Overview
Classter lets certain people add their own personal shortcut links inside the portal – for example, a link to a favorite external tool, a personal report, or a page they use often. Once created, a personal shortcut can appear as a menu entry, a dashboard tile, or a quick action button, in the same places where the institution-wide links set up by the back office normally appear.
This setting controls who is allowed to create and manage these personal shortcuts. By default, ordinary end users cannot create their own links. Only the user types selected in this setting are given that ability.
What This Setting Does
This is a multiple-choice setting. The institution can select any combination of the following user types:
- Admin (back-office administrator; the main Owner account is treated the same as Admin for this setting)
- Secretary
- _Teacher_ (also known as Educator, Instructor, Tutor, Professor or Lecturer, depending on the institution’s wording)
Any user type selected here gets access to a “Manage Custom Links” option, from which a person can build and edit personal links – the same way an administrator builds institution-wide links, but limited to links that only that person can see and use.
If a user type is NOT selected, users of that type do not see any option to create personal links. This also applies to user types that are not offered as a choice at all in this setting (for example, _Student_ or _Parent_) – those user types can never manage personal links, regardless of how this setting is configured.
Where It Is Used
1. My Profile page – Actions section
Any user whose type is enabled by this setting sees a “Manage Custom Links” action on their My Profile page. Selecting it opens their own personal Custom Links list.
2. The Custom Links management screen
The same screen the back office uses to manage the institution-wide custom links also serves personal links. When an enabled user opens it from their own profile, the screen automatically switches to a personal view (labelled “Personal Custom Buttons Mode” for back-office users who can switch between the two views): they see only their own links, without the extra filters and columns used to manage everyone else’s links.
3. Where the created links can appear
Once saved, a personal link can be placed in one or more of the following locations, chosen individually when the link is created:
- The main menu
- The dashboard, as a tile or shortcut
- The quick actions area
In short, this setting does not decide where a link shows up – it decides who is allowed to create one in the first place. Where each individual link appears is a separate choice made per link, at creation time.
Business Logic / Behavior
- This setting only grants the ability to create personal links; it does not create any links by itself. Nothing changes for a user until they actually add one.
- A user only sees the “Manage Custom Links” option if BOTH of the following are true: (1) their user type is selected in this setting, AND (2) the related “Use Custom Menus” setting is turned on for the institution (see Related Settings below). If either condition is not met, the option is simply hidden – no error message is shown.
- Personal links created by a user are private to that user. Nobody else – including another Admin or Secretary – can see or manage another person’s personal links, and a personal link can never be reassigned to a different owner.
- Back-office user types (Admin, Secretary) who are enabled by this setting can switch between two views on the same management screen: their normal “manage everything” view, and the personal view limited to their own links only. Teachers only ever see the personal view, since they only ever manage their own links and are not offered the switch.
- Institution-wide (shared) custom links created by the back office for everyone are a separate feature and are not affected by this setting. This setting only concerns whether a person can create shortcuts for themselves.
- If someone without the right access tries to reach the personal-links screen directly (for example using an old saved link after their access was removed), they are redirected away and are never shown anyone else’s personal links.
Example(s)
Example 1 – Enabling for Teachers
Institute Alpha wants its Teachers to be able to set up a personal shortcut to an external grading tool they each use individually, without asking the office to add it for everyone. The administrator opens this setting and selects Teacher. From then on, every teacher at Institute Alpha sees a “Manage Custom Links” option on their profile page, where they can add their own link, choose an icon and color, and decide to show it as a quick action. Each teacher only sees their own shortcut; a colleague who adds a similar link sees only their own copy, never someone else’s.
Example 2 – Enabling only for back-office staff
School Beta wants only its front-office team to be able to create personal shortcuts (for example, links to spreadsheets or trackers they use daily), and does not want regular Teachers adding their own extra menu items. The administrator selects Admin and Secretary only, and leaves Teacher unchecked. Teachers at School Beta will not see a “Manage Custom Links” option; front-office staff will.
Example 3 – Leaving the setting empty
Academy Gamma leaves this setting completely empty (no user type selected). Nobody – not even Admins or Secretaries – sees an option to create personal shortcuts from their profile. All links available to end users are the shared ones configured centrally by the back office.
When to Use
When to Enable
- The institution wants specific staff (Admin, Secretary and/or Teacher) to be able to build their own personal shortcuts to frequently used pages, reports, or external tools, without needing the back office to add a shared link for everyone.
- Different staff members have different personal workflows and would benefit from individually customized quick actions, menu entries, or dashboard tiles.
- The institution wants to reduce the administrative workload of building and maintaining one-off shortcuts that are only relevant to a single staff member.
When to Disable (leave empty)
- The institution wants full central control over every link, menu entry, and quick action shown to any user, with no personal customization.
- The institution wants a simpler, more consistent screen layout across every user of the same type, without staff-by-staff variation.
- There is no operational need for personal shortcuts, and the shared/system links already cover everyone’s needs.
Notes
Prerequisites
- The “Use Custom Menus” setting (see Related Settings) must also be turned on. Even if a user type is selected here, users of that type will not see the “Manage Custom Links” option unless that master setting is enabled for the institution.
- For Admin and Secretary users, normal access to the Custom Links management screen must already be in place, since personal management uses the same screen in its personal view.
Related Settings
“Use Custom Menus: (“General Settings > Templates & Menus tab > Custom Links tile – Portal Custom Buttons“) – the master switch that turns the whole custom-links feature on or off for the institution, for both shared and personal links. It must be enabled for personal links to be usable at all, regardless of how this setting is configured.
K-12 vs Higher Education Mode
This setting works exactly the same way in both modes: the available user types (Admin, Secretary, Teacher) and the resulting behavior – who can create personal links, and where those links can appear – do not change between the two modes.
Separately, within this institution’s overall configuration, having this setting configured with at least one user type is used as one of the indicators that the institution is operating in Higher Education Mode, while leaving it empty is used as an indicator of K-12 Mode. This is a configuration convention applied alongside other settings to help distinguish the two modes, rather than a rule that this setting enforces automatically by itself.
Other Notes
- This setting does not affect the institution-wide (shared) custom links that back-office staff create for everyone. Those remain controlled separately and stay visible to whichever audience the back office assigns them to.
- Built-in system shortcut buttons that come with Classter are not affected by this setting either. They follow their own separate visibility rules and cannot be deleted or reassigned by end users.
- Assumption: if a user type is later removed from this setting, personal links already created by users of that type are expected to remain in place and continue to display where they were set to appear, but the affected users would no longer be able to create new ones or edit the existing ones through “Manage Custom Links”. If this distinction matters for a specific decision, confirm the exact behavior with Classter support before relying on it.
