Considerations for assigning a Site Administrator

Viewing content as a Site Administrator

The Site Administrator has bypass logic and access rights to all aspects of the system. This allows them to bypass the normal conditions and procedures a regular user must step through. This means that the site behaviour will be different to the behaviour you'd expect for a normal user.

If using Totara Learn, the Site Administrator can use the Switch role to... option within the Course administration menu to view content from a different role's perspective and see how this content will appear.

The Site Administrator role

Although you can add new Site Administrators, the role itself cannot be edited (or deleted).

As it is a system role, you must access it via Quick-access menu > Users > Permissions > Site administrators. 

It is recommended that you do not have more than five Site Administrators (depending on your organisational structure), as it may not be clear which users are responsible for which tasks or changes, and your site will be vulnerable with so many users with the highest level of access. You may wish to create a new role with most, but not all, of the permissions of a Site Administrator.

Main admin

After adding other Site Administrators, you can make one of these users the primary Site Administrator by selecting them and clicking Set main admin.

The main Site Administrator has the same permissions as any other Site Administrator, except they cannot be removed. If you wish to remove the main Site Administrator, you must first set a new main Site Administrator. You can remove the user who was previously set as main Site Administrator in the normal way (select their name and click Remove). This is to prevent all Site Administrators from being removed accidentally.