When someone new joins your organization, their onboarding should be waiting for them on day one — without anyone remembering to add them by hand. Knowly can do this for you: when a new person appears in your active directory, Knowly enrols them in an onboarding learning journey and starts it from their first day.
It works by combining three things you set up once — SCIM directory sync, a dynamic list, and an individual learning journey. After that, new hires flow in on their own.
Availability
Automatic enrolment relies on dynamic lists, available for Enterprise organizations with SCIM directory sync enabled.
See If a feature is locked if any part is unavailable.
If you'd rather set up each piece first
This article shows how the pieces fit together. If you want the step-by-step for any one of them, start here:
What you need in place
Three things have to be set up for automatic onboarding to work:
SCIM directory sync. Your active directory — for example Microsoft Entra ID — is connected to Knowly, so new people appear in Knowly shortly after they're added on your side.
A dynamic list that matches new hires. Its filters decide who counts as a new hire, for example everyone in a certain SCIM group, or everyone with an employment start date on or after a given date. People who start matching are added to the list automatically.
An individual learning journey with the list connected. Connect the dynamic list to your onboarding journey with Connect dynamic list, and choose an individual learning journey so each person gets their own onboarding on their own timeline.
Why individual rather than cohort? Onboarding usually needs to start on each person's first day, not on a shared date. An individual learning journey gives every new hire their own copy, timed to when they join. A cohort shares one schedule, which fits a group starting together — not a steady trickle of new joiners.
How the automatic start works
Once those three things are in place, you don't touch anything when a new person joins:
The person is added in your directory — for example, added to the right group in Entra ID.
Knowly picks them up through directory sync and checks them against your dynamic lists.
Because they match your new-hire list, they're added to the connected learning journey.
For an individual journey, Knowly creates their onboarding and anchors the schedule to the day they join the list, so their first activities line up with their first days.
From there, onboarding runs on its normal schedule for that person, just as if you had added them yourself.
Give each new hire a manager automatically too
If your directory knows who each person's manager is, you can let Knowly assign it for you. Turn on Automatically assign manager on the connected list, and each new hire's manager is set from their directory profile as they're added. If the manager can't be matched, the person is still onboarded — just without a manager, which you can set by hand later.
See Automatically assign managers from your directory for the details.
When someone leaves the list
Automatic enrolment has an automatic counterpart: if a person later stops matching the list — say they change department and no longer fit the filter — Knowly removes them from that learning journey too. Someone you also added by hand stays, and so does anyone who is on more than one of the lists connected to that journey.
Keep this in mind when you choose your filters: they decide who stays in onboarding, not only who starts it. If a mid-onboarding change in your directory shouldn't pull someone out, filter on something stable, like a start date rather than a department.