Getting oriented

In one line. How to sign in, land on the Command Deck, jump into any project, navigate the app your end users see, and move in and out of Studio. You’ll be able to. Land in any project, name every part of the frame around it, and switch confidently between the end-user app and the builder’s Studio. Where this lives. The sign-in page, the Command Deck at /, and the top bar inside any project.

Why it matters

From here on you are in the product, clicking real screens. The single biggest source of early confusion is navigation — builders get lost between workspaces, projects, the tabs their users see, and Studio, and waste time hunting for a screen that was one click away. This page is the map. Read it once and you’ll always know where you are and how to get anywhere else.

A quick vocabulary reminder (full list in the Glossary; the agent-and-collection model is in Core concepts):

A Workspace holds a set of projects, the people in them, and the plan.
A Project is one solution — its collections, agents, and surfaces. You always work inside one project at a time.
Studio is where you build the solution; the rest of the app is what your end users use.

Signing in

The sign-in page is at /profile/login. Your sign-in page may carry your organisation’s logo and colours, so it can look different from a colleague’s at another company. The fields and the steps are the same.

Control	What it does	Notes
Sign in	Authenticates and lands you on the Command Deck at `/`.	Email and password is the usual path.
Forgot password?	Sends a reset link.
Continue with …	Signs you in with your organisation’s account instead of a password. The button names the sign-in your organisation uses.	Only shown when company sign-in is connected.
Verify your identity	A second step shown inline during sign-in — enter the one-time code and click Verify.	Only appears when your workspace requires two-factor sign-in.

Tip. If your screen looks different from a colleague’s — different colours, a customer logo, a company sign-in button and nothing else — that’s expected. The sign-in page is the most heavily branded surface on the platform.

Watch out. Some organisations hand out a starter password and force a change on first use. If you’re prompted to set a new password immediately after your first sign-in, that’s why — set a strong one and continue.

The Command Deck — where you land

Signing in drops you on the Command Deck at / — a home that spans all your workspaces. Instead of a wall of workspace folders, it greets you and asks “What do you want to do?” (If your organisation reaches the platform on its own web address, you land on that workspace’s project list instead — everything else on this page works the same.)

Section	What it does	Notes
Command box	The “What do you want to do?” bar — click it, or press Ctrl K / ⌘K from anywhere, to open the command palette.	Results are grouped Actions · Navigate · Projects · Workspaces; jump to any project or run a command without touching the mouse.
Jump back in	Cards for your recently visited projects, across every workspace (each carries a workspace colour dot + status).	Click a card to land back in that project.
Needs you	Your live queue — review tasks and sign-offs waiting on you, plus unread notifications.	Rows clear themselves as you act on them. When there is nothing, it says so: “Nothing needs you — all clear.”
Browse everything →	Opens the Browse overlay — the full workspace-and-project browser (below).	Also reachable at `/workspaces`.

A brand-new account with no projects sees a welcome state instead, with chips that start you off: pull data out of a pile of documents, start a blank project, learn the platform in 3 minutes, ask Piper for a tour.

The Browse overlay — the full inventory

Browse everything (or navigating to /workspaces) opens the Browse overlay: one search box across all workspaces and projects, above a two-pane browser — workspaces on the left, the selected workspace’s projects on the right.

Control	What it does	Notes
Search box	One query across workspaces and projects — “Search workspaces and projects…”.	↑/↓ to move, ↵ to open, Esc to close.
Workspace row	Click to load its projects on the right.	Shows a project count; each row carries ★ pin and ⚙ workspace settings.
Project card	Click to open the project — drops you into its landing surface.	Shows a document count and a recent chip; the landing surface may be Documents, a dashboard, or another configured page.
+ Project	Create a project in the selected workspace — the button names the workspace it will land in.	Project admins and builders.
+ Workspace	Opens Create Workspace.	Platform admins only.

Workspace settings. The ⚙ on a workspace row opens that workspace’s own settings — one pane headed Workspace with exactly three entries:

General — where you land. The workspace name and the web address it produces, an Enable Project Restore toggle (turn it on and deleted projects go to a recycle bin instead of vanishing), and read-only plan facts.
Users & Access — who can do what in this workspace, in three views: Users (the members, the licence counts, + Add user), Projects, and Policies — how people join, who can invite people, who can hand out passwords, the default join role, and whether two-factor sign-in is required for everyone. Policies is the one place those are set.
Audit & Usage — one page with an Audit / Usage switch: who did what, and what the workspace is consuming.

Users & Access and Audit & Usage appear only for workspace admins; everyone else sees General on its own.

Tip. Old bookmarks keep working. A link straight to a workspace opens Browse with that workspace already selected, so nothing you saved earlier goes dead.

Walkthrough — open your first project. Sign in; you land on the deck. If your project is in Jump back in, click its card. Otherwise press Ctrl K and type its name, or click Browse everything, pick the workspace on the left, then click the project card. You’re now inside the project, looking at the landing surface its users get.

