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Getting started as the owner

Set up your business account, sign in for the first time, turn on two-step sign-in and make your first backup.

For
Owner
Hosting
Any hosting
Devices
All devices
Business
All businesses

Checked against Pop Dispatch 0.1.0

This article walks you through the first hour: your business account, your first sign-in, the second step that protects your account, your first backup, and the people you add next.

Before you start #

  • The Pop Dispatch server is running on your office computer or your hosting. If it still needs set-up, read "Setting up the office server".
  • You have the email address you want to use as the owner and an authenticator app on your phone.

Steps #

  1. Create the business account. Whoever runs the server runs the init command with the account id and your email address. The command prints a one-time password of 16 letters and digits. For a new data folder it also prints the recovery key. Both appear once, so copy them straight away and keep the recovery key away from the server computer.
  2. Open the Sign in screen and enter your email address and the one-time password. The first answer asks for the authenticator app, because owners and managers always sign in with a second step.
  3. Set up the authenticator app. Follow "Two-step sign-in for owners and managers". When the app shows a 6 digit code, send it back to finish the set-up.
  4. Sign in again with your email address, your one-time password and the current 6 digit code. The server answers with a token that keeps you signed in for 90 days of use. Pop Dispatch then asks you to choose your own password of at least 10 characters. See "Signing in, tokens and lockout".
  5. Take your first backup. Open Settings, Backup and choose to back up now. The new backup appears in the list after the server has checked that it restores. See "Backups and restore".
  6. Check the licence. Settings, Licence shows whether the server reached the licence service. See "How licence checks work".
  7. Add your people. Each person gets one of six roles: owner, manager, advisor, dispatcher, technician or driver. See "Roles and what each can do".

What you will see #

Technical details
  • Command: dispatch-server init --tenant ID --owner EMAIL [--name BUSINESS] [--owner-name NAME] [--data-dir DIR].
  • The one-time password is stored only as an argon2id hash.
  • The account id is the tenant id: lowercase letters, digits and hyphens. A second init with the same id is refused.
  • Every action you take is written to a hash-chained audit log for your account.

If something goes wrong #

  • "The account already exists": the id is taken. Choose another id.
  • "The owner needs a valid email address": retype the address.
  • Sign-in answers totp_enrolment_required: you need to finish the authenticator app set-up first. See "Two-step sign-in for owners and managers".