Getting started with WorkZerk

WorkZerk collects forms, documents and signatures from the staff and contractors you onboard, and keeps a permanent record of what each person gave you. Instead of emailing a form, chasing replies and filing attachments, you give each person a private link to their own portal. They fill in what you asked for, WorkZerk chases whatever is still missing, and everything files itself against that person's contact record.

This guide takes you through your first portal end to end: the request list, adding people, sending links, reviewing what comes back, and handing the chasing to WorkZerk. For the wider "is this the right tool" read, see what WorkZerk does. For a tour of the app, see the sidebar and finding things.

Three words to know

A portal is the container. It holds one set of requests and the people you are asking: "Contractor onboarding", "New starter pack", "Site induction". A portal has no date and no end. It stays open as long as you are onboarding people into it.
A request is one thing you are asking for: a document upload, a question, a set of terms to sign, a checklist to work through.
A contact is the person: their details, their documents, their expiry dates, their history. The contact outlives any one portal, so next year you are looking at a person with a record, not an empty inbox.

Signing in puts you on Requests, the screen that shows what needs you right now across every portal. You build portals under Portals in the sidebar.

Every app link in this guide opens that screen in your account. If you are signed out, you sign in first and then land on the same screen.

Step 1: Create a portal

Open Portals and click New portal. The only thing it needs is a name, and your people see that name at the top of their link, so make it one they will recognize. "Northgate Facilities contractor onboarding" reads better on a phone at 7am than "Onboarding v2 FINAL".

Most accounts run a few portals rather than one big one: one per intake type (contractors, casual staff, permanent staff), or one per site. Each has its own request list, so a contractor is never asked the questions you wrote for a new hire.

Want to see a finished one first? Load sample data on the same screen adds a demo portal with demo contacts. It is marked as demo data, and you can remove all of it in one click.

Step 2: Build the request list

Inside the portal, open the Requests panel and click + Insert. Pick a type, name it and add it. The types:

Upload. A file: insurance certificate, license, photo ID, a signed policy. Tick Require expiry and the person has to give an expiry date with the file, which puts it on your renewal list.
Text. A short answer or a longer note: emergency contact, ABN, "anything we should know about site access".
Choice. Options as radio buttons (pick one) or checkboxes (pick several).
Fields. Asks the person to fill in a contact field: a built-in one like mobile or website, or a custom field you set up under Fields. Custom fields save the answer to the contact unless you turn that off, so a license number asked for once is still there next year.
Terms. Shows one of your saved terms documents and records the acceptance against the exact version the person accepted. You can require a typed name, a drawn signature, or both. Publishing a new version later never changes what someone already signed.
Tasks. A checklist of things to do rather than send back: complete the induction, watch the safety video, walk the site. See below.
Header. Collects nothing. A heading with an optional description and attached document, to break a long list into sections or give people something to read first.
Section. A conditional block. The requests inside it show only when a condition is met: an answer to an earlier Choice question, the person being one of a named group, or both.

Tick Required on anything the person must provide. Required requests count toward their progress and keep them on your outstanding list until they are done. Terms and Tasks start out required. An upload has no Required box: it asks for at least one file unless you set Min files to 0. Everything else starts out optional.

A few more things you can do:

Attach a reference file to a request, from your Files library, a new upload, or a link, so people can read the policy before they sign it.
Set a document type on an Upload to file every copy under one type on the contact, so the same certificate reads as one history across portals.
Reorder by dragging a request by its grip handle, and use the + Insert dividers to add a request in a specific spot.
Add a request pack to drop in a saved list of requests in one go. See request packs.

Conditional sections keep a list short. Ask "Are you bringing your own equipment?" as a Choice, then put the four equipment questions in a section shown only on "Yes". Someone who answered "No" never sees them.

Tasks hold a checklist two levels deep: tasks, with steps under each. The quickest way to build one is Add from a workflow, which adds a task named after the workflow with its steps underneath. You can also type a one-off task. Write a workflow once under Tasks and reuse it on every portal.

Every task and step is ticked separately, so the person shows real progress through a long induction. Items start out required, so you untick the optional ones rather than ticking everything else. However many steps a checklist has, it stays one request, so a twelve-step induction across fifteen people is one line to chase, not 180.

