Using the Admin Panel
The Admin Panel is built from categories, each holding items that open a screen.
Where to find it
Architect Panel → Layout & Pages:
- Admin Panel Builder — categories, then View Items on a row
Categories and items
A category has a name, a description and an order. An item within it has a friendly name, a description, an icon, the action it performs, its order, and optionally a count and criteria deciding when it appears.
The counts are the useful part
An item can display a number — how many records are waiting, how many are overdue, how many need approval. That turns the panel from a menu into a dashboard somebody can read in a second.
An item without a count is a link. An item with one tells you whether you need to click it.
Choose counts that prompt action
"Requests awaiting approval" is worth showing. "Total records" is not — it goes up forever and nobody acts on it.
The test: would a person do something differently because that number changed?
Items can be conditional
Criteria decide whether an item appears at all. That is how the panel stays relevant for different people rather than showing everybody everything.
Order by frequency
What people do daily at the top, weekly next, occasional last. The panel should reward the common case rather than presenting an alphabetical inventory.
Write real descriptions
The description is what tells somebody whether this is the screen they want. "Users" is a label; "Add, disable and reset staff accounts" is an answer.
Icons help more than they look
People navigate a familiar panel by shape and position rather than by reading. Consistent, distinguishable icons make a frequently used panel much faster.
Keep it short
A panel with sixty items is a panel people search rather than read. Four or five categories with a handful of items each is a panel somebody learns.
Permissions apply per item
Items carry their own permissions, reached from the row. So the panel can be one definition showing different things to different people, rather than several panels.
Worked example
An organisation runs four categories — Users, Queues, Reporting and Data — with counts on the three items that represent work waiting. Staff check the panel each morning and act on the numbers, which replaced a daily e-mail nobody read.
Recommendations
- Counts on anything representing work waiting.
- Order by how often people use it.
- Descriptions that answer a question, not labels.
- Four or five categories, not sixty items.