day sentiment 8 8.6 9

The five core survey questions are standardized to enable accurate benchmarking against industry data. However, you can customize the survey prompt message that accompanies the survey invitation.