Learn Sentinel, one step at a time
Short, illustrated guides for every task: create your organization, report a problem in the field, launch an inspection campaign or adjust what your team can do.
Video tutorials
8 steps · 34 videos · 2 h 11 minA step-by-step path, in the order you set up a network in Sentinel. Start with the first step, or jump straight to the one you need.
Getting started with Sentinel
Create your account, your workspace and import your trails.
In the article “Your first sign-in: linking your account to a trail site”Get started
Create your organization, import your trails and invite your team.
- 01What Sentinel shows when a brand-new account has no site yet, and the two ways to get one: create your own from a computer, or get invited.WM
- 02Paste a message into your AI, or add Sentinel to Claude once and for all: it guides you step by step from this documentation, tutorial videos included.WM
- 03The full flow from mobile or the Web, what deletion really erases, and what happens to a trail site you own.WM
- 04The 30-day Pro trial, the four plans and what they include, the payment method at Stripe, cancelling and resuming, read-only mode and invoices.WM
- 05Work for more than one trail network? Jump from one to the next from the keyboard: ⌘K, a few letters of the name, Enter.W
In the field
Report, document and complete work from your phone, even without coverage.
- 06From the + button to the saved task: the type, the location, the photo and the form, screen by screen — plus the case of a stretch of trail and of an area with no signal.M
- 07Add zones, lines and photo points to a task's map so people see the size of the job before they head out.WM
- 08Draw freehand on a photo before attaching it to a task, a structure or a message.M
- 09What you can read and do without a connection, how the sync queue restarts on its own, and what happens when there's a conflict.M
- 10What a marker on the map tells you, what a card in the list tells you, and how the list is ordered.M
- 11The seven reference sets Sentinel downloads onto your phone so the map works with no coverage, and how to force an update.M
- 12Check that position tracking is working, and set GPS accuracy — what it really changes about which trail a task gets attached to.M
Run the work
Track progress, plan the work and measure what got done.
- 13The two view modes, the list groupings, folders, and the button that projects a group onto the map.W
- 14Upload a photo taken in the field — Sentinel reads its GPS location and suggests the nearby trails.W
- 15Combine status, priority, type, trail, person and date to isolate exactly the tasks you care about.WM
- 16A project gathers tasks, works out its own progress and status, and is tracked on a kanban, on the map or in statistics, on the web as on the phone.WM
- 17Verify what the public sends you, turn it into a task or refuse it, and group in one go the reports describing the same problem.WM
- 18The network's state on the left, what got done over the period on the right, a per-trail table, and exactly what each number means.W
- 19Record the hours worked, for a whole crew in one go, each at their own role and rate — and fix an entry that went in wrong.WM
- 20Read the whole team's hours, open one person's timesheet, fix entries in bulk, close the pay period and export the Excel file.W
Checklists
Repeat the same checks across the whole network, season after season.
Structures
Inventory bridges, signs and boardwalks, and follow their condition over time.
Communicate
Keep every exchange attached to the task or structure it belongs to.
- 23Create a condition board, keep it current from the field, and embed it on your website with the widget.WM
- 24Groomed, icy, muddy: besides Open, Work in progress or Closed, show the state of each trail with your own states, an icon, a color and a name in French and English.WM
- 25One thread per task, structure, project or checklist. Mentions, replies, reactions, photos — and exactly who gets notified.WM
- 26Three channels, one setting per kind of event, and the full matrix of what Sentinel can send you.WM
- 27Give a contractor, a municipality or a neighbouring club access to a single task — map, photos and GPS file — without creating an account for them.WM
- 28Let trail users report a fallen tree or a broken plank, with no account and no email — and choose what they can consult in return.WM
- 29Create a PDF map of your network as a poster, a sheet or a folded map: your trails, your points of interest, the emergency line and a QR code to your conditions, in your colors, with an always up-to-date public link.W
Configure
Adapt types, trails and conditions to how your organization works.
- 30Import your GPX tracks, sort them by activity and difficulty. Almost everything else in Sentinel hangs off them.W
- 31Biking, hiking, cross-country skiing, ATV, snowmobile — each activity has its own trails, tasks and types. Here's how to turn them on and switch between them.WM
- 32Difficulty levels give trails their symbol and their colour on every map. Here's how to set them, reorder them, and what deleting one breaks.WM
- 33The nine predefined types, creating custom ones, picking icons, and why activities decide what shows up.WM
- 34Define your structure types, write the questionnaire that scores them, set automatic rescheduling and the PV-001, PV-002 numbering.WM
- 35Your organization's record in Sentinel: the name and logo your crew and the public see, the address that places your map and goes on your invoices, the billing email and the unit for every distance.WM
- 36Place your network's landmarks on the map, from parking to first aid: more than fifty signs, a name in each language, public or team-only visibility, and the same points on the web, in the app and in public mode.WM
Team and permissions
Manage members, groups and what each person can see or change.
- 37The Members section is your team. Invite by email, pick the role, and decide which activities the person can reach.W
- 38Gather members under a name and a colour, then assign a task to the group instead of naming someone.W
- 39A role bundles 24 interlinked permissions. Here's how to read one at a glance, change it without breaking something else, and avoid locking yourself out.W
- 40A kanban per member and per group to assign tasks in one gesture, and "My planning" to see your own.WM
- 41Describe your trades and their hourly rate once, give each member a role, and the time logged on your tasks prices itself.W
Ask your AI about Sentinel
ChatGPT, Claude or another AI can guide you through Sentinel using this documentation: the steps, the link to the right article and the tutorial video when there is one.
Copy this message
Help me use Sentinel, the trail maintenance software. First read https://trail-sentinel.com/en/assistant.md and follow its instructions.
Paste it into your AI
Any AI that can read a web page: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Le Chat.
Open in ChatGPTAsk your question
“How do I create a task on my phone?” · “Where do I see the crew's hours?”
Using Claude? Add Sentinel once and for all: every conversation will have it, without pasting the message again.
Add to ClaudeOn the web, in Checklists (left bar, under General):
- Click New checklist.
- Give it a name, for example “Summer opening 2026”.
- Pick a template, or type your items: culverts, blazes, hazard trees…
- Every trail is selected by default: uncheck the ones it doesn't concern.
- Click Create checklist. It starts right away.
Full guide: Checklists › Creating a checklist
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