# Developers

Sign in to the [Dashboard](https://dashboard.checkout.com) and select _Developers_ in the left navigation bar to:

- Follow a [quick and interactive guide](https://www.checkout.com/docs/get-started) to your first payment in sandbox.
- Create, update, or delete your API keys and access keys to [manage API authentication](#Manage_API_authentication).
- [Create test data](#Create_test_data) for your sandbox environment.
- View the Checkout.com [service status](#View_service_status).
- Access [developer resources](#Developer_resources).

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## Get started

This quick guide will help you get up and running with payments. We help you create your first keys and make a payment using [Frames](https://www.checkout.com/docs/integrate/frames.md) in our sandbox.

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## Manage API authentication

There are 2 forms of [API authentication](https://www.checkout.com/docs/resources/api-authentication.md) available for you to use: API keys and OAuth 2.0 access keys.

In the Dashboard, you can:

- List and view your keys.
- Create new keys.
- Edit or delete existing keys.

Any user with the Developer or Admin role can view or create keys, but only users with the Account owner role can edit or delete existing keys.

You can only create keys for the entity and its processing channels that you have access to in the Dashboard. This is controlled by your Account owner or Admin role.

To create a key:

1. Sign in to the [Dashboard](https://dashboard.checkout.com).
2. Select _Developers_ in the left navigation bar and open the _Keys_ tab.
3. Select _Create a new key_.
4. Select the type of key you want to create.
5. Give it a description. This will help you identify what the key is used for.
6. Scopes grant access to specific APIs. For secret API and access keys, we automatically assign all scopes by default for convenience. If you want to limit the scopes a key has access to, use the _Customize_ option.
7. Depending on your selected scopes, select an entity and, optionally, a processing channel. By default, a key will be assigned to allow any processing channel. Alternatively, you can manually assign up to 25 processing channels to a single key.
8. Select _Submit_ to create the key. For secret API and access keys, copy the secret value securely – you will only see this value once. Public API keys can be viewed at any time after creation.

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## Create test data

You can create test data for payments, disputes, and refunds to use in your sandbox environment.

> **Note**
>
> Test data creation is currently designed for use by Direct Seller merchants.

You can either create pre-defined sample sets of data with the _Auto add test data_ option, or customize the test data set with the _Add custom test data_ option.

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## View service status

The service status viewer allows you to monitor the status of Checkout.com's various services.

A green marker next to a service indicates that there are no issues, while an amber marker means that there are minor issues. A red marker indicates that an outage has been reported for the specified service.

For more details about our system status reports, contact your account manager or solutions engineer.

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## Developer resources

The developer resources section provides a handy way to access our documentation, API reference, and GitHub repository from a single location.