On this page
As a platform admin, you run the whole training platform: the organizations on it, the people in them, the course catalog, and the storefront your visitors see. This article explains how everything fits together and gives you a tour of the admin panel.
Where to find it
Sign in at /login on your platform's main website, then open the admin panel at /admin. The panel has a sidebar on the left (Dashboard, Users, Organizations, Courses, and so on) and a top bar with your setup progress and account menu.
Organization admins and group leaders use a different panel (/org-admin), and learners use /learner. You will normally only work in /admin.
How the platform is structured
Your platform is a container for everything below it:
- Your platform holds the course catalog, products, themes, plans, and settings, plus every organization.
- Organizations are customer companies on your platform. Each one has its own website address, its own admins, users, and groups, and a plan that controls which features it gets.
- Groups are collections of users, usually inside an organization. When you create a group in the admin panel, the organization field is optional: leaving it blank creates a platform-level group that belongs to no organization.
- Users are the individual accounts: learners, group leaders, and organization admins.
The sidebar also separates Users from Administrators. Administrators are your own platform staff: they belong to no organization and never count against any plan limits, so they are managed apart from the billable Users list.
One naming note: learners may be labeled "Student" in menus and reports. Role display names are configured per platform, so what you see can differ from the internal role name.
The domain model
Three kinds of website addresses matter:
- Your main site. Your platform's primary domain serves the public storefront (/courses, /events, and so on) and the /admin panel.
- Organization subdomains. Each organization gets its own site, by default as a subdomain of your domain (for example, acme.your-domain.com, built from the organization's slug).
- Custom domains. An organization can instead be served on a domain of its own (for example, training.company.com), once its DNS points at the platform and the domain is verified.
Each organization's site carries that organization's branding and theme, so it can look like a completely separate product. See /knowledge/tenant/organizations for how domains are set up and verified.
Sessions are per website address
Signing in is tied to the exact website address you signed in on. Being signed in on your main site does not sign you in on an organization's subdomain or custom domain; if you open an organization's site, you will appear signed out there. Accounts themselves are also scoped per site, so the same email address can exist as separate accounts on different organization sites.
When you need to work inside an organization as if you were its admin, do not try to reuse your own password on their site. Instead, open the organization in /admin and use the Sign in as Admin button, which starts a session on their site for you. Details are in /knowledge/tenant/organizations.
A tour of the admin panel
The sidebar is organized roughly like this (exact labels shown; some items only appear if you have the matching permission or add-on):
- People and structure: Dashboard, Users, Administrators, Organizations, Groups
- Learning content: Courses (All Courses, Categories, Listing Approvals), Quizzes (Question Bank, Categories), Grading, Evaluations, Documents, Media Library
- Commerce: Products (All Products, Categories, Certifications), Training Packages, Coupons, Access Codes, Orders, Shipments, Enrollments, Subscription Plans (Plans, Add-Ons), Billing & Invoices
- Events and tracking: Events (All Events, Venues, Organizers), Attendance, Compliance, Reports, Certificates (Templates, Issued)
- Communication and support: Support Tickets, Inquiries, Blog
- Appearance and configuration: Themes, Settings
Settings opens a page with its own left-hand sections, including Branding (name, logos, colors), Email (sender identity, delivery provider, templates), Stripe (payment keys), Tax, and Webhooks.
Why did this happen?
Why do I appear signed out on an organization's website?
Sessions are per website address. Your sign-in on the main site never carries over to an organization's subdomain or custom domain. This is by design: each organization's site is an independent, white-labeled property. Use Sign in as Admin from the organization's page in /admin when you need to get in.
Why is a menu item missing from my sidebar?
Most sidebar items are gated by a permission, and several are gated by an add-on as well: Events needs the Events & Ticketing add-on, Blog needs the Blog add-on, Training Packages needs the Custom Training Packages add-on, and Certificates > Templates needs the Custom Certificate Templates add-on. If an item is missing, check your role's permissions and your installed add-ons (Subscription Plans > Add-Ons).
Why do learners show up as "Student"?
The default display label for the learner role is "Student". The wording is configured per platform by your provider, so screens, emails, and PDFs use whatever labels your platform has set. The underlying role and its permissions do not change.
What is the difference between Users and Administrators?
Both open a user list, but Administrators is narrowed to your platform staff. Administrators belong to no organization and never count against a plan, which is why they are kept apart from the billable Users list.
Why does the same email address appear on more than one account?
Accounts are scoped to the website address they were created on. For example, making an existing user the admin of an organization creates a separate admin account on that organization's domain with the same name and email. The original account is untouched; it is a parallel login, not a move.
Related
- Initial setup checklist
- Managing organizations
- Users, roles, and permissions
- Storefront and themes
- Add-ons, reports, and support
Stuck on something this article does not cover? Reach out through support and we will help.