Setting up your account and workspace
A step-by-step guide to creating your Ken account, setting up your workspace, and getting your profile ready - whether you signed up yourself or accepted an invitation from a teammate.
Overview
Onboarding in Ken creates your account and the workspace that holds all your campaigns, contacts, and sending infrastructure. There are two paths through onboarding:
- Self-serve signup - you found Ken yourself, registered with an email and password (or Google), and are setting up a brand-new workspace.
- Invited user - a teammate sent you an invitation link. You join their existing workspace without filling in company details.
Both paths start at /auth/sign-up and end with your workspace fully provisioned and ready to use. Invited users reach the dashboard faster - they skip the profile form entirely.
There is no sidebar item for onboarding; the flow only runs once, immediately after your first successful signup.
Before you start
- You need a valid email address. Personal/consumer email addresses (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, and similar) are accepted but create a personal workspace rather than a shared company workspace.
- If you are joining via an invitation, open the invitation email from your inbox before starting. The invitation link is single-use and has an expiry.
- Google SSO is supported on both the signup and sign-in pages.
How to sign up and set up your workspace
Step 1 - Create your account
Open /auth/sign-up.
For self-serve signup, fill in:
- First Name
- Last Name
- Company Name
- Create a Password (minimum 8 characters, at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, and one number)
Click Sign Up. A 6-digit verification code is sent to the email you entered. Enter it on the next screen and click Continue. If the code does not arrive, click Resend code.
Alternatively, click Continue with Google to skip the email/password form and verify with your Google account.
For invited users, open the invitation link from your email. The sign-up page shows "You're invited!" and your email is pre-filled and locked - you cannot change it. Fill in:
- First Name
- Last Name
- Create a Password
Click Accept invite & continue.
Step 2 - Complete your profile
After email verification (or invite acceptance), you land at /onboarding/profile.
Self-serve users see a form titled "Awesome! Let's set up your profile" with the following fields:
- Website - your company's website URL
- LinkedIn URLs - two fields:
- LinkedIn Personal URL - your personal LinkedIn profile
- LinkedIn Company URL - your company's LinkedIn page
Fill in all fields and click Continue. These details are used to personalize your campaigns; the more accurate they are, the better the AI performs.
Invited users arrive at /onboarding/profile but see a shorter form - the Company Name field is hidden because your company context is inherited from the workspace you were invited to. The platform detects the invite flag server-side and skips company-name validation. Your personal LinkedIn URL can be added later under Settings - Profile.
Step 3 - Welcome screen
After the profile form submits successfully, all users (both self-serve and invited) land at /onboarding/welcome.
The screen confirms your workspace is ready and shows a "You're all set!" message with your workspace name. It includes a short getting-started checklist with links to:
- Invite your team - opens Settings - Users
- Set up your blocklist - opens Settings - Blocklist
- Configure notifications - opens Settings - Profile
Click Go to dashboard to open the main dashboard and start building campaigns.
How it works
When you complete signup, two things happen in parallel on the backend:
-
Identity provisioning - a signed server-to-server event from the auth provider creates your user record in Ken's own database, assigns your role, seeds default notification preferences, and accepts any pending invitations attached to your email address.
-
Workspace provisioning - the platform reads your email domain and decides whether to create a new shared workspace (for corporate domains not already taken) or a personal workspace (for consumer email providers). If a workspace already exists for your domain, you get a personal workspace instead and are expected to join your company's workspace through an invitation.
After workspace creation, the sending infrastructure for your workspace is provisioned automatically. If a downstream infrastructure call fails during signup, the workspace is still created and the infrastructure is repaired in the background - you will not see an error.
For invited users, neither workspace creation step runs. When the profile form is submitted, the server action re-reads the invite flag from your account metadata independently and calls a separate setup path. That path resolves the workspace you were invited to, sets an active-workspace cookie (and a localStorage mirror for instant client reads), and writes onboarding-complete flags to your account - no new workspace is created. If workspace resolution fails, an abbreviated manual form is shown as a fallback so onboarding can still complete.
Troubleshooting & debugging
Symptom: "Invitation unavailable" is shown on the signup page. Likely cause: the invitation link has expired or has already been used. Invitation links are single-use. Fix: ask the workspace admin to send a new invitation from Settings - Users.
