The teacher dashboard explained

The teacher dashboard at /panel/dashboard is the classroom control centre. Approve new student sign-ups, grant quota when a student runs out, see which printers need attention, broadcast a message to the whole class, review pending prints — all without leaving the page.

This article walks through every widget on the teacher view, what it does, and how it ties into the rest of SimplyPrint.

Table of contents

• Who sees the teacher dashboard
• The greeting and layout
• Pending student approvals
• Pending print approvals
• Quota requests inbox
• Fleet status cards
• The school queue
• The classroom bulletin
• File upload
• Help card
• The admin / partner variant
• Related articles

Who sees the teacher dashboard

A user gets the teacher dashboard when they meet any of these conditions on the School account:

• The Teacher checkbox is ticked on their account row (set via the set_user_teacher permission).
• They are the account owner.
• They are an account partner.
• They hold a rank with admin permissions.

Promotion takes effect the next time the user reloads any page. There's no impersonation step or sign-out required — flipping the Teacher checkbox is enough.

The greeting and layout

The page opens with a time-of-day greeting using the teacher's first name, then splits into two columns: an 8-wide left column with all the actionable inboxes, and a 4-wide right column with status cards, a file upload card and a help card.

Pending student approvals

If you require teachers to approve new student sign-ups (a common school setup), every pending sign-up surfaces right at the top of the teacher dashboard. Approve or deny in one click; no need to open the Users page.

Each row shows the student's name, email, requested rank and sign-up time. The widget uses the same Pending users table as the main Users page, so any rank-specific approval rules you've set apply here too.

Pending print approvals

If your school requires teacher approval before students can print (the queue approval workflow), every queue item waiting on you shows up in this widget. Click a row to open the review modal — see the g-code thumbnail, the print time and material cost, the submitter's quota status, the comments thread — then approve, deny, or send back for revision.

The widget uses the same review modal as the queue page, so a print approved here is identical to one approved from /panel/queue. The only difference is that you don't have to leave the dashboard to do it.

Quota requests inbox

When a student runs out of print quota or balance and asks for more, the request lands in the Quota requests widget. Each request shows the student, the quota type they're asking about, the amount, an optional message, and approve / deny / reply controls.

You can:

• Grant a specific amount (defaults to the deficit).
• Deny the request.
• Reply with a message that goes back to the student.
• Notify the student about the resolution (a checkbox you can toggle per request).
• Batch select several requests and resolve them together.
• Group by student or quota type for faster review.

Resolved requests collapse into a history list so the inbox stays focused on what's pending.

Fleet status cards

The right column starts with a strip of compact printer-status tiles. Each tile counts a slice of the fleet so you can spot the printer that needs help before a student has to flag it:

• Next finish — printer with the soonest finish time
• Idle — printers ready but not currently printing
• Paused — paused print jobs
• Attention — printers needing a user action (filament out, door open, error)
• Offline — printers that aren't reachable
• Ongoing — currently printing
• Pending — queue items waiting for a printer

You can hide individual tiles in settings (see the "Setting up your school dashboards" article linked below) if a particular tile isn't useful for your classroom.

The school queue

A compact queue widget that shows the live print queue across the class. Each row shows the file, owner, queue group, status and (for the teacher) a start-print action. It uses the same data as the full queue page, just trimmed to a focused widget view.

For deeper queue management — bulk operations, reordering, group editing — open the full queue page at /panel/queue.

The classroom bulletin

The bulletin board widget shows every bulletin message the teachers have posted, plus add / edit / delete controls. Use it to broadcast announcements to the whole class.

Students see the same widget on their dashboard but can only read, not write. Read more in the classroom bulletin article linked at the bottom of this page.

File upload

Teachers also get a file upload card on the right side, with the same drag-and-drop behaviour as the student version. Useful for when you want to demo a file or queue a print on a student's behalf.

Help card

The help card has a shortcut to the in-product help flow, Crisp chat and email contact.

The admin / partner variant

Admins, account partners and the org owner see exactly the same surface as the teacher dashboard, with one addition: a Settings page link in the help card that drops them straight into the School settings configurator.

The Settings link is gated on the org_school_settings_manage permission, so it only appears for users who can actually edit the dashboard configuration. If you don't see it, you probably don't have that permission — ask your account admin.

Related articles

• The teacher, student and admin dashboards: a classroom-ready landing page
• The student dashboard explained
• Setting up your school dashboards
• Posting and managing the classroom bulletin board
• Customising dashboard links and the "who to ask" list

Updated on: 24/05/2026