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Your Personalized Workspace

What you see when your CRM is tailored to your role — home pages, default list views, and insight strips

What is personalization?

Your OptiCRM workspace is tailored to your role. Instead of every user seeing the same generic screens, admins can configure:

  • What you land on after login — the page best matched to your job
  • Which list loads first — your most-used list view on each entity page
  • Data strips — at-a-glance summary tiles above entity lists so you see the numbers that matter without scrolling

These are set up by your institution admin. As a user, you don't configure them yourself — you just benefit from the tailoring.

After you log in — your home page

The first screen after login depends on your role. A few examples of what different users typically see:

  • Counsellors — a dashboard of today's new enquiries and conversion metrics
  • Teachers — a list of their classes with today's attendance status
  • Finance officers — the outstanding fees dashboard
  • Principals — an executive overview dashboard spanning all departments

If you're not sure what you're looking at, ask your institution admin what they've configured for your role. If you think it should be different, they can change it — in Settings → Presentation — Design → Home Pages.

If the home page fails to load

If your assigned home page can't be loaded (the dashboard or report it points to was deleted), you'll see the system default landing page with a small banner: "Your home page is unavailable." You're never stuck on a broken screen. Let your admin know so they can re-assign.

Opening an entity list — your default view

When you open /o/Student, /o/Invoice, or any entity's list page, the list view that loads first is tailored to your role:

  • Teacher opening Students → might land on "My Classes' Students" instead of the generic "All Students"
  • Finance officer opening Invoices → might land on "Outstanding This Month"
  • Counsellor opening Enquiries → might land on "Open Enquiries"

Switching to a different list view

Personalization only changes the initial load. Every list page has a dropdown at the top where you can switch to any other list view you have access to. Your switch is remembered for that session — the personalized default loads fresh next session.

If you don't see the list you expected

Two possibilities:

  1. The personalized default was removed by your admin (or deleted). The page falls back to the tenant's default view.
  2. You were looking at a private list view and no longer have access. Private views (marked with a private badge) belong to specific users.

Either way, the list page still loads. Ask your admin if you'd like a different default.

Insight strips — the data row above list pages

Some entity list pages show a strip of 2-4 tiles above the grid. Each tile shows a small piece of at-a-glance context:

  • A number tile (METRIC) — e.g., "Overdue invoices: 137"
  • A chart tile — e.g., a small donut chart of enquiries by stage
  • A list tile (LIST_PREVIEW) — the 5 most recent records with quick-click links

What each tile does

Number tiles show a single count, sum, average, or percentage — the kind of thing you want to see first when you open the page. Tiles can be colored (green / amber / red / neutral) to draw your eye to things that need attention.

Chart tiles show the distribution of records by a field. One look tells you "most of the enquiries are in the 'Applied' stage" or "students are evenly split across grades."

List preview tiles show your 5 most recent rows with the names and a clickable link. Good for "which were the latest enrolments?" or "what invoices came in today?"

Collapsing the strip

You can hide the strip by clicking the small chevron at the corner. Your preference is saved in your browser — the strip stays collapsed until you explicitly re-open it. If you use a different browser or device, each has its own collapse state.

Why is one tile showing "Data unavailable"?

Tiles are independent. If the specific report that a tile pulls from was deleted (or temporarily unavailable), you'll see "Data unavailable" in that tile only. The other tiles in the strip keep working normally. Tell your admin so they can fix the broken tile without affecting the rest.

What if I don't see any personalization?

Two reasons you might see the "generic" OptiCRM experience:

  1. Your role doesn't have personalization configured. Your admin simply hasn't set up a home page, default views, or strips for your role yet. You'll see the out-of-the-box experience everyone else does.
  2. Personalization was temporarily disabled for your institution. Rare — usually an operator action for a specific issue. Ask your admin.

Nothing about the core CRM changes — all the same features are available. Personalization is purely about what appears FIRST.

What admins see that you don't

Everything above is the USER view. Admins at your institution can:

  • Pick a home page for any role or profile type
  • Set default list views for any role × entity combination
  • Build new insight strips and assign them to roles
  • Change what every user sees without touching any code

If you think something should be configured differently, talk to your admin. They have the power. If you ARE the admin, see the Profile Personalization admin guide for step-by-step configuration.

Privacy note

Personalization never changes which records you can see — only which view / screen loads first. You still only see records your permissions allow. If an admin sets "Show all students" as your default view but your role can only see students in your own class, you'll still only see your own class — the view just loads filtered to what you're allowed to see.

Personalization is a UX preference layer. It doesn't override security or permissions.