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The onboarding flow runs when you first create your account. You can revisit and update everything anytime from Company Profile.

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What You Will Set Up

Onboarding configures your first AI Profile — the foundation the AI uses to match opportunities, qualify contracts, and generate proposals. It’s a 9-step wizard; a progress bar on the left tracks where you are.
Onboarding is completed once for your whole organization, not once per person. If a teammate finishes it first, you won’t be routed through it again when you join.
Your AI Profile isn’t saved to your account until Step 5 (Deal Criteria). Steps 2 through 4 are held only in this browser tab. Refreshing the page or clicking Previous keeps what you’ve entered, but if you close the tab before finishing Step 5, everything from Steps 2–4 — your AI-generated description, regions, certifications, codes, and keywords — is lost. The exception is Step 1: your organization info, website, and Terms acceptance save immediately.
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1. Organization Info

Provide your core company details on the Business Information screen:
  • Company Website — optional, and asked first. As you type, SamSearch looks up your logo and shows a preview next to the field; click the X on the preview if it picked the wrong one. Your website also powers AI profile generation in the next step.
  • Legal Business Name — required. Once you’ve typed at least three characters, SamSearch suggests matching companies from the SBA’s small business directory. Pick your company from the list (mouse, or arrow keys and Enter) to fill in your address, UEI, and CAGE code automatically — and your website, if you left it blank. You can always ignore the suggestions and keep typing.
  • Incorporated Address — required
  • Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) — optional; add later if you don’t have it yet
  • CAGE Code — optional
  • Terms of Service & Subscription Agreement — required checkbox
Click Save and Continue. This step saves to your account immediately, independent of everything that follows.
Picking your company from the directory suggestions does more than save typing. The NAICS codes on your SBA registration are carried forward as suggestions in Step 3, and your UEI lets SamSearch look up your federal award history in Step 2.
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2. Business Profile

The AI Profile Generation screen drafts your Business Description, Operating Regions, and suggested Certifications for you to review and edit.Generate from your website — if you entered a website in Step 1, generation starts automatically when you arrive; otherwise enter your URL and click Generate. A progress panel narrates what’s happening while the AI reads your site. Generation can take a minute or two. When it finishes, review the results and click Regenerate if you want a fresh draft.Skip AI generation and fill in manually — write your Business Description yourself and pick your Operating Regions and Certifications directly. Useful if you don’t have a public website or prefer full control.If you entered a UEI in Step 1, a Your federal track record card appears here once SamSearch finds your past federal awards on USAspending. It shows your number of federal awards, their total value, the most recent award year, your top agencies, and any set-aside types you’ve won under. NAICS and PSC codes from those awards are added to your code suggestions in Step 3. No UEI, or no award history, means no card — the rest of the step works the same.This step is optional — all fields can be left blank and you can continue.
Spend a few minutes on the Business Description even if you generate from your website. It’s the single field with the most impact on match quality, and it’s one of the few things that can substitute for missing NAICS/PSC codes when the AI decides whether to surface an opportunity to you at all (see the signal gate).
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3. Industry Codes

Add your NAICS codes and PSC codes on the Industry Classification screen. Suggestions are pre-filled in priority order:
  1. NAICS codes from your SBA registration, if you picked your company from the directory in Step 1. Your registration’s primary codes carry a Primary tag.
  2. Codes the AI drew from your website in Step 2.
  3. Codes from your past federal awards, if SamSearch found any.
Suggestions are capped at 10 NAICS and 10 PSC codes so the list stays reviewable. Remove anything that doesn’t fit and add more by searching; with the search box empty, Backspace or Delete removes the most recently added code. Optional — no validation blocks you from continuing without any.
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4. Keywords

Add Positive Keywords (opportunities containing these are highlighted) and Negative Keywords (opportunities containing these are filtered out). Optional.
Keyword matching is a literal substring match, not a semantic one — “HVAC mechanical contracting” won’t match an opportunity titled “HVAC PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE.” Keep keywords short and think about how they’d literally appear in a solicitation title or description.
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5. Deal Criteria

