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GC Landing Page

The Guardian Connector Landing Page is the home page for your community's Guardian Connector: the front door you arrive at after signing in. It brings everything together in one place, so you don't need to remember web addresses or hunt around for the right tool.

From the Landing Page you can:

  • Open the services your community uses (like Explorer, Superset, Windmill, or File Browser) with a single click.
  • Learn about the tools you can use with Guardian Connector to collect and bring in data (like CoMapeo, KoboToolbox, and more).
  • If you are an administrator, you can manage user accounts and roles, and configure theme settings, and add custom apps for your community.

🔑 Signing In​

When you first visit the Landing Page, you may be asked to sign up or sign in. After signing up, a member of your community with administrator access needs to approve your account and give you a role before you can see the services. Until that happens, you will not be able to access Guardian Connector.

What you see on the Landing Page depends on your role. Different people need different tools, so the page only shows the services you have permission to use. If a service you expect is missing, it may not be turned on for your community, or your role may not include access to it yet — reach out to your community's administrator.

👤 User Identification​

Once you are signed in, the center of the top header displays your email address. This helps you quickly confirm which account is currently active — particularly when working on shared computers.

🧭 Navigating the Landing Page​

🎓 Guided Tour​

When you open the Landing Page for the first time, an interactive guided tour uses step-by-step coach marks to walk you through the page. The tour adapts to your role and localized language, introducing:

  • Each available service card (Explorer, Superset, File Browser, Windmill, and any custom apps)
  • Data collection tools that connect to Guardian Connector
  • Header controls for display mode, language, and signing out
  • Administrator controls (Custom Apps, Theme Settings, and User Management) if you are signed in as an Admin

Your tour state is saved in your browser's local storage so the tour won't repeat automatically on future visits. You can skip the tour at any time, or replay it whenever you want by clicking the ? button in the top-right header.

🌙 Light and Dark Mode​

The Landing Page includes native support for both light mode and dark mode. Click the moon/sun display icon in the top-right header to switch between light and dark themes to match your preference or working environment.

🌐 Language Selection​

Click the globe icon in the top-right header to change the display language used across the Landing Page, including the guided tour.

🚀 Available Services​

These are the default Guardian Connector services your community can link to from the Landing Page. Each appears as a card you can click to open it in a new tab.

Guardian Connector Landing Page

  • Explorer: View your community's data as interactive maps, media galleries, and an alerts dashboard.
  • Superset: Build and explore charts, dashboards, and visualizations from your data.
  • Windmill: Run and schedule the automation workflows that gather and process your data (see the GC Scripts Hub).
  • File Browser: Browse, download, and manage your community's raw files and archives.

Not everyone sees every service. In general, the more advanced or sensitive a tool is, the higher the role needed to open it — for example, Explorer is available to most signed-in users, while Windmill is reserved for administrators.

It's also possible to configure the Landing Page to show custom apps, which are apps that are not part of the default Guardian Connector stack. See ⚙️ Configuring Custom Apps for more information.

🌐 Tools You Can Use with Guardian Connector​

The Landing Page also introduces the field tools and platforms that work with Guardian Connector. These are the apps your community can use to collect data in the field — data that then flows into Guardian Connector for viewing and analysis.

Guardian Connector Landing Page

  • CoMapeo: Offline-first mapping and monitoring on a mobile device.
  • KoboToolbox and ODK: Forms and surveys that work online and offline.
  • Timelapse: Reviewing and annotating camera trap images for biodiversity monitoring.

Guardian Connector also connects with other tools such as ArcGIS Survey123, Locus Map, Global Forest Watch, SMART, and more. To learn about everything that can be connected, see the GC Scripts Hub.

🔧 For Administrators​

👥 User Management​

If you are an administrator, the Landing Page gives you a User Management area to control who can access your community's Guardian Connector and what they can do.

From here you can:

  • Search for people by name or email.
  • See each person's status — whether their account is Approved or still Pending — along with their role and when they last signed in.
  • Approve (or un-approve) an account. Only approved users can reach the services.
  • Assign a role that decides which services each person can open.
  • Delete an account if they should no longer have access.

The currently available roles, from least to most access, are:

  • Signed In: Signed in, but without access to restricted services yet. Can access only public dataset views in GC Explorer.
  • Guest: Limited access, suitable for visitors or partners. Can access dataset views shared with guests in GC Explorer, and maps to the Gamma role in Superset.
  • Member: Everyday access for community members. Can access member dataset views in GC Explorer, and maps to the Alpha role in Superset.
  • Admin: Full access to everything — including Windmill, all dataset views, settings, and this User Management area — and maps to the Admin role in Superset.

When you approve someone and give them the right role, the services they're allowed to use will appear on their Landing Page and their permissions in GC Explorer and Superset will update on their next sign-in.

🎨 Theme Settings​

Theme Settings lets you customize your community's branding on the Landing Page.

From here you can add:

  • A logo URL, which shows up on the home page.
  • A background image URL, which is used as the background on the login screen.

⚙️ Configuring Custom Apps​

If your community has other apps running on Guardian Connector, the Custom Apps page lets you create cards similar to the default services — like Explorer, Superset, and File Browser. Each card opens at its own subdomain, so people can reach your custom apps from the Landing Page the same way they open the built-in ones.

For each custom app you can add, a name, subdomain, description, icon, and tags.

ℹ️ Which Version of the App Am I Using?​

If you ever need to know which version of the Landing Page you are using — for example, when reporting a problem — open the /_info endpoint on the app. Add /_info to the end of the Landing Page address in your browser (for example, https://alias.guardianconnector.net/_info). You do not need to sign in.

It will look like this:

{
  "tag": "20261012-189",
  "commit": "1234567890abcdef1234567890abcdef12345678",
  "buildId": "abcdef1234567890abcdef1234567890abcdef12",
  "startedAt": "2026-10-12T12:00:00.000Z"
}

The response identifies the running build:

  • tag: the deployed version, written as a date and build number (YYYYMMDD-<run>)
  • commit: the source commit that version was built from
  • startedAt: the date and time the application was started