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Your First Engagement

This is the full walkthrough: from a cold prospect to a client-ready deliverable, following the Diagnose → Plan → Execute → Deliver lifecycle. Allow 30–60 minutes including evidence upload and an assessment run.

Before you start​

  • You should be signed in. If you're setting up the firm for the first time, complete the Org Admin steps in the Quick Start first (invite team, enable practices).
  • Have a few of the client's documents handy (PDF, Word, Excel/CSV) to upload as evidence.

Step 1 — Create the client​

  1. Open Prospects and add the company you're pursuing, or go straight to Accounts and create the client company.
  2. Convert the prospect to an Account when they become a client.

See Prospects and Accounts.

Step 2 — Create the engagement​

  1. Go to Engagements → New.
  2. Fill in the engagement details: name, objective, industry, and the practices it draws on. The industry selection seeds the engagement's ontology and KPI tree.
  3. Optionally pre-seed from the prospect/account you just created.

You'll land on the engagement Overview — the home screen with the lifecycle rail, objectives, team, and quick actions.

Engagement Overview

Step 3 — Build the team​

Open Team, add the colleagues working this engagement, assign their roles, and set the engagement lead. See Team.

Step 4 — Collect evidence​

Open Data & Evidence:

  1. Upload documents — drag in the client's files. Each is indexed so the AI can retrieve and cite from it. Watch the indexing status reach ready.
  2. Connect sources (optional) — link a database, CRM, or document store. Your firm's org-level defaults are inherited and can be overridden per engagement.
  3. Collect data (optional) — launch a topic-based AI interview to capture evidence conversationally from a stakeholder.

See Data & Evidence and Evidence Collection.

Step 5 — Diagnose​

Open Diagnose and work the checklist:

  1. Frameworks — pick one or more frameworks to assess against.
  2. Evidence coverage — confirm how many sources will feed the run.
  3. AI interviews — optionally add conversational evidence.
  4. Run Assessment — start the run and watch it stream through Generate → Review → Analyze → Report. Runs are versioned, so you can re-run as evidence improves.
  5. Findings — review per-dimension answers and their confidence and citations. Accept the answers you trust to unlock analysis, then Send gaps to Plan.

Diagnose checklist Answers and findings

See Diagnose and Running Assessments.

Step 6 — Plan​

Open Plan:

  1. Gaps & Recommendations — accept the AI-suggested workstreams and commit them to Execute.
  2. Roadmap — sequence the initiatives with owners and timing.
  3. Database KPIs — review live KPIs computed from any connected database, each backed by a verifiable query.

See Plan.

Step 7 — Execute​

Open Execute to track your in-flight workstreams (each linked back to its source gap) and capture insights from analysis. See Execute.

Step 8 — Deliver​

Open Deliver and produce a client artifact:

  • a narrative report,
  • a deck built in Deck Studio,
  • or a KPI dashboard.

Every artifact is grounded in your evidence and registers as a deliverable on the engagement (and rolls up into the firm-wide Knowledge Vault).

Deliverables

You're done​

You've run a complete engagement. From here: