The first time you open a new app there's always a moment of "where do I start?" — especially one with as many moving parts as a garden record-keeper. We've added an interactive onboarding tour that runs automatically for new accounts and walks you through the key parts of MyPlot in about 30 seconds.
The tour uses a spotlight approach — everything except the element being explained is dimmed, so you know exactly what's being referred to. A popover card sits next to the highlighted element with a short explanation, a step counter, and Back and Next buttons. Navigation dots at the bottom show where you are in the sequence. You can also move through steps with the arrow keys, or press Escape to close the tour at any point.
The tour covers 11 steps: the Sprout assistant, Quick Log, Walk Session, your garden structure (Properties → Gardens → Beds → Plantings), Activity and Planning, Reports, the weather card, dashboard customisation, Settings, and Household. That's essentially a complete map of the app in under a minute. Steps are skipped automatically if the relevant element isn't present on your dashboard — so if you haven't enabled the weather card, the tour doesn't trip over an empty space.
We deliberately kept it short. Long product tours with twenty steps and auto-playing videos are skipped — everyone just clicks through to dismiss them. This one assumes you're capable of working things out yourself once you know where things are. It's a map, not a manual.
- Land on dashboard, unclear where to start
- Find features by exploring and clicking around
- Miss the sidebar panels entirely for weeks
- Ask support "where is Walk Session?"
- 30-second tour runs automatically on first login
- Every major control spotlighted with context
- Sidebar panels opened during the tour so you see them
- Replay anytime from Help → Take the tour
If you're an existing user who signed up before this launched, you can run the tour anytime from the Help section in the sidebar — look for "Take the tour". It's also available at any time via the navigation. If you've been using MyPlot for months and feel like you know it well, it might still show you a shortcut you didn't know about.
The tour runs once automatically when you first sign up. After that it's out of the way — no popups, no nudges, no "have you seen this feature?" banners. We think that's the right balance between being helpful for new users and not getting in the way of people who know what they're doing.