Tip. The logo (top-left) is the universal escape hatch: from anywhere in the product it returns you to the Command Deck. And every click that changes screen shows a thin moving line across the very top of the window, so you always know the click registered while the next screen loads.

Create Project and Create Workspace

You usually open an existing project. When you do need new ones:

Create Project launches a guided create-project flow — from the Browse overlay’s + Project (in the selected workspace), or the palette’s Create project… action (on the deck it first asks you where the new project should live). You can also start one from a Hub solution. Your first 30 minutes builds inside one end to end.
Create Workspace (+ Workspace in the Browse overlay) opens a small dialog:

Field Rule

Workspace Name Letters, numbers or underscore; no leading underscore; no spaces.

Template Optional — pick a starter configuration when more than one exists.

Create is disabled until the name is valid, and shows “Creating…” while it provisions.

Field	Rule
Workspace Name	Letters, numbers or underscore; no leading underscore; no spaces.
Template	Optional — pick a starter configuration when more than one exists.

Watch out. Creating a workspace is an administrator’s act, usually done once. As a solution builder you’ll almost always work inside a workspace someone has already set up — you create projects, not workspaces.

Open a project and the top bar is the constant frame around everything. It has three clusters: left (identity / how you got here), centre (the configurable tab row), and right (tools and your account).

Left cluster

Control	What it does	Notes
Workspace logo	The universal escape hatch — returns you to the Command Deck at `/` from anywhere.	Anonymous (public-share) sessions keep their scoped landing instead.
Project name	Click returns you to the project’s landing surface.	When a left sidebar is active, this region shows the active View name plus a help-info icon.

Centre — the tab row (the heart of the end-user app)

Tab	Goes to	What it’s for
Overview / Dashboard	`_dashboard`	Project analytics widgets. One button per configured dashboard. See Dashboards & inbox.
Chat	`_chat`	Ask questions over the project, grounded in cited documents.
Search	`_search`	Natural-language / semantic search across the project.
Documents	`_view/<default>`	The document table — the main work surface. See Document workspace.
Collection / View tabs	`_view/<name>`	One tab per collection and per saved View (a saved column+filter slice).
External Links	(a configured URL)	Opens a link the project author wired in.
⌄ (overflow)	—	A small chevron at the end of the row, shown when the project has more than six tabs; picking an item from it promotes that tab into the visible row.

Watch out — the tab row is configurable and role-gated. What you see is not fixed. Each tab appears only when the project enables it and your access allows it. A project can hide Chat, Search, or Dashboard entirely; a Viewer sees fewer tabs than a Builder. Don’t assume a tab is missing because it’s broken — it may simply be turned off for this project or for your role. Access & roles covers who sees what.

Note. A tab named after a collection opens that collection’s list. The default unnamed View is hidden from the tab row, which is why you see Documents rather than a “Default” tab. Projects that queue work for people also surface an Inbox — Dashboards & inbox covers it.

Right cluster

Control	What it does	Notes
Copilot	Opens the project’s chat assistant in a full-window panel.	Only when the project enables it.
Studio	Opens Studio for this project — the builder side (tooltip “Go to Studio Menu”).	Project admins and builders only; absent when a project has Studio switched off.
Share (link icon)	Copies the current page URL to share.	Only when share links are enabled.
Notifications (bell icon)	Opens a notifications popover; a green dot marks new items.
Account menu (your picture)	Your account menu — see below.

The account menu. Click your picture (or your initials) at the far right of the top bar. One panel opens, holding — depending on what you’re allowed to do:

The top row — your picture, your name, and your real role underneath. Click the row to open your profile: name, mobile, picture, change password.
View as — admin roles — chips for the admin roles you may preview: Workspace Admin and Project Admin. Click one and the whole product switches to that role’s point of view. Preview only ever goes downward: a platform admin sees both chips, a workspace admin sees only Project Admin, a project admin sees none. The Project Admin chip appears only when a project is open.
View as — personas · <project name> — one chip per persona the current project defines (Underwriter, L1-Reviewer, and so on). Hovering a chip says what that persona can see — other personas’ work, or its own only. Only appears when a project is open and that project defines personas.
Viewing as … / Return to your role — while a preview is running, a strip sits at the very top of the panel: the role you’re previewing, and Return to your role. Click anywhere on the strip and your real access comes straight back. On the few screens that hide the top bar — the experience runtime, the document viewer, full-document focus mode — a small floating button reads “Viewing as <role> — stop” and does the same job.
Administration → Admin — opens Administration, the platform-wide admin area. Only platform admins see this. It lands on Action Center; its pages are grouped Platform, AI Runtime, Extensions and Governance.
The footer bar — Log out, with the application version beside it. Logging out always asks you to confirm, and if an automation is still running it says so before you go.

