Administrate does not have a separate instructor portal. Instead, instructors can be given their own TMS user account with a tightly restricted Role, so they log in to the normal Administrate interface and see only their own teaching schedule. This is the supported way to give instructors self-service access to their events, attendance recording, and absence management.
What a restricted instructor account can do
With the setup described below, an instructor can:
- See only the Events and sessions they are assigned to — other events do not appear in lists, searches, or the calendar.
- Record attendance and pass/fail results for learners on their own sessions, without being able to edit the event itself.
- View and manage their own holidays and absences.
- Work from a personal task list showing only tasks assigned to them.
- Use the dashboard, including the My Events Only toggle on the Upcoming Events widget.
They cannot see financial information, other instructors' schedules, or events they are not assigned to.
How the restriction works
The key permission is Event - Restrict To Own. When a Role includes it, event and session visibility is filtered to events where the user's linked Contact appears on the event's personnel list — in any personnel role, as instructor or administrator.
Three rules determine whether the restriction behaves as expected:
- It must be paired with Event - View, granted for the same Company. Event - Restrict To Own on its own shows nothing at all; it restricts the events that Event - View would otherwise show.
- The user must be linked to a Contact. The restriction matches the personnel list against the user's linked Contact record. A user with no linked Contact sees no events.
- The restriction applies to Events and sessions only. Other record types — Contacts, registrations, learner lists — are not filtered to "own events." Any additional view permission you grant applies at Company level, so keep the Role minimal (see Boundaries below).
Setup
- Confirm the instructor's Contact record. The person must exist as a Contact flagged as an instructor and be assigned as personnel on their Events. See Instructors & Trainers.
- Create a Role for instructors. In the Control Panel, create a Role (for example, "Instructor Self-Service") and grant, for each relevant Company: - Administrate Login - Edit — required for anyone assigned to the Role to log in at all. - Event - View and Event - Restrict To Own — own-schedule event visibility. - Delegate Attendance and Results - Edit — record attendance and pass/fail results from the event screen. - Delegate Scores - Edit (optional) — edit delegate scores where you use score templates. - Own Holidays - Edit (optional) — the instructor can view and add their own holidays. - Tasks - Restrict to Own with Tasks - View (optional) — a personal task inbox. - Event Documents - View (optional) — access event documents such as trainer packs.
See User Roles for creating and assigning Roles. 3. Create the user and link the Contact. Create a TMS user for the instructor and set their linked Contact to the instructor's Contact record. This link is what makes "own" resolve to their assignments. See Users and Managing Users in Administrate. 4. Assign the Role to the user for the appropriate Company or Companies.
The instructor's navigation shrinks to match the Role: with only the permissions above, they see the Training menu with Events, plus the dashboard and their tasks and absences.
Recording attendance and results
Attendance and results are controlled by Delegate Attendance and Results - Edit, which is independent of event editing rights — an instructor can record attendance without being able to change the event's schedule, personnel, or setup. The restriction to their own sessions comes from event visibility: they can only open the sessions they can see.
For the recording workflow itself, see Recording Attendance for an Event.
Boundaries
Keep these limits in mind when extending the Role beyond the permissions listed above:
- Own-event scoping covers Events and sessions only. Permissions such as Event Registration - View or Contact - View operate at Company level: granting them shows registrations or contacts across the Company, not just those on the instructor's events. Withhold them unless that is intended.
- Delegate Attendance and Results - Edit is Company-wide by nature. In the interface this is contained by event visibility, but treat the permission as Company-level when deciding who receives it.
- Financials stay hidden only if you withhold them. Do not grant Event P&L - View or any Financial-group permissions to an instructor Role. Restricted custom fields can additionally be limited to specific Roles, which is useful for hiding cost and margin fields.
- Creating events auto-assigns the creator. If a user with Event - Restrict To Own creates an event, they are automatically added to its personnel as administrator so the event remains visible to them. Most instructor Roles should not include event creation.
- Contact visibility interacts with segregation settings. If you grant Contact - View while account segregation is disabled, the user can see all Contacts. See Company Segregation and Visibility Settings.
- The dashboard's My Events Only toggle is per-session. It is a convenience filter on the Upcoming Events widget and resets between visits; the enforced restriction is the Role's Event - Restrict To Own.
Instructors without TMS access
Where instructors should not log in to the TMS at all, the alternatives are:
- Two-way calendar sync — instructors see assignments in their own Outlook or Google calendar and their busy time flows back into availability. See Calendar Sync.
- Instructor Jump Ball — an Automator workflow that emails available assignments to instructors and records their RSVP responses on the Event, useful for letting instructors claim open teaching slots without any TMS access. The complete workflow, with setup instructions and a downloadable definition, is in our public GitHub repository.
- Scheduled emails of upcoming events to instructors, covered in Instructors & Trainers.