Your GovDash Onboarding Guide

Your quick guide to what onboarding looks like and how to come prepared.

Onboarding is a guided, hands-on program that gets your team running real workflows in GovDash on your own data, not a generic feature tour. It runs as a 30-day activation across four working sessions, roughly one a week, and a dedicated onboarding specialist configures GovDash around your contracts, your pipeline, and the way your team actually wins business. We focus on automating your most painful workflows first so you see value early. Your sessions are booked upfront, so you have a milestone every week, and there's no expectation that you'll learn every feature in the first month.

Your onboarding at a glance

Onboarding runs across four working sessions, roughly one a week. Each one builds on the last and is shaped around the pain points your team raises on Day One, so the more you share and drive, the more tailored it becomes.

Session 1: Discovery   Week 1 · 60 min

Who's there: Champion, decision-makers, and anyone whose work GovDash will touch.

A working conversation, not a demo. We listen first, surface your biggest pain points, and build the next three sessions around them. In this hour we focus on how your team works today:

• Your proposal process end to end, from finding opportunities to assigning capture and proposal managers.

• Where your time actually goes, especially the manual compliance checks and repetitive data calls worth automating.

• Your contract landscape, and where that past-performance data lives today.

We close on the big question: what does a home run look like twelve months out? Before you leave, we book all of your onboarding sessions on the calendar. Your only homework: upload your ~5 most-referenced contracts (award document and PWS/SOW for each).

You'll leave with: a 30-day plan tailored to your priorities, a clear path to load your top contracts, and defined success metrics for the year.

Session 2: Quick Wins   Week 2 · 60 min

Who's there: Champion plus the hands-on team: proposal writers, capture managers, and BD leads.

Your data, live. This is your workflow running through GovDash for the first time, not a sample tour. We confirm your contracts are in the system (records visible, key fields populated, past-performance summaries generated), then show how GovDash connects, with Contract fueling Capture, Discover, and Proposal so your history powers every draft. From there we run live demonstrations on your real contracts, focused on the features that solve the biggest pain points we surfaced in Discovery, and pause to capture the time saved on each. You'll get a light orientation to Capture and Proposal so the next sessions feel familiar, meet your three support lifelines, and leave the session recorded with timestamp markers so your team can revisit any step.

You'll leave with: your top features in active use on real work, Academy modules mapped to your use cases, and a recording with timestamp markers.

Session 3: Hands-On Capture   Week 3 · 60 min

Who's there: Pipeline owners, capture leads, your BD director, and anyone who runs gate reviews.

You take the wheel and share your screen, because driving it yourself builds the muscle memory that makes it stick. Together you'll:

• Upload 3–5 active pursuits and configure your pipeline phases and gate criteria to match how your team actually works (for example, Qualified becomes Go Decision, Proposal becomes Pink Team).

• Connect your integrations so your documents and BD tools flow into GovDash.

• Build a custom capture plan with the five go/no-go questions your team asks on every pursuit, and watch Dash draft evidence-based answers from your past performance.

• Set up your Discover profile (capability areas, target agencies, vehicles, NAICS, and set-asides) so opportunities matched to what you actually pursue start showing up.

You'll leave running your pipeline in GovDash instead of a spreadsheet, with your test proposal staged for Session 4.

You'll leave with: a pipeline tailored to your process, a capability statement ready to send, and a Discover profile already finding opportunities.

Session 4: Proposals   Week 4 · 60 min

Who's there: Your proposal and contracts team, plus an executive sponsor for the ROI conversation.

The payoff. Bring a proposal your team has already responded to, and we run the same RFP through GovDash side by side with your version. We first generate a baseline draft with no guidance, then build a writing plan together (win themes, voice and tone, and specific proof points from your history) and regenerate, so you can compare all three and see exactly what your expertise adds. You'll meet the Word Assistant, which substantiates vague claims with real metrics from your contract record, then map the exercise to your pre-GovDash process to calculate the hours you just got back.

You'll leave with: three versions of one proposal to compare and a defensible ROI baseline.

What you'll have by Day 30

By Day 30, your team has a system tailored to your business, not a generic install:

• A system configured to your workflows, so you can run your critical requirements in GovDash and save time.

• A contract inventory rich with usable data (PWS, period of performance, and key personnel) that substantiates the claims you make.

• A pipeline and Discover profile already working, so you can identify opportunities right away.

• A faster path to compelling, compliant content in your voice, on every proposal that follows.

And a clean handoff to your Account Manager. On Day 30 you're introduced to a dedicated AM who already knows your stakeholders, your pipeline, your success definition, and the work we've done together. Nothing starts over.

Integrations & what to set up during onboarding

A few connections make GovDash work best and are typically configured during onboarding. Most require an admin, so set them up early to keep your sessions moving. Each links to its full setup guide.

Not sure what's connected? Check Settings → Configurations → Integrations in GovDash, or ask your onboarding specialist.

Come prepared

A little setup ahead of time makes every session more productive. Aim to have these ready:

• Your champions added to GovDash: points of contact from Proposal, Capture/BD, Contracts, IT, and Leadership (how to invite teammates).

• Your proposal template: send us your branded proposal template so every proposal GovDash generates already looks submission-ready in your house style.

• Your top ~5 contracts: the award document and PWS/SOW for each (more supporting docs give better results). See Uploading Your Contracts.

• 3–5 active pursuits: real opportunities to build your live pipeline in Session 3.

• A test proposal package: one real solicitation (RFP and PWS), the past-performance contracts it references, and any key-personnel resumes, for the live run in Session 4.

• Integrations connected: see the table above.

A note on the test proposal

The test proposal is optional but highly recommended. Recreating a proposal your team already knows well gives you a familiar reference point for seeing where your strategic input matters most in GovDash. It does not have to be one you won.

Your support resources

Yours for the life of your subscription. You're never on your own during onboarding or after. Reach us through:

• Live in-app chat: open Get Help → Contact Us inside GovDash. Staffed by former capture and proposal pros; responses in minutes.

• Help Center: searchable answers at support.govdash.com.

• GovDash Academy: self-paced, on-demand training your team can leverage anytime.

• Weekly webinars: live, hands-on sessions led by our team.

• Email: support@govdash.com.

• Your onboarding specialist: your direct guide through your first 30 days.

Questions about onboarding? Reach out to your onboarding specialist or support@govdash.com. We're here for you.