Step wording comes from the workflow, so fixing a procedure once fixes it everywhere it is used. Typing a description on a step overrides it for that portal only. What each item said is recorded at the moment it is ticked, so a later edit never changes what someone signed off.

Step 3: Add people

One at a time. In the portal's people panel, start typing in Add from contacts and pick the person. If they are new, click Add beside the box and fill in their details there.

From a spreadsheet. Import a CSV from Contacts. This is the fastest way to bring an existing staff or contractor list in. See importing contacts from a CSV.

Let them add themselves. Turn on the portal's Self-registration link, add an optional description, and share the link: in a job ad, a group email, or a QR code at the site office. Anyone who fills it in becomes a contact on that portal and gets their own private link straight away. See self-registration.

Step 4: Send the links

Each person on a portal gets their own private link. No account, no password, no app. They can do part of it, close it, and come back later; their progress is saved.

Click Email invites to queue everyone's link at once, or use Email link on one person's row to send theirs straight away. The row shows that button until their link has been emailed. In the Email invites window, View the invite email shows the wording before you queue anything. To change the invite wording, open Automations and edit the Portal invite template.

If a link reaches the wrong person, click Revoke on their row, or turn on Bulk select to revoke several at once. The link stops working immediately. See resending and revoking a link.

Step 5: Review what comes in

Each request in the portal shows a count of what has been received, which opens the individual answers and files.

Uploads need your review. Approve a file, or reject it with a reason, which tells the person what was wrong and asks for a new copy. "This is the certificate of currency, we need the policy schedule" saves an email thread. See reviewing and approving uploads.

Step 6: Let WorkZerk chase

Requests is where the chasing happens:

Waiting on. For the portal you pick, who still owes a required request and how long it has been.
Needs review. Files you have not reviewed yet, oldest first.
Uploads expiring soon. Documents expiring in the next 30 days, or any window from 3 to 365 days. Prompt on a row emails that person for a new copy, and the "not prompted within" filter stops you nudging someone twice.
Rejected uploads. Files you sent back, grouped into who has not resent one and who has.
Previously ignored. Documents you chose to stop tracking, kept out of the way but not lost.

Automations turn the regular nudges into rules. The first one is already running: the outstanding requests reminder emails someone 7 days after their invite, and again at 14, if their required requests are still incomplete, and stops as soon as they finish. You can change the days and the wording, or switch it off. Invite not opened is on from the start too, and tells you when a link was never opened.

Other automations, off until you turn them on, can send the invite the moment you add someone, chase an expiring or expired document, follow up a rejected upload that has not been replaced, and confirm when someone finishes. Each can email the person, you, or another address, create tasks for you, or wait before the next step. See automations.

Make it yours

Worth ten minutes each, roughly in this order:

Branding: your logo and colors on the page your people open.
Terms: your contractor agreements, policies and codes of conduct, versioned.
Fields: custom contact fields, so answers have a permanent home on the person.
Tasks: your own follow-up work, plus the workflows you reuse on portals.
Files: policy PDFs and induction packs you attach to requests. What people send you lives on their contact record, not here.

Close a portal when you are done

When an intake is finished, close the portal. Everything stays readable and every document stays on the contact record, but the links stop working, self-registration stops, and those people stop counting toward your active people. You can reopen it any time and the same links come back. See portal lifecycle.

A sensible first week

Pick the intake that annoys you most and build only that one. A first portal that works beats a complete setup that never launches.

Contractors: insurance certificate with an expiry date, licenses with expiry dates, bank details, a contractor agreement as Terms with a signature, and a site induction as Tasks.
New staff: personal details, bank and tax details, emergency contact, a right-to-work document, a policy pack as Terms, and a first-week checklist as Tasks.

Build the list, add three people you know, send the links, and see what comes back. One real round teaches more than another hour of setup. The contractor compliance and staff onboarding walkthroughs go further.

Getting help

Search the help centre, which the question-mark icon in the app's top bar opens in a new tab. For anything it does not answer, open a help ticket and you get a private link by email to follow the reply. Or email [email protected]. We read both 9am to 5pm AEST, seven days.

If a request type is missing or a screen made you hesitate, tell us. Most of what gets built next comes from someone saying so.