Symptom: Invited user is asked for a Company Name on the profile form.
Likely cause: the invite flag (invitedToOrg) was not written to the user's account metadata at sign-up time, so the profile form treated the user as self-serve and showed the company name field.
What to check: verify the user went through the invite sign-up path (opened the invitation link and clicked "Accept invite & continue") rather than the standard sign-up form. If the flag is missing, the user can enter any company name to proceed; the workspace is still resolved from the invitation at submission time and no duplicate workspace is created.
Symptom: Invited user's profile form submission fails or loops.
Likely cause: setupInvitedWorkspace could not resolve an active workspace for the user - the invited workspace may no longer exist or the user's membership was revoked.
What to check: verify that the workspace the user was invited to still exists and is active. Check whether the user's membership record is present. A workspace admin can re-invite the user to fix broken membership.
Symptom: Profile form submission fails with "Company name is missing". Likely cause: the company name was not captured at sign-up (self-serve path only) and the server action requires it before provisioning the workspace. Fix: this should not normally happen if the user went through the standard sign-up form. If it does, an operator can set the company name directly in the user's account metadata via the auth provider dashboard, then have the user retry submission.
Symptom: User completes onboarding but the dashboard shows "No active workspace". Likely cause: the active-workspace cookie was not set, or the workspace was created but the user session does not reflect it yet. What to check: a hard reload (Cmd+Shift+R / Ctrl+Shift+R) resolves this in most cases. If the workspace does not appear after reload, check whether the workspace creation succeeded by looking up the user in the backend. The workspace should exist even if sending infrastructure provisioning failed.
Symptom: User signed up but cannot access any workspace data - everything shows as empty or 403.
Likely cause: the user record was created in the auth provider but the backend user provisioning webhook has not fired or failed silently.
What to check: verify the user row exists in the backend user table. If the row is missing, the webhook likely failed to deliver. Check backend webhook logs for the user.created or user.updated event. The webhook endpoint is POST /v1/webhooks/clerk. Re-triggering a user.updated event (for example, by updating a user field in the auth provider dashboard) will re-run provisioning idempotently.
Symptom: User receives a "Clerk user ID conflict" error or cannot complete signup. Likely cause: an active Ken user already exists for that email address with a different auth-provider account. This is a security block and cannot be self-served. Fix: an operator must investigate whether the email address belongs to the same person and, if so, reconcile the accounts manually.
Symptom: Soft-deleted user tries to re-sign-up and is blocked. Likely cause: the backend refuses to auto-reactivate a previously deleted account from the public signup webhook. Reactivation preserves old roles and client memberships and must go through an explicit re-invitation flow. Fix: an operator must send a fresh invitation to the affected email and coordinate the reactivation. The user cannot self-serve this path.
Symptom: Two users on the same corporate email domain both end up with personal workspaces. Expected behavior, not a bug: the platform creates the first workspace for a corporate domain and lets the first user own it. All subsequent users on the same domain are expected to join via invitation rather than sharing a workspace automatically. Ask the first user (the workspace owner) to send invitations from Settings - Users.
FAQ
Can I use a personal Gmail or Outlook address to sign up? Yes. Personal email addresses are accepted. You will get a personal workspace rather than a shared company workspace. If you want a shared workspace, use your company email address and have your teammates join via invitation.
I signed up with Google. Can I switch to email/password later? You can add a password to your account from your account settings within the auth provider (accessible from Settings - Profile). Both login methods can be active at the same time.
I entered the wrong company name during sign-up. Can I change it? Yes. Go to Settings - Company to update your company name, website, and LinkedIn company URL at any time.
Why does my profile form ask for a LinkedIn URL? Ken AI uses your LinkedIn profile and company page to personalize campaign copy and research prospects. You can skip the LinkedIn fields and add them later from Settings - Profile, but AI personalization will be less accurate until they are filled in.
My invitation link says it is expired. What should I do? Ask the person who invited you to resend the invitation from Settings - Users. They can revoke the old invitation and generate a new one from the same page.
I completed onboarding but I am not sure where to go next. The welcome screen has a "Go to dashboard" button that opens the main dashboard. From there, open the Campaigns page from the left sidebar and click Create campaign to start building your first outreach sequence.