# Using the admin

This part of the manual is for the people who work in the admin: what
each screen does and how to find your way. What you see depends on
your account. A resource, a field or a button you may not use is not
shown at all.

## Signing in

How you sign in depends on how your organization deployed the admin:

- **Standalone** — the admin's own sign-in page asks for your e-mail
  address and password. If you opened a link while signed out, you land
  on that page once signed in.
- **Hosted** — your application's own sign-in page. After signing in you
  are taken to the admin.

An account that the admin does not admit is told so on the sign-in
page. When your session expires, the next page you open asks you to
sign in again.

## The shell

- **Navigation drawer** — the dashboard, then every resource you may
  list, grouped (for example *Catalog*, *Sales*), then custom pages,
  **Jobs** and **Settings**. A coloured count beside a resource is a
  *badge*: how many of its records need attention, such as products low
  on stock. Badges refresh every minute and after each navigation.
- **App bar** — **Search**, the notifications inbox, the light/dark
  theme toggle, and your account menu with **Sign out**.
- **Toggle navigation** — the menu button collapses the drawer, which
  it does on its own on narrow screens.

## The dashboard

The home page shows the *main* dashboard, when your application has
one: cards of figures, trends, breakdowns and short tables. A card with
several ranges (7 days, 30 days, 90 days, a year) has a range selector;
a table card may link to the full list with **See all**. Every resource
is in the navigation drawer.

## Search

Press <kbd>Ctrl</kbd>+<kbd>K</kbd> (<kbd>⌘</kbd>+<kbd>K</kbd> on a Mac),
or **Search** in the app bar, and type. Matching records appear under
*Records* — with a subtitle such as a SKU, and a thumbnail when the
record has an image — followed by the resources and custom pages whose
names match. Choose one to open it.

## Notifications

The bell in the app bar is your inbox. Background jobs and actions leave
a notification there when they finish — an export ready to download, an
import with its failed rows. Open one to go where it points, or
**Mark all read**.

## Jobs

**Jobs** lists your background work: large exports, imports and actions
that run in the background. Each shows its kind, resource, status
(*queued*, *running*, *done*, *failed*), progress and start time. Open a
job to follow its progress; a finished export or an import with failed
rows offers **Download**.

## Settings

**Settings** holds the groups of values your account may manage, such
as *Branding*: the admin's title, logo, colours, default theme and
footer line. Save a group and it applies at once.

## Acting as another user

An administrator allowed to impersonate sees **Impersonate** on a
user's page. While you act as someone else, a banner says so, and
everything you do is recorded as theirs with you as the impersonator.
**Stop impersonating** returns you to your own account.

## See also

- {doc}`lists` — finding and changing records in bulk.
- {doc}`records` — viewing, editing and deleting one record.