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Customising dashboard links and the "who to ask" list

Customising dashboard links and the "who to ask" list


Two admin tools turn the student dashboard from a generic landing page into something tailored to your classroom: the Quick links bucket and the Teachers and admins selector. Both live under Settings -> Organisation -> School settings -> Dashboards, and both apply to the student dashboard only.


This guide covers how to set both up, what students see, and the small design decisions worth thinking through before you start adding links.


Both tools are part of the School plan and require the Manage school settings permission (org_school_settings_manage).


Table of contents

  • Why these two tools matter
  • Adding a quick link
  • Highlighted vs regular links
  • Editing, reordering and deleting links
  • The "Your teachers and admins" selector
  • Pre-built recipes
  • What students see
  • Related articles


Why these two tools matter

By default the student dashboard shows a generic Academy CTA and a list of every teacher and admin on the account. That's fine for a single classroom, but a large school with multiple labs, year groups or design teachers needs more curation.


Quick links and the admin selector exist to do exactly that: surface the resources and contacts that are relevant to this classroom, hide everything else.


Dashboards configurator with links and admins selectors


In the student dashboard configurator, find the Quick links section. Click Add link and a small editor opens with four fields:


  1. Title — what shows on the button or list row.
  2. URL — the link target. Can be internal (a SimplyPrint URL) or external.
  3. Icon — pick from the built-in Font Awesome icon browser. There's no upload step.
  4. Highlighted — a checkbox that decides which bucket the link lands in.


Click Save and the link appears immediately in the configurator and on the student dashboard.


The two buckets render very differently on the student dashboard:


  • Highlighted links become large coloured buttons with the icon you picked. Best used sparingly — three to four at most — for the things you want students to use first.
  • Regular links become a compact list with small icons. Use for everything else: secondary tools, reference docs, your school's design archive.


Think of highlighted links like a pinned shortcut and regular links like a bookmarks folder. If everything is highlighted, nothing is.


There's no hard cap on either bucket, but a student dashboard with 12 highlighted buttons stops feeling curated. Aim for 2 to 4 highlighted and as many regular as you genuinely use.


Each link row in the configurator has edit, reorder and delete handles:


  • Edit re-opens the link editor with the current values pre-filled.
  • Reorder lets you drag links into the order students see them. Highlighted and regular reorder independently.
  • Delete removes the link from the student dashboard immediately.


Deleted links can't be recovered. If you might want them back, leave them in but untick the Highlighted flag to demote them to the regular list, or post a quick-link in the bulletin instead.


The "Your teachers and admins" selector

The contacts widget on the student dashboard shows staff who can help. By default it shows every teacher and admin on the account.


In the dashboards configurator, the Teachers and admins selector lets you hand-pick which staff appear there. Tick the staff you want students to see; leave it empty to show everyone (the default).


Leaving the selector empty is the right answer for most small schools. The hand-picked mode is for larger schools where students should only contact their own teacher rather than every admin in the district.


The widget shows each picked staff member's name, avatar, email and (if they've set one) phone number. There's no per-class scoping — the same list applies to every student. If different year groups need different contacts, run separate SimplyPrint accounts.


Pre-built recipes

A few combinations we've seen schools settle on:


Maker club


  • Highlighted: Tinkercad, your school's project archive.
  • Regular: safety sheet, build plate guide, the maker club Discord.
  • Contacts: one or two teachers running the club.


K-12 STEM class


  • Highlighted: today's project brief, Tinkercad.
  • Regular: a tutorials playlist, the lab calendar.
  • Contacts: the class teacher and the IT admin.


University design studio


  • Highlighted: Fusion 360, the design archive, the brief PDF.
  • Regular: rendering pipeline docs, supplier links, the studio Discord.
  • Contacts: the studio lead and the technician.


What students see

The quick links widget only appears on the student dashboard when at least one link is configured. Highlighted links sit at the top as big coloured buttons; regular links follow as a compact list.


Student dashboard with quick links and contacts populated


If your school doesn't need either tool, leave both empty — the widgets just won't render on the student view.



Updated on: 24/05/2026

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