Your first 30 minutes
An ordered path through the six things worth doing on day one — business type, branding, a sending domain, one teammate, one client, one portal.
A new Zyan workspace works out of the box, but six settings decide how much of it fits your agency instead of a generic one. Do them in this order and everything you create afterwards inherits the right defaults. Each step links to the page that covers it properly — come back here when you are done.
Before you start
Sign in as the workspace owner. Business type, branding, White Label and Plan & Credits are all owner-only, so a teammate cannot work this list for you.
The checklist that tracks this for you
Open /admin and look at the top of the dashboard. The Getting Started card lists these steps with live checkmarks read from your real workspace data — it is not a separate progress tracker, so a step ticks the moment the underlying thing exists. Click any unchecked step to jump straight to the surface that completes it.
It disappears after seven days
The Getting Started card and the first-run business-type prompt both leave the workspace seven days after it was created, finished or not. Nothing breaks — every setting stays reachable from Settings — but the guided version of this list is temporary.
The six steps
Pick your business type
Open SettingsBusiness type, or answer the What kind of business are you? prompt that appears over the dashboard on your first sign-in. Choose one of eight types and Zyan fills in task types, lead tags, delivery steps, an onboarding pack, billing categories and the AI's description of what you do.
Do this first. Defaults only fill — they never overwrite anything you have already authored — so the later a workspace picks a type, the less it gets. See Set up your workspace.
Brand the workspace
Open SettingsAppearanceBrand. Set the workspace name, upload a logo and favicon, and pick a brand colour. This is the same record the admin portal, your sign-in page and your client portal all read, so one pass covers all three. See Branding your workspace.
Verify a sending domain
Open SettingsWhite LabelEmail Identity. Set the sender name and reply-to your clients will see, then add a sending domain and publish the DNS records it shows you. These identities are client-facing only — staff email never uses them.
Until this is verified, client invitations and portal email send from the shared platform address. It works, but it is the first thing a new client sees and it is far more likely to be filtered.
Invite one teammate
Open TeamInvite team member. Enter their email, pick a role, tick the permission rows they need, and send it. The invitation link expires after seven days and a pending invitation consumes a seat while it waits.
Invite one person now rather than the whole team — you will want to see how the permission grid behaves before you repeat it five times. See Team and permissions.
Add your first client
Create the client record: name, company, email, phone. This is the admin-side record only. Creating it does not create a login, and the email address on it is what the next step needs.
Create their portal
From the client's Overview or Settings tab, click Create portal. Optionally link it to a project, choose whether to send the onboarding invite now, and attach an onboarding pack. See Create a client portal.
What each step unlocks
| Step | What it changes downstream |
|---|---|
| Business type | Task types, lead tags, delivery steps, onboarding pack, billing category order, AI persona |
| Branding | Admin portal chrome, sign-in page, client portal, browser-tab icon, accent colour |
| Sending domain | The From address on every client-facing and marketing email |
| Teammate | Who can see and change each area — nothing else grants access |
| Client record | The target for portals, projects, billing and messages |
| Portal | Your client's login, and the surface every deliverable is published to |
Two things worth understanding early
Access in Zyan is decided twice, and confusing the two gates costs people afternoons.
- Plan features decide whether a capability exists in your workspace at all. They come with your subscription.
- Permissions decide which teammates can see or change it. They live on each member's Permissions tab.
A permission can never unlock something your plan does not sell, and a generous plan cannot show a teammate something their grid denies. Full detail in Plans, credits and seats.
Leave the rest of Settings alone for now
Sales defaults, project workflows, messaging lines and content-publishing defaults are all worth setting eventually, but none of them block your first client. Do them when the matching feature comes up.
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| The business-type prompt keeps reappearing | Decide later is never stored — it hides the prompt until the next full page load | Pick a type, or wait out the seven-day setup window |
| The Getting Started card is gone | The workspace is more than seven days old | Every step is still reachable from Settings; the card does not come back |
| “Access Restricted” on a Settings section | A non-owner deep-linked to an owner-only section | Ask the workspace owner to make the change |
| The Save button on Brand is greyed out | No text row has changed — logo, favicon and colour save on their own actions | Edit one of the text rows, or use Upload / Apply for the rest |
| Invite team member is disabled | Every plan seat is taken, including pending invitations | Revoke a pending invite under Team → Invitations, or upgrade the plan |
| “Add a client email before creating portal access” | The client record has no email address | Add one on the client's profile, then create the portal |