The teacher, student and admin dashboards: a classroom-ready landing page

When a class of 30 students opens SimplyPrint, they shouldn't see the same screen as the teacher running the lab. The School plan ships a role-aware landing page at /panel/dashboard that automatically renders a different view depending on who's logged in: a focused upload-and-queue page for students, a control centre for teachers, and the same teacher view with a settings shortcut for admins and partners.

This article gives you the full tour: what each dashboard does, who sees what, where it lives in the panel, and how to configure it. Each section has a deeper-dive article linked at the end if you want to go further.

Table of contents

• Who sees which dashboard
• Where to find the dashboard
• The student dashboard at a glance
• The teacher dashboard at a glance
• The admin / partner variant
• The shared bulletin board
• Configuring everything
• Plan and feature requirements
• Related articles

Who sees which dashboard

SimplyPrint picks the dashboard for you based on the role on your school account. There's no role switcher and no separate sign-in.

• Students see the student dashboard. On a School account, every user who is not a teacher and not an admin is treated as a student by default. There is no separate "student" rank to assign.
• Teachers see the teacher dashboard. A user is a teacher when the Teacher checkbox on their account row is ticked, or when they hold a rank that grants teacher behaviour.
• Admins and account partners see the same surface as the teacher dashboard, plus a direct Settings page shortcut in the help card. The org owner is always treated as an admin.

The decision is made server-side at every page load, so as soon as a user is promoted to teacher, they get the new dashboard on their next page reload.

Where to find the dashboard

The dashboard lives at /panel/dashboard. On a School account it gets a dedicated entry in the left sidebar.

When a student logs in for the first time, they're auto-redirected from the default printers / files landing page straight to the dashboard, so they never have to ask "where do I click first?". Teachers and admins keep the standard landing behaviour.

The student dashboard at a glance

The student view is built around the three things a student actually needs: upload a file, see their queue, know who to ask for help.

In the left column: a greeting, a big drag-and-drop file upload zone, and the student's queued prints. In the right column: the classroom bulletin board, an Academy CTA, the teacher-curated quick links, a list of teachers and admins to contact, and a help card.

Read more in The student dashboard explained.

The teacher dashboard at a glance

The teacher view is built around the classroom workflow: approve new students, grant quota when someone runs out, see which printers need attention.

In the left column: a greeting, pending student approvals, pending print approvals, the quota requests inbox, the classroom bulletin and the live school queue. In the right column: fleet status cards (next finish, idle, paused, attention, offline, ongoing, pending), a file upload card and a help card.

Read more in The teacher dashboard explained.

The admin / partner variant

Admins, account partners and the org owner see the same surface as the teacher dashboard. The only difference is a small Settings page link in the help card that drops them straight into the School settings, so they don't have to dig through menus to tweak a dashboard widget.

If you've added a partner to your school account, they'll see this view automatically.

The shared bulletin board

The bulletin is a teacher-to-student broadcast that shows up on both dashboards. Teachers post, students read. Use it for printer outages, project deadlines, open-lab hours, a new build plate that just arrived, or anything else the whole class needs to know.

Students can't author or edit bulletin posts, which keeps the board a clean announcement channel rather than another chat feed.

Read more in Posting and managing the classroom bulletin board.

Configuring everything

Both dashboards are fully configurable from one settings screen at Settings -> Organisation -> School settings -> Dashboards. You can:

• Enable or disable each dashboard independently
• Pick which widgets appear on each side (file upload, queue, bulletin, status cards, quick links, and so on)
• Choose which status cards the teacher sees (next finish, idle, paused, attention, offline, ongoing, pending)
• Add quick-link buttons that show up on the student dashboard
• Hand-pick which teachers and admins appear in the student's "Your teachers" widget
• Preview either dashboard before saving, exactly as a student or teacher would see it

The system always keeps at least one widget enabled so the dashboard never goes blank, and ships sensible defaults so a brand-new School account works on day one.

Two articles cover the settings in detail:

• Setting up your school dashboards covers the master enable toggle, the widget checklists, status cards and preview mode.
• Customising dashboard links and the "who to ask" list covers the quick-links bucket and the admin selector.

Plan and feature requirements

The dual teacher / student dashboard is exclusive to the School plan. Several related features also live on the School plan and feed into the dashboards.

If you're on Free, Basic, Pro or Print Farm, the dashboard isn't available — but you can still upgrade to School to unlock it. The full plan comparison lives on the pricing page.

Related articles

• Setting up your school dashboards
• The student dashboard explained
• The teacher dashboard explained
• Posting and managing the classroom bulletin board
• Customising dashboard links and the "who to ask" list

Updated on: 24/05/2026