Document list for onboarding

The Onboarding Guide exists because opening a fully featured compliance platform for the first time can feel overwhelming. Instead of leaving you to hunt through the sidebar, DPMS greets you with a structured checklist that adapts to your role — whether you are a newly appointed Data Protection Officer, an IT Security Manager setting up an asset register, or a system administrator preparing the platform for your whole team. Every foundational task is grouped into numbered sections, each with a short explanation, a demo video, and (where available) a live interactive tour. By the time you work through the guide, your platform will be configured, your first records will exist, and you will know exactly where everything lives.

How to open it

DPMS routes you here automatically the first time you log in. You can also return at any time by navigating directly to the /onboarding URL or clicking a Get started link on the main dashboard. No special permission is required — every authenticated user can open this page.

What you see

The page opens with a large "Welcome!" heading centred at the top, followed by a short invitation to get familiar with the platform. Directly below that, three shortcut cards sit side by side — quick links to external help resources you can use at any point during setup.

The rest of the page is a vertical stack of numbered accordion sections. Each section is a white rounded card. When collapsed, it shows only its title and a subtle grey border. When expanded, the border turns black and the section reveals a set of task cards — one card per concrete task you need to complete. Each task card shows a title, a short description, and a cluster of action buttons on the right. You work through sections in order, but you can jump to any section at any time by clicking its header.

Because the content is personalised, two colleagues at the same company may see slightly different tasks in Section 3, and a user who manages compliance across multiple subsidiary companies will see additional sections that a single-company user does not.

Working with this screen

Getting your bearings on day one

When you first arrive, start with the three shortcut cards at the top of the page:

• Book a call opens a Calendly scheduling page in a new tab where you can book a one-to-one support session with the DPMS team. Use this if you want a guided walkthrough from a human expert rather than working through the steps alone.
• Quickstart Guide opens the written Quickstart Guide in the help centre — a concise, step-by-step introduction to the most important features.
• Help Centre opens the full help centre homepage, where you can search for answers to any question that comes up later.

None of these leave the DPMS app permanently; they all open in a new tab, so you can return to the onboarding page whenever you like.

Once you have noted those resources, click the 1. Introduction header to expand the first section. Here you will find the role selector and two short survey questions. The role selector is the most important control on this section — see the next scenario for details.

Telling the system your role

Inside Section 1 (Introduction), you will find a dropdown that asks for your role in the organisation. By default it is set to the first role assigned to your account, most likely Data Protection Manager. Click the dropdown and select the role that best matches your actual job — for example, IT Security Manager if your primary concern is the asset register and risk evaluations rather than the ROPA.

This selection does two things: it saves your preference so that the next time you return to this page it is still set correctly, and — most importantly — it controls what you see in Section 3. If you choose Data Protection Manager, Section 3 is titled "Building your Privacy Program" and guides you through creating processing activities, vendors, and technical and organisational measures. If you choose IT Security Manager, Section 3 is titled "Building" and instead focuses on risk scenarios, the asset register, and risk evaluations.

Heads up: Changing the role selector here does not affect your actual permissions in DPMS. It is purely a personalisation tool for the onboarding tasks. Your real system roles are managed by your administrator.

You will also see two Yes/No questions — "Are you using a GRC platform?" and "Are you using other providers?" — which are informational survey inputs. Answer them as they apply to you; they help contextualise your setup but do not currently change any other part of the platform.

