Step 1 — Open the dashboard¶
Goal
Get to Decision Theatre in your browser. Nothing to install.
Background¶
Decision Theatre is hosted, so for almost everyone getting started means opening a link. There is no installer, no data to download, and no configuration.
A desktop version exists for offline and field use — a workshop without reliable internet, for example — but that is a specialised case. If you need it, see Running Decision Theatre locally. Otherwise ignore it entirely: everything in this guide works in the browser.
Steps¶
- Open africanlandscapefutures.wits.ac.za in any modern browser.
- Wait for the landing page to appear. The application loads map data on first visit, so give it a moment on a slow connection.
- Once you reach the map, check the Tiles badge in the header — green means the map data loaded successfully.
That is the whole setup. Continue to the next step.
Where your work is saved
In the hosted version the sites you create are stored in your own browser, on the device you created them on. That means:
- They are not synced between your laptop and your phone.
- Colleagues cannot see them.
- Clearing your browser's site data deletes them.
- Browser storage has a fixed size limit, so a few large study areas can fill it.
If saving stops working, or the application becomes slow, that limit is the usual cause — see the FAQ. Record work that matters outside the application too.
Which browser
Any current Chrome, Firefox, Edge or Safari. The map renders with WebGL, so an older machine with dated graphics drivers may struggle — particularly with several map panes open at once.
What you achieved
- You have the dashboard open in your browser
- You confirmed the map data loaded, from the Tiles badge
- You know your sites are stored in this browser only