Support onboarding: plug in automation, not just take over
We make Drupal support ready from day one. Onboarding lines up access, local development, runbooks, CI/CD, and quality gates so improvements move without friction.
Why support onboarding matters
Most handovers miss the engineering basics that make support efficient—local dev, real test data, automated checks, and a clean pipeline. We fix that on day one so incidents are easy to reproduce, improvements ship faster, and change risk stays low.
What we do during onboarding
Access & security readiness
Set up secure team access (hosting, DNS, SSL, repos, VPN if required). Confirm roles and contacts so incidents route fast.
Codebase & repository alignment
Migrate or mirror to GitHub when needed, align branching strategy and standards, and clean up secrets handling.
Local development scaffold
Enable quick, consistent local setup (containers or scripts), seed with a recent sanitised database, and document runbooks.
CI/CD + automation
Wire pipelines with automated tests, security checks, accessibility and performance budgets, visual regression, and linting.
Documentation & licensing
Create a concise site summary, capture integrations, track paid licenses and renewal dates, and map data flows.
Monitoring & response readiness
Validate backups, logging, and alerts. Define escalation paths and test response runbooks against your SLA tier.
How we work with your team
Clear ownership and comms
Define primary contacts and responsibilities so triage, approvals and deployments move without wait states.
Joint backlog & triage
Agree a ticket intake path and prioritisation model that suits your cadence and risk profile.
Data-safe collaboration
Use sanitised production snapshots for reproducible fixes while protecting sensitive information.
Enablement when you need it
If you have in-house developers, we align workflows and conventions so both teams ship as one.
What we need from you
Primary contacts & SLA level
Names, email, phone for key stakeholders and your chosen support plan.
Access & credentials
CMS, hosting, repo, DNS, SSL, VPN details where applicable.
Integrations & licenses
Third-party services (e.g. CRM, mail, data APIs) and any license keys.
Testing scenarios
Existing test cases or a short list of critical user journeys to cover first.
Recent production snapshot
A sanitised database/file snapshot so we can reproduce issues locally.
Prior maintainers (if any)
Who worked on the site before—useful for context and knowledge transfer.
What you can expect first month
- • Local dev working with a reproducible dataset
- • GitHub repo aligned and protected branches in place
- • CI/CD pipeline with automated checks switched on
- • Smoke tests for critical journeys
- • Site summary with integrations and licenses
- • Monitoring/alerts validated to your SLA
- • Agreed triage and release cadence
- • Backlog aligned and first improvements shipping
Typical onboarding effort is 10-20 hours. For complex migrations or heavy scaffold work it can exceed this. In Priority Support, onboarding up to 10 hours is included; in Critical Availability, up to 20 hours is included. Additional onboarding time is simply drawn from your pre-purchased support hours. If time remains after enablement, we use it to build automated tests for your highest-value user journeys.
Not feature work—foundation work
Onboarding does not change your site’s business features. It prepares the scaffold around it so we can support, improve, and ship with confidence: access, environments, local dev, automation, and pipeline quality gates. That foundation is what unlocks lower risk and lower total cost.
We transition you to our supported scaffold so all projects share the same tooling. That consistency lets both our team and yours (if you have in-house developers) spin up fresh environments in minutes, run the same linting and tests locally and in CI, and keep quality checks identical across repos.
* Included onboarding applies to our support retainers: Priority Support (up to 10 hours) and Critical Availability (up to 20 hours). Onboarding is for support enablement—not project feature delivery. When onboarding requires more time—such as repository migration, automation enablement, CI/CD wiring, or environment remediation—additional hours are deducted from your support block.
Ready to switch on support-grade automation?
Let’s make sure onboarding removes friction, hardens your scaffold, and powers predictable delivery from month one.