Settings Hub & Navigation

Settings Hub & Navigation

1. What it is

The Settings Hub is the searchable directory of every admin setting in the platform. Instead of remembering which menu holds a particular configuration page, you search or browse from one place. It also serves as the AI’s grounding for “where do I find…” questions — the same registry that powers the Settings Hub page powers the Platform Help agent’s answers.

This article also covers the admin sidebar and the sidebar app rail — the left-hand navigation that organises the platform into zones (Home, Apps, Admin) and lets you pin frequently used apps for one-click access.

• Access: Admin → Organization → Settings Hub. Requires the Administrator or Super Admin role.
• What it is not: The Settings Hub does not change settings itself — it is a directory that links to the page where each setting lives. To actually change a setting, click through to the destination.

2. Standing it up

The Settings Hub and sidebar navigation work immediately — there is no setup. Any user with the Administrator or Super Admin role sees the Admin zone in the sidebar and can open the Settings Hub from Admin → Organization → Settings Hub.

1. Go to Admin → Organization → Settings Hub. You see a search bar, a Quick Access row of common settings, and collapsible categories.
2. Type a keyword (e.g. “leave”, “sso”, “email”) into the search bar. Results appear after two characters, ranked by relevance. Each result links directly to the configuration page.
3. If Ask AI is enabled for your business, click the Ask AI button or one of the suggested questions. The AI is hard-bound to the Platform Help agent on this page, so every question routes to the settings and navigation tools rather than falling through to a general-purpose answer.
4. To browse, expand a category card. Each item shows its title, a one-line description, and links directly to the configuration page.

3. How it fits together

Settings Registry — Every tile in the Settings Hub comes from a single central registry. The registry defines the title, description, search keywords, destination page, required permission, and optional feature gate for each item. When an item is gated on a feature (e.g. the Attendance Settings tile is gated on the Time & Attendance app being enabled), the tile is hidden while that feature is off — so admins never see a link to a page they cannot use.

The same registry backs Settings Hub search, the Platform Help agent’s answers about where a setting lives, and the Quick Access row. All three surfaces always agree because they read one source.

Four categories — The registry groups settings into four categories:

• Organization Settings — Business Profile, Departments, Locations, Users, Roles, SSO, Security, Brand & Theme, Integrations, and other structural configuration.
• Operational Settings — Billing & Payments, General Settings, Attendance, Shifts, Notifications, Content Moderation, Compliance, Audit Logs, Workforce Intelligence, AI Operations, and day-to-day configuration.
• App Settings — One tile per enabled marketplace app that has a settings page. This category is populated dynamically from the apps your business has enabled.
• Data Import Center — Every importer in one place: employee import, attendance import, shift import, leave balance import, compensation import, Smart Import targets, and scheduled import jobs.

Sidebar zones — The left sidebar has three zones: Home, Apps, and Admin. Each zone has an icon in the rail (house, rocket, gear). The Admin zone only appears for users with the Administrator or Super Admin role. Within the Admin zone, settings are grouped into sections: Settings, Organization, Security, Apps, AI Operations, Compliance, and Super Admin.

Rail apps — The sidebar rail shows up to 7 apps as icons below the zone icons: a person’s own pins, then their dashboard’s picks, then the apps switched on fill the rest. Admins pick each dashboard’s apps in the Dashboard Builder; the Default dashboard’s picks reach everyone without a group dashboard of their own. Anyone can pin an app or remove one from their own rail, or stop the fill so the empty slots on their rail stay empty.

Admin sidebar sections — Inside the Admin zone, the sidebar is divided into collapsible sections. Each section is gated by role — most require Administrator or Super Admin, while the Super Admin section and certain items within Security (Sessions & Tokens, Authentication Log, Maintenance & Lockdown) require Super Admin specifically.

Section	What it holds
Settings	Billing & Payments, General Settings, Roles, Groups, Notifications, Content Moderation, Governance, Translation, Approval Workflows, Audit Logs, Workforce Intelligence
Organization	Settings Hub, Business Profile, Departments, Locations, Users, Job Titles & Families, Dashboard Builder, Engagement, Quick Actions, QR Posters, Integrations, Bring Your Data
Security	Sign-in Policies, SSO, Service Accounts, API Keys, plus Sessions & Tokens / Authentication Log / Maintenance & Lockdown (Super Admin only)
Apps	All Apps, Widget Gallery, Custom Apps, App Pipeline, App Health
AI Operations	Overview, Approvals, Action History, Agents, Channels, Agent Settings, Trust & Safety
Compliance	Work Policy Settings, Labor Law Rules, Employment Law Rules, Jurisdictions, Jurisdiction Mapping, Compliance Explorer, Compliance Audit Logs (Platform Enterprise edition), Employment Law Audit History
Super Admin	App Data Management, the Sample Data page (Super Admin only; one app’s sample data also loads from the Demo data card in that app’s settings, for that app’s administrators)

Global search — The platform’s top-nav search bar also queries the settings registry. When an admin types a setting name into the global search, up to five matching settings appear alongside other results, linking directly to the configuration page.

