Starting off with this project, I knew it would need a strong admin interface. One of the problems I mentioned initially is that all of the PD troubleshooting and administration went through me. That became a big burden, especially when presenters needed something done.
The new platform includes a SuperAdmin area which can be used to manage events and users. This role can be given to anyone, so it’ll be nice to have some other team members who are able to make system-level changes.
Navigation
The navigation menu includes two options for SuperAdmins: Event Management and User Management. I decided to split it into two different views because they were getting very complex when combined. SuperAdmins can also create events, just like presenters.
Event Management
SuperAdmins have access to all events in the system. They can see registration details and update attendance. From time to time, a presenter may miss a person who was actually there, so the admin can go in and mark that person as having attended after the fact.
The SuperAdmin event controls are nearly the same as the Presenter controls with two major differences:
First, SuperAdmins can add any user as a presenter to an event. Presenters can only search through users who are already presenters in the platform. SuperAdmins override that and can add any registered user. When that user is made a presenter, their user role is also updated and they’ll be granted the Presenter permissions detailed in my last post.
Second, SuperAdmins can completely delete events. Presenters could set an event status as ‘inactive,’ which hides it from the UI, but doesn’t remove any of the data. The SuperAdmin can nuke the entire event along with registrations, attendance, and other associated data.
Because the deletion is completely irreversible, this has an extra confirmation step before actually performing the operation.
User Management
When a user registers for the site, their account is set by default to User. This limits what controls the general user has (again, detailed in another post) and lets people sign up without interaction from presenters or admins.
There are times when users need to graduate up a level. The User Management area allows admins to change user roles with a dropdown menu. This role change is immediate and on the next login (or page refresh), the user permissions will update.
SuperAdmins can make edits to users within the platform. Their login matches their Google account, but maybe they want their first name to be displayed differently. Or, more importantly, they didn’t register for an event that they actually showed up for. If an edit is necessary, the SuperAdmin can do all of those things in the sidebar. This is the same sidebar mentioned in the post on presenters with different form fields thrown in there.
I decided not to all admins to disenroll a user from an event because we want to be able to look at what was registered for vs what was actually attended. There isn’t a view for this report yet, but we’ll be able to do that in the future.
In the end…
This was a project of necessity to help us move forward as a cohesive team but it was also one of significant learning for me. This is my real first full-stack project from the database up to the frontend. The entire project is on Github, and while it isn’t ready for general distribution yet, you can look at the design from the code level.
There are several features I’ve added since starting these posts (duplicating events, UI updates, mobile styles, accessibility styles, etc) that I won’t be visiting specifically. I’m going to do one last post on technical aspects and explain some of my design and code choices if you’re interested.
If this is something you’d like to consider using in your school or district, I’d be happy to set up a demo to walk through the platform as a whole. Get in touch if you’d like to do that.
