Onboarding Walkthrough

The first time you sign in to AcaTrove, a guided onboarding flow helps you configure the platform to match your role, research area, and working style. Completing onboarding takes about three to five minutes and ensures your dashboard, recommendations, and AI tools are relevant from the start.

Step 1: Welcome and Role Selection

After signing in, you will see a welcome screen that asks you to select your primary academic role. AcaTrove uses this to adapt your dashboard and surface the most relevant features.

Available roles include:

• Professor / Principal Investigator
• Graduate Student
• Postdoctoral Researcher
• Undergraduate Researcher
• Administrator
• IRB Board Member
• Grant Office Staff
• Librarian
• Department Chair
• Development Officer
• Dean

You can change your role later from Settings > Profile, so choose whichever best describes your current position.

Step 2: Profile Information

Next, you will confirm or complete your profile details:

• Name and title -- Pre-filled if you signed up with ORCID or a social provider.
• Institution and department -- Start typing to search for your institution, or enter it manually.
• ORCID iD -- If you did not sign up with ORCID, you can link your iD here. This triggers an automatic import of your publications and grants.

If you signed up with ORCID, most of these fields will already be populated. Review them for accuracy and make any corrections.

Step 3: Research Interests

AcaTrove asks you to select or enter your research interests and disciplines. These are used to:

• Personalize your dashboard with relevant content.
• Improve AI-generated suggestions, outlines, and writing assistance.
• Power grant recommendations in the Grant Finder.
• Surface relevant publications and collaboration opportunities.

You can select from a curated list of disciplines or type in specific keywords (for example, "computational neuroscience" or "CRISPR gene editing"). Choose as many as apply -- more detail leads to better personalization.

Step 4: Connect Your Tools

During onboarding, you have the option to connect external services:

• ORCID -- Import publications, grants, and profile data (highly recommended if not already connected).
• Reference managers -- Link Zotero, EndNote, or Mendeley to bring in your existing library.
• Calendar -- Connect your institutional calendar for deadline tracking.

These connections are optional and can be configured later from Settings > Integrations.

Step 5: Choose Your Starting Point

The final onboarding screen presents a few suggested starting points based on your role:

• Explore your Dashboard -- See the persona-adaptive overview tailored to your role.
• Upload a document -- Try Paper Chat by uploading a PDF and asking it questions.
• Create a project -- Set up your first research project to organize related work.
• Browse templates -- Explore the 33+ outline templates for papers and proposals.

Click any option to jump directly to that area, or dismiss the suggestions to land on your Dashboard.

After Onboarding

Once onboarding is complete, your Dashboard will reflect your chosen role and interests. The onboarding flow will not appear again on subsequent logins, but every setting you configured is available in Settings > Profile and Settings > Integrations.

If you skipped any steps, AcaTrove may display gentle reminders in your Dashboard suggesting you complete your profile or connect ORCID.

Tips

• Take the time to add specific research interests rather than broad disciplines. The more precise your interests, the better AcaTrove's AI recommendations will be.
• If you manage a lab, complete onboarding before inviting team members. Your lab settings will serve as defaults for new members.
• You can re-run parts of the onboarding experience from Settings > Profile > Re-run Setup if your role or research focus changes significantly.