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General usage

FedMS is a web application. The most important navigation elements are described here. Not every element is available to every user — what you see depends on your role(s).

The upper toolbar

The upper toolbar runs across the top of every page and gives you quick access to the application-wide tools.

Element Allowed roles What it does
Shortcuts Any A short menu of your most-used pages. You can configure these in your profile.
Helpdesk Any Help and support. See Help and support.
Dashboards Any Jump between the dashboards your role has access to (your personal dashboard, an event dashboard, the global dashboard, etc.).
User menu (your name) Any Profile, settings, sign out, masquerade (for admins).

The left main menu

The left toolbar is the main navigation. It is collapsible — use the button at the bottom-left to expand or collapse it. We recommend keeping it collapsed most of the time, since the working area is more valuable than the navigation.

The menu has several blocks:

Home

The home icon at the top takes you back to the application home page at any time.

Create new content

The plus icon opens a drop-down for creating new entities. Which options appear depends on your role:

  • Managers: create org, event, session, attachment.
  • Content Managers: also event types, session types, attachment types, task patterns, books, pages.
  • Other roles: usually no create access.

Content overviews

A block of icons that lead to the lists of entities you can see:

  • Orgs — the organizations you can access.
  • Events — upcoming and past events.
  • Sessions — upcoming and past sessions.
  • Users — members across the orgs you can see.
  • Tasks — your tasks and the tasks of people you supervise (if your role permits).
  • Media — files, images, videos uploaded across the instance.

Configuration and administration

Configuration icons appear for users with administrative roles:

  • Manage configuration (Manager / DevOps / Admin)
  • People and permissions (DevOps / Admin)
  • Reports (Manager / DevOps / Admin)
  • Structure (Content Manager / DevOps / Admin)

Each of these expands into deeper menus that you can also reach via direct URL.

Every page has a breadcrumb at the top that shows you where you are in the org → event → session hierarchy. Use it to navigate up.

There is an open request to make event-session breadcrumbs more prominent — see fedms/support#65.

Local tasks (tabs)

Most entity pages have a row of tabs under the title:

  • View — the canonical view of the entity.
  • Edit — the edit form (if you have permission).
  • Members — the membership list (on groups).
  • Content — the content attached to the group.
  • Tasks — the tasks for the group (or your tasks for it).
  • Operations — admin operations (delete, clone, etc.) where applicable.

The set of tabs varies by entity type and role.

Forms in modals

By default, FedMS opens many forms in modal dialogs rather than navigating to a separate page. This keeps you in context.

One known caveat: a modal cannot contain another modal (e.g. a media field that needs to open the media library). This is being tracked at fedms/components/eca#7.

Language switcher

If your instance has multiple languages enabled, a language switcher appears in the toolbar. Switching language re-renders the interface and any translated content. Your preferred language can also be set permanently in your profile.

Keyboard navigation

The standard browser shortcuts (Tab, Shift+Tab, Enter, Esc on modals) work throughout FedMS. The Gin admin theme is accessible — if you find a place where keyboard navigation breaks, please open an issue.

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