Handing off from sales to post-sales
When you mark an opportunity as Won, the record's More menu gains the Start onboarding action, which creates the Onboarding record already linked to the same company and takes you straight to it. If you would rather have this happen on its own, ask your administrator to turn on the automatic handoff.
The most fragile moment in a customer relationship is the day after the win. The rep celebrates and moves on to the next deal; the implementation team finds out about the new customer days later, with no context. A structured handoff exists so that the win immediately creates the artifact post-sales works from: the Onboarding record.
Manual handoff, in one click
- Open the opportunity and click Won, at the top of the record.
- With the deal already marked Won, open the More menu at the top of the record.
- Click Start onboarding.
- The system creates the Onboarding record named after the deal and already linked to the same company, with status Not started, and takes you straight to it.
- In the onboarding, fill in the Owner (CSM) and the Target date, and build the checklist.
The action only appears once the opportunity is marked as won. While the deal is open, lost or on hold, the item stays hidden in the More menu.
Automatic handoff, no clicks
There is also an automatic handoff, which starts out off and is turned on by the administrator in the organization settings. With it enabled, as soon as an opportunity enters a stage whose outcome is won, the CRM creates the account's Onboarding on its own.
- The onboarding is created with a name derived from the account, status Not started, a start date of today and a target date 30 days out.
- Creation is idempotent: if the account already has an onboarding that is not complete, no second one is created.
- With no company filled in on the opportunity, nothing is created, because there would be nobody to link the implementation to.
- It depends on the organization having the business event log turned on. If you enabled the option and nothing happens, that is what is missing.
A third option · a cross-object rule
If you want behavior that differs from the default, for instance also creating a delivery project or filling in specific fields, create a cross-object rule under Settings: object Opportunity, on the edit event, with the condition of a won stage, creating whatever record you want. The rule coexists with the manual handoff.
Limits and common questions
- Why do I not see Start onboarding? Check that the opportunity really is marked as won and that your role has permission to create Onboarding records.
- I clicked twice and created two onboardings? The manual action does not check for duplicates. Delete the extra one through the Trash. Automatic creation, on the other hand, does check and will not duplicate.
- Can I undo it? The onboarding it creates is an ordinary record: it can be deleted and restored through the Trash. Marking the opportunity as won again does not recreate the record if one is still open.
- Does the handoff move financial data? No. It creates the implementation record. Generating an order and an invoice from the won deal is a different, also optional function of the billing flow.
- What happens if the deal is reopened? The onboarding that was created stays. Reopening the opportunity deletes nothing.