A tour of the console

The console at https://cloud.cahaves.com is where you create, deploy and watch everything in Cloud. Every signed-in screen has the same frame: a rail of sections on the left, with the organization switcher at its top, a bar across the top with your place, the search and your account, and the screen itself below.

Everything the console shows belongs to an organization, so a new account opens on Name your organization rather than the Dashboard. Type the required Organization name and press Create organization. The field starts empty, including after GitHub or Google sign-in. The Dashboard then opens in the new organization. Below the form, it says who you are signed in as, with Sign out. An account that already has an organization goes straight to the Dashboard. Organizations covers what an organization holds.

At the top of the rail, under the logo, the switcher shows Organization above the name of the organization the console works in. Every section under it shows that organization's projects, deployments, logs, storage, domains and billing. Its menu lists Your organizations, with the current one marked, and Organization settings. A normal account has one organization and Contact us to request more. Once Cahaves enables additional organizations, New organization appears, available while the account can create another. Choosing another organization moves the console to it and opens its Dashboard. With the rail folded, the switcher is its icon, which opens the same menu.

The rail lists every section, in three groups and a footer:

The button at the top left of the bar folds the rail down to its icons, each with its name in a tooltip, and opens it again.

Beside the rail button, the trail names where you are: Cloud, then the section. The section's name opens a menu of every section, which is the quickest way between them when the rail is folded or hidden. A screen deeper than its section, such as a service, names the rest of its path in its own header.

At the far end are the search and the account menu. The account menu shows your name and email address, Profile, which opens Settings, Take the tour, and Sign out, which ends Cloud's session in this browser. Sign in and your Cahaves account explains what signing out does and does not end.

The first time you open the dashboard, Cloud offers a short tour of the console: one step for each section of the rail, saying what it holds, with the section itself highlighted. On a narrow window, where the rail is folded away, each step shows the section's icon instead.

Each screen has a tour of its own as well, which opens the first time you open that screen and points at its controls: on Projects, New project and how to find one; on a service's page, Deploy, its state and its sections. A step for something the screen is not showing yet, such as a list that is still empty, is left out.

Skip tour or Esc ends any tour at any step. Finishing or skipping one is remembered on your account, so that tour does not open by itself again, in this browser or any other. Take the tour in the account menu starts the tour of the screen you are on again, or the console's tour on a screen without one.

Press the magnifier, or Cmd K on a Mac and Ctrl K elsewhere, to open the search. It finds:

• the sections in the rail, and the Organization, Billing, Notifications and Git providers pages under Settings;

• the organization's projects, by name or address;

• its services, listed under their project and kind;

• its domains, listed under their project and service.

Before you type, it suggests the sections and the organization's five most recently updated projects. Projects, services and domains are read afresh each time the search opens, so a service created a moment ago is already there. Choosing a result opens it. To find something in another of your organizations, switch to it first.

Settings has a column of its own:

• General: your name, email address and sign-in methods, read from your Cahaves account.

• Organization: the name and ID of the organization the console works in, and what belongs to it.

• Billing: how the organization pays, its month so far, its statements and its usage.

• Git providers: the GitHub accounts Cloud can build from.

• SSH keys: the public keys that open a shell in your services over SSH.

• Notifications: the automatic account emails, and the channels that receive deployment, domain and backup updates.

Organization and Billing are the current organization's. The others are yours, and hold in all your organizations.

A service's header holds its name, its state chip and its controls: Visit once it runs and has an address, Deploy, and Stop or Start. A control that cannot be used is greyed out, and its tooltip says why.

Below the header, the service's sections are a column on a wide window: Overview, Deployments, Logs, Metrics, Domains (not for a database), Storage, Environment and Settings. The section you are on is part of the address, so a reload or a shared link opens the same one. Leaving Environment while you edit it puts the edit away: the values are hidden again and anything unsaved is dropped. Service lifecycle covers the controls.

A screen with something in progress reads itself again every few seconds, so a chip changes without a reload. What you have typed and any open dialog stay as they are while it does.

Logs, build logs and the terminal are live streams rather than refreshes. Logs and Terminal cover them.

The result of something you press, such as a save or a refused deploy, appears as a short message at the bottom of the window, and a refusal says why in one sentence.

While a Cahaves operator has a support session open on your account, which reaches the services of every organization you own, a notice sits above every screen: the operator's name followed by "is assisting with your workspace", then the reason, the ticket and when the session expires. The console checks for one every 30 seconds. Support lists open sessions, and Security says what an operator can and cannot do during one.

• While a screen loads, its outline is drawn in grey first.

• A screen that fails shows "That screen did not load." with "Nothing was changed by loading it, so trying again is safe." and a Try again button.

• An address for something that does not exist, is not yours, or belongs to another of your organizations reads "Nothing in this organization matches this address", and the page says that the switcher at the top of the sidebar moves to another organization.

• If your session ends while you work, the next screen you open is the sign-in screen.

Below 1024 pixels wide, the console rearranges itself:

• The rail becomes a drawer over the screen, opened with the button at the top left, with the organization switcher at its top.

• The section's name in the top bar still opens the menu of every section.

• A service's sections become a row of tabs under its header, which scrolls sideways.

• Settings turns its column into tabs as well.