CSE Onboarding (First Order)
In the Onboarding motion, a Customer Success Engineer (CSE) guides an eligible new customer through their first year with GitLab. The aim is to get the customer started right, build their confidence in the foundations, and make sure a customer who has bought GitLab also adopts it. The journey is anchored on a customer-facing Onboarding Hub and runs through a kickoff and five scheduled check-ins.
Onboarding is one of the three CSE motions. It is included in the subscription, not a paid add-on. It is also called First Order onboarding, because it starts with a customer’s first GitLab purchase.
Who is covered
The motion covers first-order customers in eligible sales segments, with expansion to more segments in progress. Customers who buy a paid Success Tier, and customers outside the eligible segments, are onboarded through other motions, such as Professional Services or digital onboarding.
The first year at a glance
| When | What happens |
|---|---|
| Day 0, when the purchase closes | The Account Executive (AE) confirms the technical champion (their email, timezone and rough go-live timeframe) and the customer receives a welcome email with a link to book their kickoff |
| Within 3-5 business days | The customer books their kickoff; the AE nudges if it has not been booked |
| Within about 10 business days | The onboarding kickoff, led by the CSE |
| 30 days | First check-in |
| 90 days | Check-in at the end of the intensive first 90 days |
| 6, 9 and 12 months | Check-ins that keep adoption on track and set up the renewal |
The first 90 days are the intensive part. Milestones are tied to the business outcomes that led the customer to buy. The later check-ins keep adoption moving and lay the ground for renewal and expansion.
Before the kickoff
The CSE reviews what the AE captured during the sale (the champion, the timeline, the business outcome behind the purchase), checks that licenses are activated and support access is in place, and aligns with the AE, the Account Manager (AM) and the Solutions Architect (SA) on any blockers known from the sales cycle.
The onboarding kickoff
The kickoff is led by the CSE, takes about 60 minutes, and is driven from the Onboarding Hub rather than a slide deck. It is also the warm handoff from the AE to the CSE. It covers:
- Introductions, and how the GitLab team will work with the customer.
- A walkthrough of the Onboarding Hub and the first-year journey.
- Success planning: the customer’s 12-month vision, their top business outcomes, and the metrics that matter.
- Agreement on the first 30 days: the pilot team, the non-negotiable setup items, and the next actions.
The Onboarding Hub
The Onboarding Hub is being rolled out, so some customers may start with an earlier version of the journey.
The Onboarding Hub is the shared reference site the CSE and the customer use throughout the first year. It has four parts:
- Success Plan: the customer’s goals and desired outcomes, and progress against them.
- First-year journey timeline: the path to success, with its key milestones.
- Your GitLab team: the account team and the CSE.
- Useful resources: guides, documentation and support options.
Onboarding is sequenced into plays for Premium and Ultimate onboarding, tier upgrades, and Duo Agent Platform adoption.
Foundations every new customer should get right
Three areas have the biggest impact on early adoption, and they are the backbone of the early conversations. The CSE asks open-ended questions to understand the customer’s plans, progress and, most importantly, their confidence in each area, then points them to the right enablement: webinars, documentation and videos.
- Group and project hierarchy: structuring GitLab so it scales with the organisation. See groups and subgroups.
- User authentication and authorization: single sign-on and access management. See SAML SSO for GitLab.com groups, SAML for self-managed instances and LDAP.
- Early DevSecOps adoption: security scanning in pipelines from the start. See getting started with application security and the webinar Holistic Approach to Securing the Development Lifecycle.
The questions and resources cover both GitLab.com and self-managed deployments.
After each session
The CSE follows up within 24 hours with a summary and next steps, and flags any risks to the AE and AM, such as licenses that are not yet activated, a single point of contact, or blockers the customer has raised.
Related pages
- CSE homepage
- Webinars and hands-on labs, a good companion to onboarding for every new customer
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