Working through the task cards

Each numbered section contains a set of task cards. Expand a section by clicking its header, then work through the task cards in order. Every card offers up to four action options:

• DEMO — Click this button (the one with the play icon) to open a full-screen video overlay. The video plays an embedded walkthrough of the task so you can see exactly what to do before attempting it yourself. To close the video, click the X in the top-right corner of the overlay, or click anywhere on the dark background outside the video frame. You will be returned to exactly where you were on the onboarding page.
• Upload Template — This button appears on tasks such as "Create a processing activity (ROPA)" and "Create your asset register". It is intended for importing a pre-built template, but this feature is not yet active. Clicking it currently does nothing — watch for a future update.
• Quickguide — A button on certain tasks intended to open a quick reference card. Like Upload Template, it is a placeholder for a forthcoming feature and does not yet perform an action.
• START — A black pill button that launches an interactive guided tour inside DPMS itself. When you click it, Product Fruits (the tour platform integrated with DPMS) will take over your screen and walk you through the relevant feature step by step, highlighting buttons, explaining fields, and prompting you to click. This button only appears if your IT administrator has enabled the Product Fruits integration in IT Settings.

Tip: If the START button is not visible on any task card, Product Fruits has not been enabled for your organisation. Ask your IT administrator to check the Product Fruits configuration in the IT Settings section of DPMS.

Work through the sections in sequence: Introduction → Setup → Building your Privacy Program (or Building) → Onboard your first vendor → (if applicable) Sharing Elements → Accessing Elements → Set your InfoSec Workflows. There is no requirement to complete every task before moving on — you can expand any section at any time, skip tasks that do not apply to you, and return later to pick up where you left off.

Heads up: DPMS does not currently track which tasks you have completed. Every time you return to this page, all sections will appear the same regardless of your progress. Keep a personal note or use your team's task tracker to record what you have already done.

Exploring sharing and multi-company tasks

If your DPMS account covers more than one company — for example, you manage compliance for a holding company and its subsidiaries — you will see two extra sections that single-company users do not: Section 5 – Sharing Elements (e.g. HQ) and Section 6 – Accessing Elements (e.g. HQ). These guide you through setting up the data-sharing relationship between companies (for example, making a standard framework created at HQ level available to subsidiaries) and then through configuring how subsidiary users access those shared elements.

If you do not see these sections and you believe your account should span multiple companies, contact your system administrator — the multi-company relationship may not have been configured yet.

Field reference

How this connects to the rest of DPMS

The Onboarding Guide is your entry point into the whole platform. Each task card points you towards a different area of DPMS — processing activities (ROPA), the asset register, vendor management, technical and organisational measures (TOMs), risk evaluations, and workflow automation. Completing the tasks here is how you build the foundations that every other DPMS feature depends on.

Once you have worked through the relevant sections, your next steps will typically take you into the areas of the app that the tasks described: the Processing Activities module for ROPA entries, the Asset Register for IT assets and risk assessments, the Vendors module for third-party data processors, and the Workflows module for automated review and approval processes. The IT Settings area is where your administrator will have already enabled Product Fruits if the interactive tours are available to you.

If you are setting up the platform for the first time, we recommend completing Section 2 (Setup) before anything else — it covers organisational units, responsible persons, and labels that are referenced throughout every other part of the system.

Tips & common pitfalls

Tip: Start with the Book a call shortcut if this is your very first day with DPMS. A 30-minute onboarding call with the support team will save you hours of trial and error.

Heads up: The Upload Template and Quickguide buttons on several task cards are placeholders — they do not yet do anything. Do not spend time troubleshooting them; they will be activated in a future release.

• Selecting a role in Section 1 only changes Section 3's task list. It has no effect on what you can see or do elsewhere in DPMS. If you need different system permissions, ask your administrator.
• The page does not remember your progress. There is no green "completed" badge or task counter in the current version. Keep your own notes on what you have already set up.
• The star icon on some task cards is decorative. Clicking the gold star does nothing in the current version — it is a visual placeholder for a future bookmarking feature.
• Demo videos need an internet connection to an external service. In corporate environments with strict firewall rules, the video overlay may appear blank. If this happens, check with your IT team whether the domain app.supademo.com is allowed through your proxy or firewall.
• The Sharing Elements section is intentionally hidden for single-company users. This is not a bug or a permission issue — it simply does not apply to your setup. If your company later expands to a multi-company structure, the section will appear automatically.