# Online Dashboard

### What is the Online Dashboard?

The Online Dashboard is where the cloud services behind your **coherence**-based game can be managed. It can be found at <https://coherence.io/dashboard>.

Here are some examples of tasks to perform on the Online Dashboard:

* Create your organization and project for your game
* Start/stop/restart your cloud-based **Replication Server** or **Simulator**
* Enable coherence features such as **player authentication, key-value store, persistence,** and **build sharing**
* Invite teammates to your project
* Cost analysis: view your resource usage and billing forecasts

### Is the Online Dashboard required for development?

While a local [**Replication Server**](https://docs.coherence.io/1.6/manual/replication-server) is available as part of the [**Unity SDK**](https://docs.coherence.io/1.6/getting-started/installation), in order to host multiplayer services like the **Replication Server** in the [**cloud**](https://docs.coherence.io/1.6/hosting/coherence-cloud), your team must have a project in the Online Dashboard. It is up to your project needs when to begin using the cloud services.

### Getting started

Please see the page [Create a free account](https://docs.coherence.io/1.6/getting-started/setup-a-project/test-in-the-cloud) in the Get Started section.

### Accessing Online Dashboard features from Unity

Please see the article on [using the **coherence Cloud** in Unity](https://docs.coherence.io/1.6/hosting/coherence-cloud/coherence-cloud-apis).