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# Customer onboarding and intake use case

> Docusign for Developers includes a number of technologies that directly address the needs of developers building customer onboarding processes.

Onboarding is one of your business’s first touchpoints with customers, so you want to leave a good impression, giving them as frictionless an experience as possible. In theory, onboarding should be a simple and straightforward process, but it can become complicated when multiple systems are involved, often requiring customers to enter their information multiple times and authenticate with multiple platforms. Across industries, customers can get frustrated when the onboarding experience is complex and insecure. A disjointed and manual process can be a major factor in customer attrition.

#### Problem statement

Agreements are a critical part of the customer onboarding journey. But signatures are just one piece of the larger picture, and isolating the signing of the agreement from the rest of the process leads to the following challenges:

* Collecting customer information requires the customer to fill out multiple forms, repeatedly entering the same information.
* Customer data is trapped in static files and needs to be entered manually across different systems.
* Onboarding a single customer can require the creation of multiple accounts, making it difficult to manage and track the status of individual agreements.

## How Docusign for Developers can help

Docusign for Developers includes a number of technologies that directly address these challenges by providing the tools developers need to automate and manage complex workflows and, easily and securely, read customer data from and write it back to third-party platforms. Let’s review these technologies and how each of them can be used for this purpose:

### Workflows

[Docusign Workflow Builder](https://www.docusign.com/products/platform/workflow-builder) is a platform service that lets you create reusable workflows that automate often-used business processes such as customer onboarding. Through the low-code builder, you can add steps that gather customer data in a web form and collect signatures. With the [Workflow Builder API](/docs/workflow-builder-api), you can trigger, manage, and embed workflows in your own applications.

![A screenshot of a Maestro workflow](/_fern-files/_img/0a2abac46b838374b7588c8bb7a59ca84c6ec1048e36ed8a498819094c5a6bc0.webp)

### Private extension apps

When onboarding customers, you’ll likely want to store their information in proprietary internal systems. With [private extension apps](/extension-apps/extension-apps-101/choosing-private-distribution), you can extend Docusign workflows with Data IO extensions to read and write data from those systems without making your app public for external distribution.

![A screenshot of the screen where you submit your private extension app for review](/_fern-files/_img/391c27341e5b4e93cb0a7a09f66001d427cdd2fa1ffb655136aea75ea2508d25.webp)

### Data IO extension

[Data IO](/extension-apps/extension-apps-101/supported-extensions/data-io) is used to send data back and forth from your systems to agreements being signed using Docusign eSignature that are part of a workflow. You can build a private extension app that uses Data IO to send account information to your own proprietary system as part of the onboarding workflow.

![A screenshot of a Data IO extension app](/_fern-files/_img/783e847f983ac72a2c35b257f46b85053bdab97fc0e3637389395315efd22c05.webp)

### Web Forms API

The [Web Forms](https://support.docusign.com/s/document-item?bundleId=gmi1660583110357\&topicId=brp1660583998599.html) feature enables you to build web pages that contain fields in which users enter data. User-entered form values can be dynamically incorporated into eSignature [envelopes](/docs/esign-rest-api/esign101/concepts/envelopes) that users sign, as well as being exported to your business applications. With the [Web Forms API](/docs/web-forms-api), you can create and manage instances of web forms that users fill out and embed web forms into your own applications.

![A screenshot of a web form collecting information about opening an account](/_fern-files/_img/976de5441587c92c2ab74bc82b9c348338327195c0761b759c68e4c2fb90e0c7.webp)

### Workspaces API

[Workspaces](https://www.docusign.com/products/workspaces) are designed to simplify complex, multistep agreement processes with the same set of participants over time. For example, a single complex process, such as onboarding a new client, may require three new accounts to be created. Each of those accounts can require five agreements each. If all 15 agreements are sent and managed individually, it can be difficult to manage and track the status of each one. A workspace solves these problems by offering a central hub to manage your complex agreement flows, documents, and participants. With the [Workspaces API](/docs/workspaces-api), you can automate the creation and management of your workspaces.

![A screenshot of the workspaces UI](/_fern-files/_img/931d5a2d476d6200434af0331c0ba2d5c0d145792a5d2a773d3446b64ff7323b.webp)

#### Resources for Developers

To get you started on building your own customer onboarding solution using Docusign for Developers, here are a few useful resources:

* [Know Your Customer (KYC) workflow template](https://apps-d.docusign.com/send/workflowtemplates/290e8157-58a6-446e-aebb-2505366add43): You can use this template to prepopulate a no-code workflow in Workflow Builder with everything you need to verify a new customer’s identity and collect their information. It includes steps that use web forms, [ID verification (IDV)](https://support.docusign.com/s/document-item?bundleId=yff1696971835267\&topicId=qht1698126463108.html), and conditional logic that branches depending on the success of the IDV step.
* [The Web Forms Builder](https://support.docusign.com/s/document-item?bundleId=gmi1660583110357\&topicId=gpc1660591510274.html): The Web Forms Builder is where you can create web forms to collect customer data. Web forms can be leveraged in [Workflow Builder workflows](/docs/workflow-builder-api/workflow-builder101/workflows) so any data input by the customer can be easily referenced in other workflow steps.
* [How to trigger a Workflow Builder workflow](/docs/workflow-builder-api/how-to/trigger-workflow): This code example showcases how you can use the Workflow Builder API to programmatically start a workflow. You can then embed the workflow inside an iframe in your web application. Use this to trigger onboarding workflows directly from inside your own web app.
* [From NIGO to STP: A developer's guide to custom data verification and the Connected Fields API](https://www.docusign.com/blog/developers/custom-data-verification-connected-fields-api): This comprehensive blog post provides useful information about using the Connected Fields Extension to provide custom data verification for your organization needs. You can build highly customized extension apps that are tailored to your organization’s specific requirements  for the account opening process. Read this blog post to see how this is done with examples that include both product screenshots and code snippets.
* [Plan a Web Forms API integration](/docs/web-forms-api/plan-integration): This guide walks you through everything you need to know to build web forms into your API integrations. From authentication to rendering web form instances with the [Docusign JS](/docs/web-forms-api/plan-integration/render-instances#use-docusign-js-to-render-web-form-instance-urls) client SDK, this guide has you covered.
* [How to create and embed a web form instance](/docs/web-forms-api/how-to/create-embed-web-form-instance): This code example demonstrates how to create web form instances and embed them into your applications to provide users with a seamless form-filling experience.
* [Build an extension app](/extension-apps/build-an-extension-app): This guide covers the general steps to build an extension app, including how to decide which extension type to use and how to set up IT infrastructure like an API proxy.
* [Data IO Reference Implementation](https://github.com/docusign/extension-app-data-io-reference-implementation): This reference implementation models the implementation of data input and output functionalities in an extension app.To use an extension app reference implementation, clone the project files from GitHub and follow the step-by-step instructions provided in the README file located in the root folder of each implementation.
* [How to create a workspace](/docs/workspaces-api/how-to/create-workspace): This code example demonstrates how to create a workspace through the API, providing users with a consolidated view of all envelopes, documents, and tasks related to a particular agreement process.

**Related videos**

* [Build Secure Custom Integrations with Docusign Private Extension Apps](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-WYLfjzaWM)
* [Custom data verification for eSignature flows with Connected Fields API](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI1GpCzaO4g)
* [Configuring a Docusign Template to Use a Data Verification Extension App](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lQEq3DkFyU)
* [Using the Docusign Salesforce extension app in a workflow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEs-jGUY1Dw)
* [Docusign Agreement APIs: How to Optimize Customer Experiences with the Workspaces API](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cY9faBpvajY)