Getting Started, in four steps.

Four steps, in order. Creating the account also creates your mesh, so most of the work is deciding who and what belongs on it.

1. Create your organization

Sign up with your work email at console.fowlguard.com/signup. The address you use becomes the first administrator, and the organization is created around it.

Nothing else is needed to begin. You are not asked to choose network ranges, pick a region or configure a gateway: those either do not exist here or are decided for you.

2. Your mesh already exists

Signing up creates your first FGMesh, the private network your people and systems will sit on, along with its own DNS zone. You do not create it, and there is no step you can forget.

Open Organization to see its name and identifier. The names are yours to change; the identifiers are generated once and never change, which is what makes renaming safe. Rename the mesh now if the default is not what you want, before anyone joins and starts quoting it.

3. Add a person

Go to Access Management and invite them by email address. They receive a link, set their own password, and land in your organization, never setting a password on their behalf.

Choose their role as you invite them. A role decides what they can reach, not merely what they can see, so it is worth being deliberate: give the narrowest one that lets them do their job. You can change it afterwards without disturbing their access to anything else.

A person consumes a client licence the first time they sign in on a device with the Client Agent, not when you invite them. Inviting someone who never signs in costs nothing.

4. Add a server

Servers join differently from people, because a server has nobody to log in as. Instead of an invitation it activates with a key.

1. On Licenses, create a server licence key.
2. On Downloads, take the Server Agent for that machine's operating system.
3. Install it, and give it the key when asked.

The server appears under Asset Management once it activates. Each key records which machine it activated on and when it last checked in, so an unused key is easy to tell from a live one, and a key that never activates is a signal that the install did not finish.

What to do next

You now have a mesh with a person and a server on it, and nothing is reachable that you have not allowed. Access is granted, not assumed, so the next step is deciding what that person may reach:

• Private Access Policy, which internal systems each person or group can reach.
• Internet Access Policy, what categories and sites are allowed out.
• Host Compliance, the conditions a device must meet before it connects at all.

If someone is refused something they need, they can ask for it from the block page rather than opening a ticket; the request arrives under Access Requests for you to approve or decline.