Docs · Getting started

First sign-in

Claiming a fresh installation, the optional licence step, the Demo workspace, and what Home shows you.

The first time a browser reaches a fresh installation, Mosaic works out which of two screens to show: nobody has claimed this install yet, or somebody has.

#Claiming the installation

An unclaimed install opens on Create the first account:

Nobody has claimed this installation yet. The account you make now owns everything already here, and adds everybody else.

That is worth reading literally. The account you create here becomes the owner — the role that can add people, install licences and delete workspaces. On a shared server, make sure the person creating it is the person who should hold that.

The hint under the password boxes reads "At least 12 characters. A phrase you can remember beats a short jumble." That is the actual rule. Mosaic enforces length, not composition — there is no demand for a capital, a digit and a symbol, because that produces worse passwords than a phrase does. It refuses three things: anything under 12 characters, anything over 512, and the handful of guesses that come first in every attack, like a password starting password or 1234.

Press Create account and continue and you are signed in.

#The licence step, which you can skip

Underneath the account form is a licence panel:

Your licence. Sign in and it arrives on its own — or skip this entirely: Mosaic runs on the free tier without one.

Two ways in. Sign in with your Mosaic account asks for your account password and fetches the licence over the internet. Paste a licence key takes the key as text, for an installation with no route out. Both are optional and both can be done later, under Tenancy.

One ordering detail matters: the licence is stored before the account is created, so ownership can be read from a signed statement rather than taken on trust. If the licence names an owner and you type a different address, Mosaic refuses and tells you which address the licence expects.

During the beta, an unlicensed installation is not limited. The Tenancy page will say so:

Beta. The whole product, free and unmetered, for as long as this lasts — every feature, no ceilings, no card. Tell us what breaks.

So none of the tier ceilings described elsewhere are in force yet, and you do not need a key to follow the rest of this documentation.

#Signing in afterwards

Once an install is claimed, that same address shows Sign in — email and password, nothing else.

Every failure gives the same answer: "Those details do not match an account." No account, wrong password, disabled account — one message, and deliberately the same amount of time, so the screen cannot be used to find out which addresses exist.

If you see Mosaic cannot reach its server instead, that is not a password problem. The page loaded but the API did not answer. Check the server is running, and that anything sitting in front of it — a proxy, a load balancer — passes /api through.

#The Demo workspace

The first time any account signs in, Mosaic builds a workspace called Demo and puts it in the workspace switcher. It is worth opening before you build anything of your own, because it is already finished.

Inside are five Checks, each already run twice against invented data:

• Daily sales — POS ↔ ERP
• Stock on hand — WMS ↔ ERP
• Price list — PIM ↔ tills
• Card settlement — POS ↔ acquirer
• Store master — ERP ↔ POS

Along with an invented Italian estate of nine places across two regions, two exceptions already triaged by an imaginary colleague, and two investigations that walk a single store's figures from one system to the other.

Three things to know about it:

• It belongs to you, not to the installation. Each person who signs in gets their own, once.
• It is not counted against any licence limit.
• If you delete it, it does not come back. There is no route to rebuild one.

To stop it being created at all, start the server with MOSAIC_DEMO_WORKSPACE=off.

#What Home shows you

Home greets you by name and by time of day, under the workspace name and today's date.

Get started is a three-step checklist that disappears as you complete it, or when you press Hide:

1. Connect a system — done once any system is registered
2. Map your stores — done once the estate has an open location
3. Build a check — done once a Check exists

A model is not on the list. The box at the top of Home offers to connect one if you want a Check drafted for you, but nothing here needs it.

Below it, six tiles over a window you choose — 24 hours, 7, 14 or 30 days, opening on 7:

Then your Checks as cards, each showing when it last ran and whether it is published, and a Recent activity panel listing the last eight runs with what started each one — by hand, on a schedule, or from a published page.

#Next

Your first Check — two sources, one comparison, one run.