First admin

Every account is created through the sign-up form with the member role and, unless its email domain is pre-authorized, approved = false. Authorizing domains and approving users are admin actions, so the very first admin has to be promoted directly in the database.

Sign up normally

Go to APP_URL/sign-up, pick the Global region (the initial migration seeds it, together with a Default group), and submit. Then open the verification email (MailHog at http://localhost:8025 in development) and click the link. The client shows a screen saying the account is waiting for approval.

If ENABLE_PASSWORD_LESS_AUTH=true, the form has no password field and the login page emails a link instead.

Promote the account

Connect to the database from DATABASE_URL and run:

UPDATE users
SET role = 'admin', approved = true, email_verified = true
WHERE email = '[email protected]';

With the development stack:

psql postgresql://dam:dam@localhost/dam -c "UPDATE users SET role = 'admin', approved = true, email_verified = true WHERE email = '[email protected]';"

Reload the client. The avatar menu now has the admin shortcuts and /admin/settings opens.

The email_verified flag is set here only as a safety net; clicking the verification link already set it. Setting approved is required: an unapproved user is blocked by the client and by every server procedure that requires an approved user.

What to do next as the first admin

Step	Where	Why
Add your company’s email domain	/admin/authorized-domains	Colleagues who sign up with that domain are approved automatically. Without it, each sign-up emails the admins and managers of the user’s region for approval.
Create regions and groups that match your organisation	/admin/regions, /admin/groups	A user belongs to exactly one region and gets the region’s default group at sign-up. Managers act only inside their region. See Groups and regions.
Give each region a manager or admin	/admin/users	Approval requests are emailed to the admins and managers of the requester’s region; a region with none sends the request to nobody.
Check the assets tree	/admin/assets	Confirms the sync works. Assign asset types and licenses from here. See Assets tree.
Build the menu and a first collection	/admin/menu-items, /admin/collections	The home page is empty until a menu item is marked as home. See Menu and pages.

Adding more admins later

Edit the user under /admin/users and set the role to admin. Only admins can do this; managers can approve, edit and remove users of their own region but cannot promote to admin or remove an admin. See Users and approval.