1. Set Up Your Firm
Goal: create your trial account, complete the onboarding wizard as Meridian Immigration Law, and land on your dashboard with a teammate invited.
Time: ~5 minutes
Steps
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Sign up for a free trial. The trial lasts 15 days and asks for no credit card. Create your account and confirm your email if prompted. Your first sign-in opens the onboarding wizard.
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Wizard step 1 — Welcome to FileOnion. In Enter Organization, type
Meridian Immigration Law(letters, numbers, and spaces only). Under Choose your plan, select Professional — this tutorial uses workflow features that Professional includes. Enterprise is shown for awareness but is marked Sales only; it is provisioned through a sales conversation, not self-serve signup. Click Continue. You can change plans later.Creating the workspace takes a few seconds, and the button narrates what it is doing — "Creating your workspace…", then "Securing your trial subscription…", then "Almost done — finishing setup…". Let it finish.
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Wizard step 2 — Invite Your First Teammate. Enter a teammate's email and pick a role:
- Member — upload, comment, create requests
- Admin — full management except billing
Click Send invite. If you're working alone today, click Skip — you can invite people later from Organization → Teams. (On the Personal plan the wizard skips this step entirely and takes you straight to step 3.)
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Wizard step 3 — Your workspace is ready. This last screen does four things:
- A Trial pill shows how many days remain. You can upgrade anytime from Organization → Billing.
- Your default workflow previews the 5-stage kanban every request moves through — New, Client Open, Files Uploaded, Needs Review, Approved. On Professional you can customize up to 5 stages and 10 workflow actions later in Settings → Workflows.
- Email notifications — turn on all three (File Upload, Request Viewed, New Comment) so you see activity land in your inbox during parts 4 and 5. They are off by default.
- Next steps lists what to do first: create a client, send a request, explore templates.
Click Go to my workspace.
Brand colors come later
Onboarding no longer asks for brand colors. Set your primary and secondary colors anytime in Settings → Branding — they apply to buttons, links, and the emails your clients receive.
Checkpoint
You are on the dashboard. It shows a KPI strip (Open requests, Awaiting client, Needs review, Overdue), a Needs attention queue, a clients card, a pipeline bar, and an activity feed — all empty for now. The sidebar lists Dashboard, Requests, Kanban Board, Clients, Templates, File Manager, Organization, Workflows, and Support.