Brand & Theme — Admin → General Settings → Brand & Theme. Colors, logo and favicon, the sign-in page, navigation, surfaces, fonts, mobile app colors and Custom CSS, applied together with Apply Theme. Changes apply business-wide; Rail Colors by Group gives one group its own left navigation colors.

4. Running it

Searching for a setting

1. Go to Admin → Organization → Settings Hub.
2. Type at least two characters into the search bar. Results appear within 300ms, grouped by category.
3. Click any result to go directly to that configuration page.

Search matches against the item’s title (highest weight), description, keywords, and sub-page names. If no results match, the page suggests asking AI instead.

Asking AI where a setting lives

1. On the Settings Hub page, click Ask AI or type a question into a suggested chip (e.g. “Where do I change the leave policy?”).
2. The AI sidebar opens with your question pre-filled. Press send. The Platform Help agent searches the settings registry and navigation shortcuts to answer.

The AI is hard-bound to the Platform Help agent on this page, so questions about settings always route to the right tools rather than falling through to a generic fallback.

Browsing by category

1. On the Settings Hub page, scroll past the search bar to the category cards.
2. Click a category header to expand it. Each item shows its name and description.
3. Click an item to navigate to its configuration page.

You can deep-link to a specific category by appending a category parameter to the URL — the linked category is expanded and scrolled to when the page opens. For example, to land on the Data Import Center:

/admin/settings_hub?category=data_imports

Navigating the admin sidebar

1. Click the gear icon at the bottom of the sidebar rail to open the Admin zone.
2. The admin panel shows collapsible sections (Settings, Organization, Security, Apps, AI Operations, Compliance, Super Admin). Click a section header to expand or collapse it.
3. Click any item to navigate to that admin page.

The Admin zone only appears for users with the Administrator or Super Admin role. If a user does not have either role, the gear icon is not shown.

Choosing the rail apps for everyone

1. Go to Admin → Dashboard Builder and open the dashboard (the Default dashboard for everyone not in a group with its own).
2. Open ⋮ → Recommended rail apps… and add apps to On the rail, in the order you want.
3. Leave Fill the rest with switched-on apps on to fill the empty slots, or turn it off for a rail of picks only.

Only enabled apps reach a rail, and only for people the app’s visibility rules allow.

Personalising your own app rail

1. In the sidebar, click the Apps zone icon.
2. In the Apps panel, click the pin icon next to an app. If your rail has an empty slot, the app takes it; if all 7 are used, Edit Your Rail opens and asks which app it replaces.
3. Click Edit Rail on the Apps panel’s first header line to see your 7 slots, each marked Yours, From dashboard or Filled automatically. Click Replace… on a filled slot to put an app you choose in its place (your own apps sit at the top of the rail), drag any app by its grip or move it with its arrows (an app you move above your own becomes one of yours), remove one, or click Stop filling empty slots to keep only your own apps and your dashboard’s (Fill empty slots automatically turns it back on), then Save.
4. Clicking the pin of an app on your rail removes it, and the next app fills its slot — unless you stopped the fill, in which case the slot stays empty. The app stays off your rail unless your dashboard newly picks it. Reset to my dashboard’s rail brings back your dashboard’s rail and turns the fill back on.

Your pins and removals are stored on your membership and persist across sessions.

5. Settings

Setting	Where	Default	What it changes
Rail apps per dashboard	Admin → Dashboard Builder → ⋮ → Recommended rail apps…	No picks	The apps that dashboard’s audience gets after their own pins
Fill the rest with switched-on apps	Same drawer	On	Whether the empty slots fill with the apps switched on
Per-user pins and removals	Sidebar → Apps panel → pin icon	None	The person’s own pins come first; apps they removed stay off
Rail size	Fixed platform limit	7	The sidebar rail holds at most 7 app icons
Quick Access items	Settings Hub page	6 common settings	The chips shown below the search bar for one-click access
Admin zone visibility	Automatic	Visible for Admin and Super Admin roles	Whether the gear icon appears in the sidebar rail

6. More help

• Business Profile & General Settings — configuring your company details
• Enabling Apps, Licences & Plugins — turning apps on and off, managing licences
• Security & Sign-On — SSO, password policies, session timeouts
• Ask AI — the assistant answers “where do I find…” questions using the same registry as the Settings Hub.