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Getting started Updated April 2026

Getting started with Ceven

Ceven is the operations layer that sits across your business tools — HR, billing, CRM, support, engineering — and gives anyone on the team plain-English answers (in Slack, in the dashboard, or by phone). This guide gets you from a fresh signup to a working @Ceven what's our headcount? in about five minutes.

Step 1 — Sign up + verify email

Visit ceven.io/signup. We send a verification email — click the link, log in, and you'll land on the dashboard. The first user becomes the org admin automatically.

Step 2 — Install the Slack app (optional but recommended)

  1. Open Settings → Integrations.
  2. Click Install Slack and approve the OAuth scopes.
  3. Invite @Ceven into any channel and try @Ceven hi. You should see a reply within ~300ms.

The bot also works as a DM if you'd rather keep it private. See Using Ceven in Slack for the full surface.

Step 3 — What works without any other setup

You can ask these from day one, before connecting any third-party tools:

  • HR queries — headcount, employees, departments, managers, PTO balances, open roles. The data lives in Ceven's own database.
  • Charts & dashboards — render bar / line / pie / table charts inline; save recurring dashboards.
  • Help — @Ceven help or @Ceven what can you do? returns a live capability rundown.

Step 4 — Connect the tools your team uses

From Settings → Integrations you can connect Stripe, Google Workspace, QuickBooks, HubSpot, Salesforce, Linear, GitHub, Notion, Zendesk, PagerDuty, and ~30 others. Each unlocks a different family of questions — see Connecting a provider for the full list and what each one enables.

Step 5 — Ask the bot anything in plain English

Ceven figures out which tool to call. You don't pick a tool; you describe the outcome. A few examples:

@Ceven what's our Stripe MRR right now?
@Ceven who reports to Priya?
@Ceven show me a chart of headcount by department
@Ceven any open chargebacks?
The wordings below are examples, not commands. Ceven understands intent and context — say it however feels natural. "Who's our top customer?" and "tell me about the highest-grossing account this quarter" route to the same answer. References to "this month", "last quarter", "recently" are interpreted relative to today. The bot disambiguates when it's unsure rather than guessing.
Tip — threads carry context. Once the bot replies, you can keep asking follow-ups in the same thread without re-mentioning @Ceven. It pulls the prior turns automatically.

What if it gets something wrong?

Reply in-thread with the correction — the bot adapts mid-conversation. If something fails consistently, email the exact wording to hello@ceven.io and we'll add corpus examples for it.