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Onboarding: Set up your workspace

Welcome to Solid. We're glad you're here, and we'd like your first ad to be something you're happy to put your name on, so let's get your workspace set up before you start.

The first time you open your workspace, the onboarding flow appears. It takes you through three steps: your brand, your footage, and your team. A few minutes here is the shortest route to your first ad. Everything you give it is what Solid works from later, whether that's writing a script, finding the right footage or putting a whole ad together, and the more it has to go on, the more what comes back feels like your brand rather than something generic.

If you're not the person with these answers, hand it over. Invite someone who knows at the bottom left adds a colleague by email, sets their role, and lets them take the onboarding flow from here. Or use Skip onboarding, in the same corner, and come back to it later. Skipping doesn't make it go away: the onboarding flow keeps appearing until the steps are done. You can also work through the same steps manually inside the tool.

Set up your brand

The first page asks What's your brand?

  1. Enter Your website. This is the only field you have to fill in. Solid scans your site to pick up your fonts, your colors and the way your company describes itself. That saves you entering it by hand, and gives you a starting point that already sounds and looks like you.
  2. Add your Social Media Profile if you have one. It gives Solid more to go on about your brand.
  3. Drop in your Brand Guidelines if you have a document ready.

A brand guidelines document says who your brand is: your core truth, your products, your audience and positioning, your voice and messaging. Everything someone would need to write an ad for you without asking. No document yet, or want a hand putting one together? Leave it for now, and write your brand guidelines inside Solid whenever you're ready.

To add one, drag the file onto the drop zone, or click upload and choose Files or Folder. Uploads must be PDF or TXT.

Click the X beside a document to remove it, and add as many as you need. Then click Continue.

Upload scenes

This is where you give Solid something to build with. Every file you upload is analyzed and cut into scenes, and Solid learns how you frame, cut and target your videos along the way.

A scene is a single moment taken out of an original source file. It points back to that file rather than copying it, so nothing is lost. Scenes are what the AI looks at when it hunts for footage to match your script or your A-roll video. One source file usually gives you several, which is why reaching 30 takes nowhere near 30 videos.

Four categories, one for each kind of video material you might already have:

  • Finished ads, cut ads without subtitles.
  • Individual scenes, single shots that are already trimmed.
  • A-Roll, talking-head footage.
  • RAW B-Roll, unedited footage.

Upload whatever you've got, and don't worry about filling every category. Not sure what belongs where? Click Show examples: each one has three example videos you can compare. Close it with the X.

One thing to watch: no subtitles, text overlays or burned-in captions. You can add those yourself later with the help of Solid. Footage with them baked in can't be reused cleanly.

Drag files onto a category, or click upload inside it. Individual files can be up to 2 GB.

The counter underneath shows how many scenes have been found, out of 30. At 30, Continue becomes available. That's a floor rather than a limit: more coverage means better first ads, so add more if you have it.

Invite your team

Solid is built to be worked in together. We wanted a place where a whole team could stay in one tool instead of passing files back and forth, so two or more people can be in the same project on the same timeline at once, each seeing what the others are doing. This step is about bringing in whoever you'll actually be making videos with, whether they write, edit, review the brand or sign the work off.

  1. Type an email address into the field.
  2. Click the + on the right. The person appears in the list below.
  3. Repeat for everyone you want to bring in.

You're at the top as Admin, because you created the workspace. Everyone you add starts as a Member. To give someone the same rights you have, click Member beside their name and pick Admin from the dropdown. The X at the far right takes someone off the list again.

When you click Next, everyone on the list gets a personal invitation email and can join your workspace straight away.

Don't worry if you don't have everyone's address yet. You can invite and manage team members later from Workspace settings.

Your workspace is ready

That's the three steps done, and your workspace is ready to make ads with. Before you dive in, Solid shows you what it worked out about your brand in three cards: Brand Guidelines, Colors and Fonts. Each has a Review button, and it's worth opening all three so you know what you're starting from. Nothing you see here is final.

Brand Guidelines opens as text you can edit. Read it through and change anything that isn't right.

Colors shows the palette from your site, each swatch named with its hex code. Click one to change the code, click its X to remove it, or use Add Color for anything missing.

Fonts works the same way. Font files can be .ttf, .otf, .woff or .woff2.

You can come back to all three whenever you like: write your brand guidelines, set your brand color palette and set your brand fonts.

Click Explore workspace when you're happy, and you'll land in your Brand Hub.

Anything you left undone isn't forgotten. A Setup Guide sits in the bottom right of your workspace, tracking six areas and showing which are still open, so you can pick up wherever you stopped.

Three things set you up for a good first ad: upload more of your raw video content, structure your tag hierarchy so all of it stays easy to find and the AI can filter for the right footage while it assembles your ad, and then create your first video. If you'd rather get your bearings first, a quick tour of the editor shows you where everything lives.

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