# User Guide

How to use the Mesh dashboard day to day: signing in, navigating views, reading
risk signals, and running investigations. Welcome to Axiad Mesh! As a first-time
user, this is what you can expect.

> **note**
This is the onboarding experience for a **Standard** Mesh user (no
administrative privileges in Axiad Mesh). If you're an admin setting up Mesh
for your organization, see the [Getting Started](../getting-started/index.md)
walkthroughs and the [Admin Guide](../admin-guide/index.md).

## First-time sign-in

To kick off your Axiad journey, you have access to the Axiad Mesh environment
set up by your admins. You receive an invite email from Axiad with a link that
takes you directly to the web application.

1. From the Axiad welcome email, select the sign-in link, which opens a web
   browser.
2. On the sign-in page, enter your email address and select **Next**.
3. After you authenticate through your identity provider (IdP), you land on
   the Axiad Mesh homepage. Depending on how much your admins have completed,
   you could immediately see the bubble chart visualization, or you may see a
   **Things are getting set up** page.

> **note**
Once the connectors are integrated, the homepage displays your identity
ecosystem visualization so you can instantly see the overview of your
environment.

To sign out of Axiad Mesh, select your name in the top right corner and select
**Sign out**.

## Welcome to Axiad Mesh

Once your Axiad Mesh dashboard is set up, you can quickly get the information
you need, with options to dig deeper into each entity, identity, and potential
risk.

### Mesh widgets

On the left-hand side of the application, quick reference widgets give you an
immediate snapshot of your environment and the world of cybersecurity.

- The first widget is your organization's **overall risk score**. Mesh
  generates it by compiling the individual risk scores from identities,
  applications, credentials, behavior, and other sources into a top-level
  rating. Scores range from 1 to 100, with 100 being the riskiest. Here, you
  can also address **profiling gaps** (unconfirmed account associations) to
  get a more accurate risk score for your organization.
- The next widget details your organization's **highest risks** to help you
  understand why you have the score that you have. You can use this
  information to improve your security posture and simultaneously lower your
  risk score.
- The last widget is an **industry news feed** that gives you an immediate
  heads-up on the latest happenings in the cybersecurity world.

### Bubble chart overview

The main bubble chart visualization is made up of *entities*, each with its
own risk score and organized by level of riskiness, with the highest risk
bubbling up at the top.

An entity could be an application, location, authentication method,
department, or something else that spans your environment.

From here, you can hover over each bubble to get a preview of the assessment,
or select an entity to get complete information about it, including risk score
details, associated identities, potential blast radius, and more. You can also
group entities together to see how they overlap and what risks are possible
with those relationships.

> **tip**
Continue with the other pages in this section, such as the [FAQ](./faq.md), or
follow [Investigate a risky
identity](../getting-started/investigate-risky-identity.md) to turn this
high-level overview into remedial actions.