The project switcher. There is no dedicated project dropdown in the top bar. To switch projects, press Ctrl K / ⌘K and type the project’s name — the palette jumps you straight there — or click the logo (far left) to return to the Command Deck and pick from Jump back in or Browse. Either round-trip is the project switcher — simple and always available.

Studio and the end-user app — and how to move between them

You’ll cross this boundary constantly, so make it a reflex.

	The app your users see	Studio
URL	`/<workspace>/<project>/…`	`/<workspace>/<project>/studio/…`
For	Doing the work — review documents, chat, search, dashboards.	Building the solution — agents, data, the experience your users see, and governance.
Who	Everyone with access.	Project admins and builders.
Enter via	Open a project from the deck (Jump back in, Ctrl K, or Browse); or the Project name in the top bar.	The Studio icon, on the right of the top bar.
Leave via	—	The Exit Studio button, on the right of the top bar.

Entering Studio changes the top bar itself: the four pillars — Agents · Data · Experience · Governance — run across the top of Studio with Home to their left, and a Hubs chip plus Exit Studio sit apart on the right. (On a narrow window the pillars you aren’t using tuck into a More ▾ menu — the one you’re in never disappears.) Each pillar opens its own list of pages beneath it; Core concepts explains what each pillar is for.

This is the single picture to keep in your head — everything you’ll touch hangs off it:

                    ┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
   SIGN IN  ─────>  │  COMMAND DECK  (/)                   │
                    │  Ctrl K palette · Jump back in       │
                    │  Needs you · Browse overlay          │
                    └───────────────┬──────────────────────┘
                    open a project  │   (logo = back to the deck)
            ┌───────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┐
            │                      PROJECT                         │
            │  /<workspace>/<project>/...                          │
            │                                                      │
            │  ┌─ WHAT USERS SEE ────────┐   ┌─ STUDIO ──────────┐ │
            │  │ top-bar tabs:           │   │ across the top:   │ │
            │  │  Overview / Dashboard   │   │  Home             │ │
            │  │  Chat · Search          │   │  Agents           │ │
            │  │  Documents              │   │  Data             │ │
            │  │  Collection / View tabs │   │  Experience       │ │
            │  │  External Links         │   │  Governance       │ │
            │  │                         │   │                   │ │
            │  │ plus, when configured:  │   │ apart, right:     │ │
            │  │  Inbox (human queue)    │   │  Hubs             │ │
            │  │                         │   │  Exit Studio      │ │
            │  └─────────────────────────┘   └───────────────────┘ │
            │                                                      │
            │     Studio icon  ────────────────────>               │
            │                 <────────────────────  Exit Studio   │
            └───────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────┘
                                    │
                      account menu (your picture, top right)
                   profile · View as · Admin · log out + version
                     plus: Notifications · Share · Copilot

Roles in brief — who sees what

The platform is heavily role-gated, so two people can open the same project and see different tabs, buttons, and menus. The product explains these in its own About roles panel, on any Users & Access page:

Role	Sees roughly
Viewer	The narrowest view — consumes what the project publishes: search, chat, dashboards. No Studio, no admin.
Reviewer	The Viewer’s surfaces plus the review and annotation work — the queues, the document review actions.
Builder	The end-user app plus Studio, where the solution is built. This is you for most of this Academy.
Project Admin	Runs one project — its people, its personas, and everything in Studio for that project. It is a protected role.
Workspace Admin	Runs one workspace — its members, its policies, its projects.
Platform Admin	The whole platform, including Administration in the account menu.

Two things sit outside that table. Personas are your project’s own workflow roles — Underwriter, L1-Reviewer, whatever your solution calls them — defined per project and separate from the roles above. And Super Admin is an operations-level access that is configured, never granted inside the product.

An administrator can also hide individual pages, or whole areas, for a workspace, so a colleague’s menu may be shorter than yours. If you don’t see something this Academy describes, ask your administrator.

This is a sketch, not the contract. The exact breakdown — and how an admin tunes it — is Access & roles.

Try it yourself

With the product open:

Sign in and read the right of the top bar: do you see the Studio icon? That tells you whether you have builder access in this project.
From the deck, open a project (Jump back in, or Ctrl K and type its name), then click the logo to bounce back to the deck, then open it again. You’ve just used the project switcher.
Inside the project, name three tabs in the centre row and predict where each goes (_chat, _search, _dashboard, _view/…).
Click Studio, confirm the four pillars — Agents, Data, Experience, Governance — now run across the top of the screen, then click Exit Studio to come back.
Open your account menu and read the top row: your name, and your real role. If View as chips are there, preview one, look at how the screen changes, then use Return to your role.

Where to go next

Document workspace — open a collection’s document list and review a real document.
Core concepts — the agent-and-collection model, and what each Studio pillar is for.
Dashboards & inbox — the analytics and human-queue surfaces your users get.
Access & roles — the authoritative roles-and-permissions model.