Administrator Tools — Area Overview
Platform area: Administrator Tools
Color: Blue (#057CFE)
Audience: Platform administrators, site operators, institutional IT staff
What This Area Covers
Administrator Tools covers everything needed to run and configure an Open edX platform instance — from Django admin and feature flags, to user management and SSO, institutional analytics dashboards, third-party integrations (LTI, SCORM, enterprise systems), and the infrastructure that keeps the platform running.
Administrators operate at the platform level rather than the course level. Their decisions affect all users and all courses on the instance.
Feature Areas
| # | Feature Area | Description | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Platform Configuration | Site config, feature flags, Django admin, waffle flags | scaffold |
| 2 | User Management & SSO | User accounts, roles, SAML/OAuth SSO providers | scaffold |
| 3 | Institutional Analytics | Platform-wide reporting and data pipelines (Aspects) | scaffold |
| 4 | Integrations | LTI 1.1/1.3, webhooks, enterprise system connectors | scaffold |
| 5 | Hosting & Infrastructure | Deployment, Celery, databases, scaling, monitoring | scaffold |
Key Architecture Themes
- Django admin as the primary config surface: Many platform behaviors are still configured through Django admin (site configuration, course access, user roles) — MFE admin tools are supplementary
- Tutor as the de facto deployment standard: Most Open edX deployments use Tutor (maintained by Edly/overhangio, not in the openedx org) for Docker-based deployment
- Enterprise as a distinct layer: B2B features (enterprise enrollment, SSO, integrated channels) live primarily in
edx-enterpriseand related repos; this is a major Surface for providers like Edly and OpenCraft - Aspects replaces legacy reporting: The old edX Insights product is being superseded by Aspects, which uses ClickHouse for analytics storage and Apache Superset for dashboards
Primary Repositories
| Repository | Role |
|---|---|
| openedx-platform | Django admin, site configuration, waffle flags, user models |
| edx-enterprise | Enterprise features: B2B admin, SSO, enrollments |
| openedx-aspects | Institutional analytics (ClickHouse + Superset) |
| xblock-lti-consumer | LTI 1.1 and 1.3 consumer |
| frontend-app-admin-portal | B2B admin portal MFE |
| auth-backends | SSO backend implementations (SAML, OAuth2) |