The admin is where editors write, publish and organise content. It runs in the browser; you sign in with your email and password, or your company’s single sign-on.
Forgot your password? Forgot it? beside the password field asks for your email; if it belongs to an account, a link to choose a new one arrives by email. A server that is not set up to send email says so, and tells you to ask an admin for a reset link — under Members → your name → Sessions & access.
The shape of it
- Left sidebar — navigation. Hide it with ⌘B / Ctrl+B. On a narrow screen it becomes a drawer.
- Work area — the page itself, as one card on the sidebar’s gray: a table, an editor, a dashboard.
- Top bar — the head of that card: the breadcrumb, which is also the way back, and the page’s actions. A page with tabs shows them as the bar’s second row.
- The page’s title — every page opens on its heading and a line saying what it is for; only its actions move up into the top bar.
- Properties panel — details and checks for the open record. In the entry editor it opens on demand, as a sheet over the page, from its button in the top bar; pin it to keep it as a column beside the form.
- Ask Ortha AI — under the card, at its right end, when the copilot is on.
Drag the edge of the sidebar or a pinned properties panel to make it wider or narrower; drag it well past its narrowest and it collapses. Double-click the edge to put the default width back. The Media Library’s folders column resizes the same way, but doesn’t collapse. The widths are saved to your account, so they follow you to another browser; on a smaller screen a wide panel is narrowed to fit, and comes back at full width on the big one. On a narrow screen there is nothing to drag. Actions such as Save and Publish always sit in the top bar — on a phone, in a bar at the foot of the screen — so closing the panel never hides them.
Outside a workspace
The sidebar has two groups, each entry shown only if your role may open it:
- Overview — Home, Activity
- Directory — Workspaces, Members, API Tokens, Webhooks, Segments, Content Model
Home greets you and puts what needs doing first:
- Top bar — Invite member and New workspace, each if your role may.
- Needs your attention — a card for each thing waiting on you: entries await your review, open findings from alarms, a webhook stopped after failing deliveries in a row, actions not recorded in the audit log. Reviews and findings stay on the row at 0 when nothing is waiting, so an empty queue never looks like a card that failed to load; the other two appear only while something is wrong. Each card links to where you fix it. With no card to show, the heading is not shown either.
- Overview — tiles for active workspaces, members and content types.
- Workspaces and Recent activity — the activity newest first, grouped by day.
Inside a workspace
Almost all work happens inside a workspace. Pick one and the sidebar shows:
- Home — back out to the overview.
- The workspace switcher — jump to another workspace. A shared workspace carries a Shared badge.
- Content — Favorites, Collections and Pages.
- Tools — Media Library, Insights, Alarms, Reviews, Settings.
- CMS / Agents — when Ortha CMS AI is on, switches between content and the full-page Agents view.
Where things live
| Area | What it is |
|---|---|
| Home | What needs your attention, an overview, recent activity |
| Content | An overview of the workspace, its collections and pages, and the entry editor |
| Saved views | Named filter/sort/column set-ups of a list, as tabs over it |
| Alarms | Content rules and the records they flag |
| Reviews | Review requests as tabs — Waiting on me, My requests, Recently approved — each opening a review panel |
| Media Library | The workspace’s files |
| Insights | Needs attention first, then content, media, translation and team figures as tabs |
| Settings | General (details and sharing), content types, members, Publishing — the review rules, for administrators — and the danger zone |
| Agents | The full-page Ortha CMS AI view |
| Workspaces | All workspaces as cards, and the three-step create |
| Members | People, invitations, roles, sessions |
| Segments | Reader audiences, and which entries admit or refuse each |
| API Tokens | Keys for websites and apps that read content |
| Webhooks | Notifications sent to other systems when content changes |
| Activity | The audit log |
| Content Model | Every content type and its fields; in development, administrators edit them here |
Workspaces, Members, Segments, API Tokens, Webhooks, Activity and the Content Model are about the whole installation, so they sit outside any workspace. Webhooks, API Tokens and Activity are administrator-only.
Ortha CMS AI
When your installation has it turned on:
- Click Ask Ortha AI, under the work area at its right end, to start a chat. It always starts a new one.
- Minimise a chat and it waits as a pill beside the launcher, saying what it is doing — — working…, — finished, or — waiting for you with an amber dot. Click the pill to bring it back; its × closes it. Past three, the rest fold into N more chats.
- While a chat waits for your answer to a permission prompt, the sidebar’s Agents switch carries the same amber dot.
- Hover the launcher to see its shortcut.
- It appears only inside a workspace, and only if your role may use it.
See the copilot.
Keyboard
| Shortcut | Does |
|---|---|
| ⌘K / Ctrl+K | In a workspace: search its content. Outside: Search or jump to… |
| ⌘B / Ctrl+B | Toggle the sidebar |
| ⌘J / Ctrl+J | Start a new Ortha CMS AI chat |
| Esc | Close the open dialog, menu or palette |
The entry editor adds ⌘S (save), ⌘⇧P (publish) and ⌘. (properties panel) — see the entry editor.
The modifier shortcuts step aside while you type in a text field or the rich-text editor. Everything is reachable by keyboard — see accessibility.
Permissions shape what you see
- Your role decides which pages and actions appear. A viewer sees no Publish; a contributor sees no API Tokens, Webhooks or Activity.
- What you cannot do is hidden rather than disabled — except an action you could take on a different record, which stays so the page keeps its shape.
- Records shared from another workspace are read-only: no Save.
Empty, refused or failed
Three different messages — worth reading when something looks blank:
- Empty — nothing here yet. You are invited to create something.
- Refused — you lack permission. The page says so.
- Failed — the request errored. You get an error and Try again.
A blank area with no message is a bug. Report it.
Theme
Colour theme — Light, Dark or System — in Preferences on your own user page. It follows you to any browser.