# Administrator dashboard

> What the root-account Safe Online Exam Admin dashboard does — recovery, operational-term course connection, and reusable tool presets with bulk rollout.

[Canonical HTML page](https://safeonlineexam.com/docs/operate/administrator)

Root-account administrators get a Canvas-embedded, school-wide dashboard in the
**account navigation** placement, labeled **Safe Online Exam Admin**. It is the
recovery and rollout surface for the whole institution.

<Callout type="warn" title="Access requirements">
  The dashboard requires **both** a signed LTI Administrator role **and** Canvas's
  signed root-account-admin value, plus an administrator OAuth grant. An instructor
  enrollment, a sub-account admin, or a course-level install is intentionally not
  enough. If it is missing or denied, see
  [Troubleshooting → Canvas launch](/docs/troubleshooting/canvas-launch).
</Callout>

## First use [#first-use]

Open **Safe Online Exam Admin** from root-account navigation and complete its
**separate** OAuth authorization. This upgrades your existing Canvas grant with the
administrator scopes — you authorize once and reuse the same refreshable grant in
every Canvas context. Only Canvas-authorized root-account courses appear; the
dashboard browses active courses in bounded, server-filtered pages rather than
importing the full historical catalog.

## What you can do [#what-you-can-do]

<Cards>
  <Card title="Connect courses" description="Validate and connect selected active courses, then initially synchronize their Classic and New Quiz discovery. A term/course picker pages through the account catalog." />

  <Card title="Focus the course view" description="Choose one shared operational enrollment term for the root account; use the preserved historical view when you need past or other courses." />

  <Card title="Recover passwords" description="Controlled, no-store reveal of course and assessment secrets — the value is shown briefly and then disappears automatically." />

  <Card title="Rotate exit passwords & codes" description="Rotate a course exit password, reset an assessment exit password to its effective default, and rotate the protected Canvas access code." />

  <Card title="Toggle SEB per assessment" description="Enable or disable SEB enforcement on a connected assessment, and reset an assessment to its course defaults." />

  <Card title="Reset a course" description="Rebuild a connected course's Safe Online Exam setup after confirming its exact Canvas course ID." />

  <Card title="School tool presets" description="Create reusable, validated tool definitions once and assign them to courses; queue a selected-course or all-course rollout and reconcile in bounded batches." />

  <Card title="Review activity" description="Every mutation is recorded in a secret-free activity view. Reveals and rotations show that they happened, never the value." />
</Cards>

## Course view and reset [#course-view-and-reset]

The **Operational term** is shared by the root account and persists across
browsers and reloads. The configured-course list shows non-concluded connected
courses in that term by default. Choose **Show past and other courses** to inspect
historical connections; changing the term or a course's Canvas status never
deletes a connection. Stored course status is refreshed in bounded batches and
when you connect or manually refresh a course.

Use **Reset course** only when you need to rebuild a course's Safe Online Exam
setup. Enter the exact Canvas course ID to confirm the action. The reset snapshots
the current Canvas access-code state before removing codes, then deletes the local
course policy, assessment settings, outstanding course grants, and school-tool
assignments only after all Canvas changes succeed. It keeps the administrator's
Canvas OAuth grant and the course connection; the next instructor launch starts
guided setup again. Reassign school tools afterward if the rebuilt course needs
them.

If Canvas rejects or cannot confirm a change, the dashboard restores the recorded
access-code state where it can and retains local settings for recovery. If it asks
you to verify before retrying, refresh the course and check every assessment's
Canvas access code first.

## How tool presets behave [#how-tool-presets-behave]

A preset assigned to a course is synchronized into that course's catalog as
**school-managed**: instructors can enable or disable it but cannot silently change
its launch URL or resource access. Updating or deleting a preset synchronizes every
assigned course and invalidates the affected configuration fingerprints — students
in those courses must download a fresh `.seb` file. Quiz-only tool definitions
created by an instructor stay on the assessment and never become course defaults.

The dashboard permits up to 32 school presets per root account and up to 2,000
courses in one bulk-rollout request. For a larger institution, connect and roll out
reviewed batches; each reconcile operation is deliberately bounded.

## Safety model [#safety-model]

Every administrator mutation additionally requires a short-lived action token bound
to your LTI subject, Canvas user, root account, deployment, and current session —
so a stale tab or a replayed request cannot make changes. Password reveals are
no-store and bound to your session. This is why the dashboard is safe to use for
live recovery during an exam window, but you should still prefer routine changes
outside active assessments.