[Music] in this video we'll take a look at how to get started with the graphql Explorer so you can test your queries and assess the outputs if you're using an instance prior to the Washington DC release you can download the graphql Explorer from GitHub by following the directions on the readme page a link is provided in the description of this video if you're using Washington or later you'll find the graphql Explorer pre-installed under all system web services graphql graphql Explorer note that this will start in the main content window I prefer to open it in a new tab let's do a quick tour of the graphql Explorer window there are two main Windows the left is where we enter queries we want to send and the right is where the results are returned in the middle are several icons the most notable is the execute query button which sends the query string to the instance this can also be done with the keyboard shortcut control enter on the far left is the docs icon which provides the documentation Explorer for the apis currently available on the platform if your shows nothing check that the system property shown here is set to true and restart your graphql Explorer after it's enabled you can identify apis drill into schemas and get right down to the fields it's also handy when creating queries as it can show you everything you need to know about that particular item in the documentation section let's click case here and we can see the fields available we'll see how this is very helpful when writing fragments later on the bottom are two sections the first is query variables where we can input variables in Json format when a query is written with parameters the variables are substituted at runtime these are very helpful for making reusable queries which we'll cover in the video on variables the header section also uses Json to send any header name value pairs for example specifying the content type as application Json there are other icons and features available on the graphql Explorer that I invite you to check out but this is enough to get you started with the basic functionality you'll need to follow along with all the upcoming videos