Your First 60 Minutes
This is the fastest path from a fresh signup to a live AI agent answering a real client’s enquiries. It assumes you’re a Partner (agency) with the admin agency permission — see The three-tier role model if you’re not sure which of the three roles you have.
Create your account
Apply at /signup; AgentLane confirms your plan and sets up your workspace within one business day, then you set your password from the welcome email. See Signup & First Login for the exact flow.
Set your agency-wide integration defaults
From Settings → Team, invite anyone else on your team. From Settings → Integrations, set the credentials every client will inherit by default — an AI provider key (unless you’re on a Managed AI plan), Twilio, Cal.com, and Resend. See Connect your integrations.
Add your first client
From Clients, add the business you’re building this for — name, industry, and (optionally) an invite email. See Onboard a new client.
Fill in their business context
Open the client, and fill in their business hours, services/prices, Twilio number, Cal.com link, and Google review link. This is the data the AI agent actually reads from — see Onboard a new client.
Request your first agent
From Request an Agent, pick the client and the Lead Qualifier — it’s the only catalog agent that provisions instantly. See the full walkthrough at Deploy your first agent.
Test it and invite the client
Send a test enquiry, check it in Executions, then invite the client to their own portal so they can see conversations directly.
Realistic elapsed time for all six steps, assuming you already have a Twilio number and a Cal.com account: 30–45 minutes, most of it credential setup rather than anything AgentLane-specific.
The onboarding checklist walks you through it
The Dashboard Overview shows a “Get started with AgentLane” checklist covering the four steps above that actually get an agent live — client, integrations, agent, billing — with a progress bar and one step expanded at a time. Only one CTA is ever active; earlier and later steps collapse to a single line so you always know what’s next. A step that can’t be started yet (e.g. Request your first agent before you’ve added a client) shows the reason inline instead of a disabled button.
“Invite a teammate” and “Add your agency logo” are housekeeping, not blockers — they sit collapsed under an “Optional — when you’re ready” divider and don’t count toward the bar. When the four required steps are done, the checklist becomes a one-time “You’re live.” panel with a recap and a link into Conversations; it doesn’t reappear once dismissed. A moderator teammate sees a read-only progress card instead — moderators can’t create clients, invite people, or edit integrations, so the checklist never hands them a button they’d be blocked from using.
A “Take the tour” link in the checklist header opens a short guided walkthrough of the dashboard’s main sections — it’s optional and doesn’t open automatically. While setup is incomplete, the sidebar’s Dashboard link also carries a small “n/4” badge, so remaining steps stay visible from any page — not just while the checklist itself is on screen.
What’s next
Once the first agent is live, the rest of the docs are organized by job — see the Introduction hub, or jump straight to Monitor and debug a live agent to see it in action over the following days.