How do onboarding deadlines work?

Before you begin

The lead time is set once, company-wide, in Settings → Onboarding, and role policies can override it. See How do I configure the onboarding policy?.

Where the deadline shows

A row with no badge has no start date on its project, so there is nothing to count from. That is worth checking before concluding an onboarding is on track.

The four stages

Only the amber timing is a setting. Red at the deadline is fixed mechanics, and Heads-up follows from the lead time itself — so a company with a 7-day lead time and a 3-day amber warning gets four days of blue and three of amber.

Velory re-checks every active onboarding hourly and records the stage, so the counts you see are consistent between reloads rather than recalculated on the spot.

When Velory tells you

A red onboarding announces itself. When the deadline arrives and the hire has still chosen nothing, whoever owns that onboarding is told — the people named by Who confirms a new hire in your onboarding policy, which defaults to every company admin.

Four things bound it:

• Red only. Amber colours the row for you to find; it does not interrupt anyone.
• Only when nothing was chosen. Submitting does not close an onboarding — it stays active while software provisions and access is granted — so a hire who chose on time is still in the sweep when the date passes. Velory stays quiet about those rather than telling you they chose nothing hours after they did.
• Not at weekends. Notifications are paused Saturday and Sunday, so an onboarding that first turns red then is left alone entirely and announced by the next weekday sweep instead of being sent into a void.
• Once per deadline. Move the start date out and back in and you hear about it again, which is correct — that is a new deadline, not a repeat.

The switch is Email admin at red stage, on by default. Its neighbour, Copy manager on reminder emails, does nothing: there is no reminder ladder behind it.

Despite its name, the switch decides whether the deadline is announced, not how. The channel is set by Deadline passed without a choice in Settings → General → Notifications, and out of the box that is the in-app inbox only. Turn on Email there if you want it by email. See How do I choose which notifications Velory sends?.

Everything else is there to be read rather than delivered — the badge on the Transitions table, the stage in the project sidebar, and your task list.

What happens when the deadline passes

The hire stops being the blocker. Up to the deadline you can look at the equipment plan but not act on it; once it passes, Prepare assets unlocks and you confirm, change or skip each item yourself. The Employee onboarding row reads Deadline passed — proceeding without their input.

That is the whole of it. Nothing is ordered automatically at the deadline and nothing is substituted for you — the step simply becomes yours to finish. The hire's onboarding closes at the deadline: if they open it afterwards, it tells them "This onboarding link has closed — the deadline has passed." and takes no choices.

The gate also opens early, the moment the hire submits. It stays closed only while their session is still pending or in progress.

Good to know

The email said a fallback would apply

It can say that, and it is wrong. With Auto-apply fallback at deadline switched on — the default — the message reads as though the run moves on without the hire's picks. Nothing is substituted. Read it as "this onboarding reached its deadline with no selection" whichever way that switch is set, and finish the equipment step yourself.

Can I change the deadline directly?

No. Change the start date and the deadline follows it. If your lead time is consistently wrong for how you actually ship, change the lead time rather than fudging start dates.

Why is an onboarding red when we have everything in stock?

The stage measures the date, not your readiness. Confirm the items and the step closes; the badge goes away when the project does.

Does the hire see the deadline?

Yes. Their own onboarding shows it on the Welcome and Start screens, so they know how long they have to choose.

Do scheduled invites respect the deadline?

They are independent. An invite scheduled after the deadline will still send on its date, which is a sign the schedule needs moving rather than something Velory corrects for you.