Set Deal Makers (what makes an opportunity attractive) and Deal Breakers (what disqualifies one). Each criterion can be edited in place or removed. These fields are optional too — you can skip and update them later from Company Profile.Each criterion carries a small tag showing what it’s based on (hover it for a description):The tags are for reading at a glance; you don’t set them yourself, and the same tags appear on your Deal Makers and Deal Breakers in Company Profile.
This is the step that actually writes everything you’ve entered since Step 1 to your account. Clicking Save and Continue here is what makes Steps 2–4 permanent — don’t close the tab before you reach it.
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6. Email Preferences

Toggle Email Notifications on or off overall, then set up your Opportunity Sources. Each source has two controls:
  • AI recommendations — whether that source feeds your AI recommendations and email alerts. Select All and Deselect All act on this control.
  • Hide / Show — whether the source appears anywhere in the app. Hiding a source also turns off its recommendations. At least one source must stay visible.
If email is on, at least one source must have AI recommendations turned on or you can’t continue.These are the same sources and the same controls you’ll find later at Company Profile → Sources & Alerts — nothing here is onboarding-only.
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7. Documents

Optionally upload supporting documents now — capabilities statements, past performance, certifications, and similar. Accepted formats: .pdf .doc .docx .xls .xlsx .pptx .csv .txt, up to 50MB per file.
Documents feed proposal generation and give Sammy more context — they do not affect Search or Recommendations. This step is fully optional; click Skip for now, or Continue with zero files uploaded, and add documents anytime from the Documents tab of your Company Profile.
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8. Integrations

The Connect Your Tools screen shows the same integration cards as Settings → Integrations: your CRM, cloud storage, and messaging tools. Connecting one opens the provider’s sign-in in a popup, so you never leave the wizard, and a badge counts how many you’ve connected.This step is optional. Click Skip for now (shown until you connect something) or Continue. You can connect or manage integrations anytime from Settings → Integrations.
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9. Invite Team

Enter a teammate’s email, choose Member or Admin from the role picker, and click Invite (or press Enter). Each invite sends immediately and appears in an Invited list below. To invite several people at once, paste a list of emails into the field; each one is invited with the role currently selected. If your plan has a seat limit, a badge shows how many seats are still available.When you’re done — or if you’d rather invite people later — click Finish Setup.
Admins can invite and manage team members. You can change roles or invite more people anytime from Settings.

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Where you land

AI recommendations are generated in batches, so a brand-new profile won’t have any for a while. Instead of an empty dashboard, Finish Setup takes you straight to Search, showing Federal opportunities filtered by the NAICS codes you just set (up to six of them). If you didn’t add any NAICS codes, the search uses your first positive keyword instead. If your profile has neither, you land on the dashboard.

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After Onboarding

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Finish your setup

If you skipped any of the optional steps, a Finish your setup checklist appears at the bottom of the left sidebar with a progress count. It tracks three items and checks each off automatically as you complete it anywhere in the app:
  • Upload documents — done once your Company Profile has at least one document
  • Connect integrations — done once any integration is connected
  • Invite your team — done once your organization has more than one member (not shown if your plan has no seats left to fill)
Click an item to jump to the right page. The checklist can’t be dismissed, but you can minimize it to a single line with the arrow in its corner. It disappears for good once every item is done.

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Keep refining your profile

Your AI Profile is the engine behind every SamSearch feature. Return to Company Profile anytime to:
  • Add more NAICS/PSC codes or certifications
  • Expand your Business Description
  • Refine Deal Makers, Deal Breakers, and keywords
  • Upload or replace documents
  • Reconfigure Sources & Alerts
  • Create an additional AI Profile for a second business entity (a paid add-on — see Company Profile → AI Profiles)
To understand exactly how your profile turns into the opportunities you see, read How Recommendations Work — it explains the retrieval, qualification, and scoring pipeline your profile feeds into, including why an incomplete profile can silently produce zero recommendations.
Onboarding complete. You are ready to search, save opportunities, and start winning contracts.