Support tools for administrators

When a member writes “it doesn’t work for me”, the quickest way to help is often to see the site through their eyes. Yclas gives administrators a few support tools for this, each recorded in an audit log so your team stays accountable:

Needs your attention: what is waiting for your team, on the dashboard.
Log in as this user: see the site exactly as one member sees it.
Reported conversations: read a conversation only when one of the people in it asks you to.
Audit log: who used these tools, and who changed settings, roles, users, listings, orders, reviews, disputes, banners and deposit claims.
Staging copy: a private copy of your site to try themes and settings on.

These tools are for administrators only. Moderators can’t use them, except the parts of Needs your attention their role covers.

Needs your attention

The admin panel’s dashboard (the first page you see after signing in) shows a Needs your attention card when something is waiting for your team. Each line has a count and takes you to the page that deals with it:

Line	What is waiting
Listings to review	Listings waiting for moderation, or held by AI moderation.
New listing reports	Reports about listings nobody has looked at yet.
Reported conversations and disputes	Conversations and disputes still open (see below).
Business accounts to approve	Business accounts waiting for your approval, and accounts of your own types that need it.
Listing claims to check	Claims on listings, on a business directory.
Reviews to check	Reviews held by fake-review protection.
Banners to approve	Banners members bought, waiting for approval.
Seller plan renewals that failed	Plan renewals that failed in the last two weeks.
Security deposit claims to decide	Claims on a booking’s security deposit.

Only lines with something waiting are shown, and the card disappears when nothing is. Moderators see the listings to review and the listing reports, if their role lets them open those pages. The counts are refreshed every two minutes.

Log in as a member

In the admin panel, go to Users.
Open the menu on the member’s row and click Log in as this user.
Confirm. The message warns you that it is recorded in the audit log.

You’re now signed in as that member and can browse the site, open their listings, favourites and account pages, and reproduce what they describe. A bar on every page says You are logged in as name. Click Back to your account in that bar to return to your own account.

While you’re logged in as a member:

Their messages stay hidden. Private conversations are private, even from you. If you need to read one, the member can report it (see below).
They don’t get a login code. If your site uses two-step login or SMS codes, you aren’t asked for theirs and no text message is sent to them.
They can’t download their data or delete their account through you: those stay with the member themselves.

You can’t log in as another administrator, a moderator, or a member who is marked as spam or inactive.

Reported conversations

Messages between members are private. A conversation only reaches you when someone in it asks:

Report: any member can report a conversation from its menu (the ⋯ button in Nova), for example for harassment or a scam attempt.
Open a dispute: when there is a paid order between the two members for that listing, either of them can open a dispute about it. A buyer whose order hasn’t been received yet gets a short form to say what went wrong, the same as Report a problem in My Payments: see Disputes about an order.

When a member clicks Report or Open a dispute, they’re asked for a reason. It’s optional: they can leave it empty and still report, or click Cancel to stop. If they’ve already reported that conversation and you haven’t resolved it yet, they see You already reported this conversation. and nothing new reaches you.

Each new report is emailed to the Sender email in Email settings, with the reason, a link to that conversation and how many reported conversations are waiting. It’s the conversation-report-new template, which you can reword in Email templates. To protect your inbox, at most 10 of these emails go out in an hour; the rest still wait in the list. A problem with an order reported through the buyer’s dispute form sends the dispute emails instead.

Reported and disputed conversations appear under Reported conversations in the admin panel menu, with the type, who reported it, their reason and when; a dispute about an order also shows the order number. Click Open to read the whole conversation, from both sides. When you have dealt with it, click Resolve: the conversation becomes private again and you can no longer open it.

For a dispute about an order, the conversation page also shows the order and what the buyer says, with buttons to Refund the buyer, Pay the seller or Close without a payment change. Both sides are emailed your decision. See Disputes about an order.

Each time you open a conversation it is recorded in the audit log. The Report and Open a dispute options are in the Nova and Default themes; other themes with their own message pages may not show them yet.

Audit log

Audit log in the admin panel menu lists every time an administrator on your site:

logged in as a member, and returned to their own account;
opened a reported conversation, resolved a report, or decided a dispute about an order;
made a change through the MCP server (an AI assistant), with the API key’s name;
made a staging copy of the site.

It also records what administrators and moderators change in the admin panel:

Action	What the row shows
Changed a setting	The setting, with its old and new value. Passwords, keys and other secrets are never written: their values are hidden.
Changed a role’s rights	The role whose permissions were changed.
Changed a user’s role	The member, with their old and new role.
Deleted a user	The member who was deleted.
Deleted a listing	The listing that was deleted.
Refunded an order	The order that was refunded.

It also records, each with a readable label: Deleted a review, Published a held review, Kept a review hidden, Put a consumer alert on a listing, Removed a consumer alert, Resolved a dispute, Sent a listing back with a reason, Approved a paid banner, Rejected a paid banner, Decided a security deposit claim and Added members to the weekly digest. Changes a store team member makes for a store show as Store team member made a change.

Each row shows when, which administrator, which member, and the IP address used. Nobody can edit or delete these rows from the admin panel. If a support tool can’t record its entry, it refuses to run, so nothing goes unrecorded.

Only changes made by someone signed in to the admin panel are recorded. Scheduled jobs and the site’s own updates aren’t, and what you do while logged in as a member is covered by the Logged in as a user row itself.

Try changes on a staging copy

A staging copy is a private copy of your site where you can try a new theme, a page builder design or different settings without your visitors seeing anything.

Sign in to your Yclas account and open My sites.
Open the ⋯ menu of your site and click Create a staging copy.
Confirm. After a short wait you see Staging copy ready with its address.
To work on it, open the same menu and click Open staging admin.

What the copy has, and doesn’t:

It copies your settings, categories, locations, pages, email templates and page builder designs.
It doesn’t copy members, listings, orders, messages, reviews or blog posts. Category icons aren’t copied either.
It’s private and hidden from search engines, sends no emails and runs no scheduled jobs.
Payment, email and other service keys are left empty, so it can never take a payment or contact your members.
It’s free and doesn’t count towards your free sites. You can have one staging copy per site.

The staging copy doesn’t copy anything back. When you’re happy with a change, make the same change on your live site. To start again, click Remove staging copy in the same menu, then create a new one.

Manage users — find a member, change their status or password.
Messaging — how members talk to each other.
Disputes about an order — refund the buyer or pay the seller from a dispute.
Roles — what administrators and moderators can do.
My sites — everything else you can do with your sites.