The Document Analysis and Exploitation platform is a sophisticated technical environment that consists of a repository containing document images, implementations of document analysis algorithms, and the results of these algo- rithms when applied to data in the repository. The use of a web- services model makes it possible to set up document analysis pipelines that form the basis for reproducible protocols. Since the platform keeps track of all intermediate results, it becomes an information resource for the analysis of experimental data. This paper provides a tutorial on how to get started using the platform. It covers the technical details needed to overcome the initial hurdles and have a productive experience with DAE.