The new-site wizard is a guided eight-step flow that takes a site from "we just signed the contract" to "the platform is controlling ventilation". This guide is the map: what each step does, what you need ready, and where the natural checkpoints are. The wizard saves a draft as you go, so you can leave at any point and resume from the draft list in Step 1.

Before you start

The wizard works fastest when you have everything in hand before you open it. Most slow-downs are not the wizard waiting on you — they are you waiting on someone else (your BMS vendor for the address-list CSV, your IT for the firewall opening, your IWMAC contact for the Endpoints CSV in Step 7). Gather what you can in advance and the rest of the steps go quickly.

1. A BMS credential per provider you intend to connect (for example IWMAC Client ID + Client Key, Niagara MQTT broker URL + username + password). See the BMS-specific guides for what your vendor calls these and where to find them.
2. Per-site overrides where the BMS needs them (for example IWMAC Plant ID for this building).
3. The raw address-list CSV export for each BMS — exported by your BMS vendor or integrator, not edited by hand.
4. Optional but very helpful: HVAC documentation for the site (system schematics, P&IDs, equipment lists, naming legends). The wizard uses these to identify systems and components in Step 4.
5. Sensor credentials if you use Airthings or Disruptive Technologies (Client ID + Secret, or Service Account key).

Help is one click away in every step. The "Ask AI about this step" button at the top of each wizard step opens an in-app helper for questions about what you are looking at right now. Use it instead of guessing.

Step 1 — Site Information

Pick a unique site name. It is used in URLs, in the cluster, and in our internal logs, so the rules are strict: lowercase letters, digits, "-" and "." only, and it must start and end with an alphanumeric character. Examples: "narvik-vagle", "skole.bergen", "office42". The same screen lists any drafts you started earlier. Pick a draft to resume rather than starting fresh.

About drafts: you can have several in flight at once. Drafts are not auto-deleted, so the resume list grows over time — delete the ones you abandoned so the list stays useful. The site name is fixed once a site is deployed (it is part of URLs and cluster identifiers); if you picked a name you regret before deploy, the safest move is to delete the draft and start a new one with the right name.

Step 2 — Integrations & Discovery

For every BMS or sensor system the site uses, add a credential, attach any site-specific overrides such as the Plant ID for IWMAC, and click Verify. For sensor providers such as Airthings and Disruptive Technologies, you also choose which discovered devices belong to this site. A green tick on every provider you intend to use means you are ready for the next step. You can also continue without all credentials in place — discovery and the operational snapshot will be unavailable until you come back and add them, but the rest of the wizard will work.

For BMS providers that support write-back, the credential card also shows a "Request Watchdog protection (recommended)" checkbox. Leave it ticked unless you have a specific reason not to use the watchdog — it is the safety mechanism that backs setpoint writes. The BMS-specific guide for your provider explains exactly what the watchdog does and what changes if you turn it off; the short version is that turning it off makes Step 7 a no-op for that provider.

Step 3 — Upload Documents

Upload the BMS address list CSVs, meaning the raw exports from each provider, and any HVAC documentation you have for the site: system schematics, P&IDs, equipment lists, and naming legends. If documents already exist for this site, the wizard offers to reuse them instead of re-uploading. The platform indexes everything here and uses it in the next step to identify systems and components.

Step 4 — Review Detected Items

The Wizard runs over the uploads from Step 3 and proposes the systems, such as ventilation units, heating zones, and cooling circuits, and the components, such as fans, dampers, sensors, and valves, that exist on the site. Your job here is to review the suggestions, accept what is right, and uncheck what is wrong. Use the search box to filter and the "Tagged only" toggle to focus on items the Wizard is confident about. The Wizard can also surface clarifying questions while it runs. Answer them in the questions panel, and it picks up where it left off.

Step 5 — Operational Analysis

For sites with a connected BMS, the platform reads the current state: actual setpoints, current temperatures, and fan modes. It uses that snapshot to produce evidence-based defaults instead of generic ones. For new installations that are not connected yet, you can skip this step and use standard defaults; you can come back and run it later. The snapshot also seeds the watchdog fallback values in Step 7, so it is worth running if the BMS is reachable. This is currently wired for IWMAC; if no IWMAC credential was selected in Step 2, the step explains that and lets you skip it.

Step 6 — Visual Config Editor

The platform turns the systems and components you accepted in Step 4 into a draft control configuration. Step 6 is where you review and refine it: walk through each system, open a component to inspect the data point candidates the platform picked from the address list CSV, adjust the assignment if it chose the wrong point, and confirm the control type for each system. Saving here generates the configuration preview that the next steps deploy.

Step 7 — Watchdog Setup

The watchdog is the safety mechanism that backs setpoint writes: when the platform writes a value to the BMS, the BMS side must have a fallback so it does not stay on the last value we wrote if our service ever stops. Whether Step 7 has anything for you to do depends on the BMS you connected.

1. IWMAC with watchdog enabled (the default): Step 7 walks you through the handoff — download the Watchdog Request CSV, send it to your IWMAC contact, and upload the Endpoints CSV they return. This is the round-trip that often takes days; budget calendar time for it.
2. IWMAC with watchdog unticked in Step 2: Step 7 has nothing to configure. Click Next.
3. Niagara-only sites (no IWMAC credential): Step 7 has nothing to configure — Niagara handles write safety on its own side. Click Next.

See the BMS-specific guide for your provider for what the vendor expects on each side, and for the deeper explanation of why the watchdog matters.

Step 8 — Deploy & Test

There are three actions, in order: Upload to CMS pushes the generated configuration into the platform for validation; Deploy Secrets writes each integration's credentials into the cluster so the live pods can authenticate against the BMS and sensor APIs; Deploy Site rolls out the per-site service. After deployment, the endpoint test panel is available so you can confirm that reads and writes work end to end before you leave the wizard. Read each action's status before pressing the next button.

If something goes wrong

Almost everything in the wizard is recoverable before deploy. The wizard saves a draft after each step, so closing the tab does not lose progress. Inside a step, the Undo button (top of the wizard) reverts your last change. You can also navigate back to a previous step and re-run it — for example, change which devices belong to the site in Step 2 and re-run the analysis in Step 3. Until you press Deploy Site in Step 8, nothing in the cluster has been changed; the site only becomes "real" once that succeeds.

If you started a draft you no longer want, delete it from the resume list in Step 1. If a deployed site needs to come down, that is a separate operation outside the wizard — open the assistant and we will take it from there.