Overview

This article explains the setting “Hidden Dashboard Timeline Elements For Instructors”. It is found under Main Settings > General Settings > Dashboard Settings > Dashboard Settings and Rights. The setting controls which categories of events are removed from the Timeline area of the dashboard (home page) shown to Teachers (also called Instructors, Educators, Tutors, Professors or Lecturers, depending on the institution’s chosen terminology) after they log in to the portal.

 

What This Setting Does

When a Teacher (Instructor) logs in to the portal, the dashboard (home page) displays a Timeline area that lists upcoming and recent events relevant to that person, such as scheduled online meetings, announcements, birthdays, assessments, quizzes, class sessions, library lending activity, and upcoming examinations.

This setting lets an administrator choose one or more of these event categories and remove them from the Timeline, so Teachers never see them there. Any category that is not selected keeps appearing in the Timeline as normal.

The setting is a multiple-choice list. The available categories that can be hidden are:

• Online Meetings
• Announcements
• Birthdays
• Assessments
• Quizzes
• Sessions
• Library Lending
• Upcoming Examinations

 

If nothing is selected, the Timeline shows all of the categories above, in line with each Teacher’s normal access rights.

 

Where It Is Used

– Menu location: Main Settings > General Settings > Dashboard Settings > Dashboard Settings and Rights > “Hidden Dashboard Timeline Elements For Instructors”.

– Point of effect: The Timeline area of the dashboard (portal home page) that Teachers (Instructors) see immediately after logging in, and every time that page is loaded or refreshed afterwards.

– Who is affected: Only users acting under the Teacher (Instructor) role. It has no effect on what Students, Parents, or Employees see on their own dashboards – each of those audiences has its own separate setting for the same purpose (see Notes below).

 

Business Logic / Behavior

– Hide list, not a delete: the setting only removes items from the Timeline summary. It does not cancel, delete, or restrict the underlying record. For example, hiding Assessments from the Timeline does not remove the Assessment itself; the Teacher can still find and manage it from the relevant menu – it is simply left out of this particular summary view.

– Applies institution-wide: the setting is configured once per institution and applies to every Teacher equally. It cannot currently be set differently per role or per individual user, so all instructors see the same hidden/visible categories.

– Default is “show everything”: until an administrator selects categories here, the Timeline displays all available event types to Teachers.

– Interacts with dashboard layout settings: a separate setting lets an administrator hide entire sections of the Instructor’s dashboard, including the whole Timeline area. If the Timeline section itself is hidden that way, the choices made in this setting have no visible effect, because the whole area disappears. See the Notes section below for this related setting.

– Assumption (not separately confirmed for every scenario): a change to this setting may take a short time to be reflected for a Teacher who is already logged in, since dashboard information is generally refreshed periodically rather than instantly on every visit. After a normal fresh login, the updated setting is applied.

 

Example(s)

Example 1 – Reducing noise for a school with light module usage

Riverside Academy (example institution, used here for illustration only) does not use the library lending module, and its instructors rarely have scheduled Sessions outside of regular timetabled classes. The administrator opens “Hidden Dashboard Timeline Elements For Instructors” and selects Library Lending and Sessions.

From then on, these two categories no longer appear on the Timeline that instructors see on their dashboard, while Announcements, Birthdays, Assessments, Quizzes, Online Meetings and Upcoming Examinations continue to appear as usual.

 

Example 2 – Simplifying the dashboard for a large teaching staff

Example College A (example institution, used here for illustration only) has a large number of instructors and wants their dashboards to focus only on academic events. The administrator selects Birthdays and Online Meetings to hide, because birthday notices are considered unnecessary clutter and online meetings are already tracked through a separate calendar tool.

After saving the setting, instructors’ Timelines no longer show birthday or online meeting notices, while assessment, quiz, and examination reminders remain visible.

 

When to Use

When to Enable (select a category to hide)

– A module or activity type (for example Library Lending) is not actively used by the institution, so related notices are irrelevant noise.

– The teaching staff is large, and the institution wants to keep the Timeline focused on the most important academic events.

– A category is already tracked through another tool or process, and repeating it on the Timeline is considered redundant.

– The institution prefers not to surface certain personal information (for example, birthdays) on a work dashboard.

 

When to Disable (leave a category unselected, or remove it from the hidden list)

– Instructors rely on that category to plan their day-to-day work, for example Upcoming Examinations or Assessments, which help with preparation and grading schedules.

– The institution wants instructors to be immediately aware of new Online Meetings or Announcements as soon as they log in.

– There is no specific reason to hide the category, in which case leaving it visible is the safer default.

 

Notes

K-12 and Higher Education Mode

No practical difference by institution type: this setting behaves the same way regardless of whether the institution operates in K-12 (school) mode or Higher Education (college/university) mode. The outcome depends only on which categories the administrator selects here, not on the type of institution.

 

Prerequisites

– No other setting must be configured before this one can be used; it works independently.

– If the goal is to simplify the Instructor’s dashboard as a whole (not just the Timeline), review the related dashboard-sections setting first (see below), since it can hide the entire Timeline area and would make the choices made in this setting irrelevant.

 

Related Settings

– Hidden Dashboard Timeline Elements For Students: (Main Settings > General Settings > Dashboard Settings > Dashboard Settings and Rights) – same concept, applied to the Student dashboard Timeline.

– Hidden Dashboard Timeline Elements For Parents: (Main Settings > General Settings > Dashboard Settings > Dashboard Settings and Rights) – same concept, applied to the Parent dashboard Timeline.

– Select elements that you want to hide at Instructor’s dashboard (portal’s main page): (Main Settings > General Settings > Dashboard Settings > Dashboard Settings and Rights) – hides entire dashboard sections for instructors (Calendar, Enrollment Counters, Timeline, Timetable, Mobile Apps, My Subjects), including the option to hide the Timeline area completely.

 

Assumptions vs. Confirmed Behavior

– Confirmed: the setting label, its description, the eight available categories, and that the setting applies once per institution rather than per user or per role.

– Assumption: the exact timing of when a change to this setting becomes visible to an instructor who is already logged in; this is inferred from how dashboard data is generally refreshed and has not been separately verified for every scenario.