Getting Started

Let us guide you through the initial process of setting up your account, then take your first steps in Terra with a set of hands-on tutorials that will equip you to strike out on your own.
GettingStarted Hero

Welcome to the Terra Community Workbench

The Terra Community Workbench is made freely available to the scientific community by the Broad Institute in collaboration with Microsoft and Verily. It is a self-service application that allows you to access and import data, run analysis tools on the cloud, and collaborate. Storage, compute and egress costs are billed directly by the cloud provider (Google Cloud details listed below, Microsoft Azure details forthcoming); there is no markup for the use of the Community Workbench.

From signing up to creating your first workspace

Create account1

Create an account

This requires a Google identity, which must be either a Gmail account or another email associated with a Google account (personal or G Suite). Go sign up now or view detailed instructions.

SetUpBilling2

Set up billing

Google will bill you directly for any cloud usage charges, so you need to set up a Google billing account and link it to a Terra project. See all options or view how to get free credits from Google.

CreateWorkspace3

Create a workspace

Once you have a billing project set up, you will be able to create new workspaces or clone existing workspaces. Learn more about working with workspaces in this doc or watch the video.

Orientation resources help you get started and keep running.

Would you like to review options for accessing or importing data and running tools in Terra, or get acquainted with basic cloud terminology, before moving on to some hands-on tutorials?Have a look at these summary resource guides, or check out our playlist of introductory videos on YouTube.

Practice doing real work with these hands-on tutorials

Each tutorial consists of a pre-loaded workspace (login required), a set of written instructions available separately, and a video recording.
DataQuickstart1

Data Quickstart

This tutorial demonstrates how to use data tables to organize your data, run workflows on individual elements of data and on sets of multiple elements, and manage your analyses efficiently at any scale.
Workspace | Documentation | Video

WorkflowsQuickstart2

Workflows Quickstart

This tutorial walks you through configuring a workflow to run on preloaded data, running it and monitoring its progress, then repeating the process on your own data.
Workspace | Documentation | Video

NotebooksQuickstart3

Notebooks Quickstart

This tutorial walks you through importing data into your workspace, starting an interactive Jupyter Notebook environment and running some visualization and analysis using R.
Workspace | Documentation | Video