Open edX Backend: administration

In SAAS and CUSTOM modes the backend registers three models in the Django admin. Together they let you declare dashboards, group them by function, and assign users to those groups. (In DEMO and FREE modes these models are hidden, because dashboards come from Aulasneo’s API and only superusers have access.)

The admin is reached at https://<lms>/admin/ under the panorama_openedx_backend section.

The three models

Dashboard

A single Amazon QuickSight dashboard.

Field

Meaning

dashboard_id

The QuickSight Dashboard ID (primary key).

name

Internal dashboard name (unique).

display_name

Name shown to users in the MFE tab.

priority

Order of appearance in the menu. Lower numbers appear higher.

DashboardType

A group of dashboards, representing a function or an audience.

Field

Meaning

name

The group’s name (primary key).

dashboards

Many-to-many selection of the Dashboard records in this group.

student_view

Available to students. When enabled, these dashboards are offered to students (see the student-view rules in Open edX Backend: Panorama modes).

UserAccessConfiguration

Maps one LMS user to a dashboard group, a QuickSight identity, and a role.

Field

Meaning

user

The LMS user (one-to-one).

dashboard_type

The DashboardType this user may see.

arn

The user’s QuickSight user ARN. If blank, PANORAMA_DEFAULT_USER_ARN is used.

role

READER or AUTHOR. AUTHOR users additionally get the QuickSight console (Studio) tab in the MFE.

Typical setup workflow (CUSTOM mode)

  1. Declare your dashboards. For each QuickSight dashboard you want to expose, add a Dashboard record with its QuickSight ID, a name, a display name, and a priority.

  2. Group them. Create one or more DashboardType records and add the relevant dashboards to each. Enable Available to students on any group that should power the student view (make sure those dashboards are parameterized and filtered per learner, as described in Open edX Backend: Panorama modes).

  3. Assign users. For each user (or role) that should see dashboards, add a UserAccessConfiguration linking the user to a DashboardType, setting their QuickSight ARN (or leaving it blank to use the default), and choosing READER or AUTHOR.

Once configured, the MFE will show each assigned user the dashboards in their group, ordered by priority, plus the Studio tab for authors.

What the backend does with this

When the MFE requests embed URLs, the backend:

  1. Looks up the user’s UserAccessConfiguration to find their dashboard group, ARN, and role.

  2. For each dashboard in the group (ordered by priority), calls QuickSight’s generate_embed_url_for_registered_user for that user ARN and dashboard ID.

  3. Returns the list of dashboards with their short-lived embed URLs. Student-view dashboards additionally get the userId, userFullName, and lms parameters appended.

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