Administrator guide¶
This section is for site administrators and Content Managers. It covers everything you need to configure, operate, and customize a FedMS instance — short of writing PHP code. For developer-level work, see the Developer guide.
The Administrator guide covers two distinct kinds of work:
| Site administrator (DevOps / Admin role) | Content Manager / Manager |
|---|---|
| Email transport, system settings, users, permissions, recipes, monitoring, backups. | Event types, session types, attachment types, task patterns, books, page content. |
In practice, the same person often holds both hats on a small instance. On larger instances they are different people.
In this section¶
Configuration¶
- Settings overview — the configuration surface of a FedMS instance.
- Email transport — outbound mail setup.
- Email templates — the templates that customer notifications use (when the Send Email recipe is installed).
- System settings — date formats, cron schedule, file handling.
Users and permissions¶
- Site roles — the instance-wide roles.
- Group roles — the roles inside orgs, events, and sessions.
- Permissions matrix — the full role × permission table.
Content types¶
- Event types — defining your event bundles.
- Session types — defining your session bundles.
- Attachment types — defining your attachment categories.
Workflow¶
- Task patterns — authoring task templates.
- Books and content — authoring book pages and other content.
- Webforms — using webforms inside FedMS.
Optional features¶
- Recipes — installing and configuring the optional features (Send Email, Zoom Video, Attachment Recording).
- Reports — running reports and exporting data.
Where everything lives¶
| Area | Admin URL |
|---|---|
| Site-wide configuration | /admin/config |
| Structure (event/session/attachment types, paragraphs, fields) | /admin/structure |
| People (users) | /admin/people |
| Permissions | /admin/people/permissions |
| Task patterns | /admin/structure/fedms-task-pattern |
| Reports | /admin/reports |
| ECA models | /admin/config/workflow/eca |
Operational notes¶
A FedMS instance is a real Drupal installation. The standard Drupal
admin tools apply — caches, performance, logging, cron — and they are
all under /admin/config/development and /admin/reports.
If you need to drop into a shell to run Drush or look at logs, the L3D environment is the supported way on developer machines. On the managed SaaS, the LakeDrops operations team handles this; you should not need a shell.
A few golden rules¶
- Never edit config in production by hand unless you intend to re-export it back to the source repo. Otherwise the next deployment will overwrite it.
- Always test recipes in dev first. Some recipes have side effects (installing modules, modifying mail settings) that you don't want to discover in production.
- Backups before structural changes. Adding or removing fields on a content type, changing a paragraph type — make sure a recent backup exists.
- Read the issue tracker. Many "how do I do X" questions have been answered in the GitLab issues.