How to Use Sonar - Setup and Workflow Guide

Step-by-step guide to setting up Sonar, tracking competitors, reading shipping heartbeat data, and generating AI briefs.

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How to Use Sonar - Setup and Workflow Guide

Sonar works best when you treat it like an always-on monitoring workspace: add the right competitors, let discovery find public sources, then use the heartbeat, signals, and briefs to decide where your team should pay attention.

Before you start

  • You need Sonar enabled on your account through a paid plan or active trial.
  • Have a short list of competitor names or website URLs ready.
  • Know which companies matter most so you can review coverage and fill gaps quickly.

Step 1: Open Sonar and start the setup wizard

  1. Open Sonar from the main navigation.
  2. Click Open setup wizard.
  3. Paste one competitor per line. Names and website URLs both work.
  4. Submit the batch to create the competitor records.

Sonar immediately starts discovering changelogs, feeds, recent activity, and status pages in the background.

Step 2: Let discovery finish, then fill the gaps

The batch review inside the wizard shows where Sonar found public sources and where it still needs help.

  • Changelog found means Sonar found a public update source.
  • Status page found means Sonar found a public status or incident source.
  • Needs review means a check failed or coverage is incomplete.

If discovery misses something obvious, add the public link manually and continue. The goal is not perfection on day one; it is reliable coverage for the companies you care about most.

Step 3: Read the Shipping Heartbeat

Once Sonar has coverage, the Shipping Heartbeat becomes the fastest way to understand pace.

  • Switch between 3 months and 6 months to compare recent versus broader patterns.
  • Use the filter dropdown to focus on your team, individual changelogs, or specific competitors.
  • Enable optional overlays when you want changelog engagement or outage data included in the chart context.

Step 4: Inspect a competitor in the workspace

Select any competitor from the workspace list to open the detailed panel.

This is where Sonar becomes especially useful for weekly reviews. You can see their recent changes, velocity comparison, changelog coverage, status coverage, and whether Sonar has enough public data to generate a useful brief.

Step 5: Use signals to spot meaningful movement

Signals are the shortcut layer. Instead of opening every competitor in detail, refresh insights and look for the highest-signal movements first.

  • Acceleration can suggest a competitor is pushing a bigger cycle of launches.
  • Quiet periods can suggest a slowdown or a deliberate pause.
  • Theme matches help you focus on updates that overlap with your priorities.

Step 6: Add status pages and alerts

Open Settings to manage alert preferences, digest frequency, and priority themes. If a competitor has a public status page Sonar did not discover, add it manually so outages and maintenance events can be tracked.

This is also where you can configure digests, reports, and webhook destinations when your workflow needs Sonar activity pushed into another channel.

Step 7: Generate AI briefs and PDFs

The AI Briefs area is useful when you want a summary instead of a raw feed of updates.

  1. Pick a brief format.
  2. Choose a date range.
  3. Optionally filter to specific competitors.
  4. Generate the brief, then review or download the PDF.

Use these when you need a quick internal readout, a meeting pre-read, or a lightweight summary for stakeholders.

Best practices

  • Start with a focused competitor list instead of trying to monitor the whole market at once.
  • Review coverage after discovery so your most important competitors do not stay half-configured.
  • Use the heartbeat for pace, the workspace for evidence, and briefs for communication.
  • Treat AI summaries as a fast starting point, then verify the underlying public updates when the stakes are high.
  • Revisit your priority themes over time so signals stay aligned with the areas your team cares about.

Common questions

Why is one competitor missing data?

Sonar depends on public sources. If a company does not publish clear changelogs or status pages, coverage can be thin until you add a public source manually.

Why do I see a preview instead of the live workspace?

The preview is shown on free accounts. Full Sonar access requires a paid plan or active trial.

When should I generate a brief?

Generate a brief when you need a summary for a meeting, a planning session, or a quick weekly competitor review. Use the workspace directly when you need to inspect specific evidence.

Next steps