# Introduction

An onboarding is one run of a playbook for one user or business. The playbook says what data to collect, which verification checks to run, and how to decide the outcome. The onboarding is the record of that run: the data that landed in the vault, the checks, the decision, and the status your team sees in the dashboard.

## What it does

* **Playbooks.** You build the flow in the Playbook builder from nodes that collect data and documents, run verification checks, branch, apply rules, and act on the result. KYC (Know Your Customer) playbooks onboard people; KYB (Know Your Business) playbooks onboard businesses and their beneficial owners.
* **Three ways to run one.** Embed the flow in your app with an SDK, send the user a link to the hosted flow, or call `POST /onboardings` from your backend to run a playbook on data already in the vault. An onboarding session lets your backend start the flow for a specific user, with data filled in ahead.
* **What comes back.** The onboarding's status and decision, the risk signals behind it, any custom status your rules set, and a webhook when the onboarding completes.

## Where to go next

[Building playbooks](/articles/guides/playbooks-building-playbooks) is the concept to read first, with [Playbook rules](/articles/guides/playbooks-playbook-rules) for the language the Rules node speaks and [Custom statuses](/articles/guides/custom-statuses) for the states your team defines. To run one, start at [Run a playbook](/articles/integrate/onboardings), then [Onboarding sessions](/articles/integrate/onboarding-sessions) when your backend should start the flow, [Bootstrap data](/articles/integrate/bootstrap-data) when you already hold some of the user's data, and [No-code integration](/articles/integrate/no-code) when a link is all you need.