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Getting started

From zero to first signed receipt — 5 minutes

This is the path a new MSME founder, school principal, or clinic admin takes. No prior compliance experience needed. We pre-load policies and templates so you don't draft from scratch.

Step 1

Sign up (1 minute)

  1. Visit sanad.cognoshift.in/dpo/signup
  2. Pick the tile that matches your organisation: School, MSME (micro / small / medium), Clinic, Hospital, SDF, or other regulated enterprise.
  3. Fill in: organisation name, your contact email, state, district, optional PIN code.
  4. Click Create tenant.
Email arrives within 30 seconds from noreply@cognoshift.in with subject "Verify your email — Sanad". If it doesn't, check spam, and ensure the cognoshift.in domain isn't blocked by your IT team.

Step 2

Verify email + receive license key (1 minute)

  1. Click the Verify email button in your inbox.
  2. The browser auto-redirects to your console after 2 seconds.
  3. Two follow-up emails arrive shortly:
    • "Save this — your Sanad license key" — the key in a copyable code block.
    • "Getting started with Sanad" — welcome nudge with the setup checklist.
Treat the license key like a password. It's how you sign in. Anyone holding it can issue artifacts on your tenant's chain. Save it to a password manager. If lost, recover via /recover.

Step 3

Sign in + see what's been pre-loaded (30 seconds)

  1. Open /dpo/login.
  2. Paste your license key (the show/hide eye icon helps verify you pasted correctly).
  3. Click Sign in. You land on the dashboard.

Your console is not empty — Sanad has pre-loaded a starter pack tailored to your sector:

  • 5 policies as DRAFTs (privacy notice, retention, data sharing, breach response, grievance) — visible at /dpo/policies.
  • 3-6 retention schedules with sector-correct durations (e.g. 7 years for school records, 8 for GST receipts, 99 for consent receipts) at /dpo/retention.
  • The welcome / setup checklist at /dpo/welcome walks through the 5 first actions.

Step 4

Issue your first consent receipt (1 minute)

  1. Click Issue consent on the dashboard, or open /dpo/consent/new.
  2. At the top, pick a template tailored to your sector (e.g. "Customer onboarding KYC" for an MSME, "Parental consent for student admission" for a school).
  3. The form auto-fills: purpose, legal basis, data categories, retention period, evidence method.
  4. Type the subject's identifier — their email or phone number. We hash this in your browser before sending; the raw value never leaves your machine.
  5. Click Save.
You now have a CR-2026-NNNNNN receipt on your chain. Cryptographically signed. Verifiable offline. The Data Protection Board can inspect it; an auditor can verify it without trusting our servers.

Step 5

Optional — install Sentinel on one endpoint (5 minutes)

Sentinel is the small Windows service that pushes signed endpoint posture (encryption, MFA, patch state, AI-tool inventory) to your tenant. It's optional — you can use Sanad without it — but it dramatically strengthens your audit trail.

  1. Open /dpo/sentinel/install.
  2. Click Download Install_Sanad_Sentinel.bat. The file is per-tenant — your license key is embedded.
  3. Double-click the .bat on a Windows 10/11 machine. It self-elevates to admin, downloads the EV-signed MSI, verifies its SHA-256, and installs.
  4. Return to the install page. Your endpoint appears in the live status banner within 60 seconds.
Sentinel is EV-code-signed. Windows SmartScreen will show CognoShift Private Limited as the verified publisher with no warning. For mass deployment via GPO / Intune / SCCM, see the install page's "Mass deployment" tab.

You're operational

The five steps above give you a real, signed, auditable DPDP setup. From here:

  • Run a tabletop incident drill — finds gaps before a real one.
  • Subscribe a webhook to your SIEM / Slack so events flow to where your team works.
  • Pick a plan when ready (currently in trial / test mode).
  • Read the sector guide for your specific sector.
Go to console

Stuck? Email support@cognoshift.in — we respond within 1 working day.