Find your way around
The two-tier sidebar, what each group holds, the page names Opal uses and their former names, the header, and the optional side panel.
Get startedReviewed against the application source on October 12, 2026
The sidebar has two tiers
At rest, the sidebar shows Home, then one row for each group: Network, Equipment, Work, Knowledge and Insight. Settings sits at the foot. Choose a group to drill into it: the sidebar then lists that group’s pages, with All sections at the top to go back. Settings works the same way, with Back to the console.
A page with more than one view shows them as tabs along its top. The sidebar, the tabs and the breadcrumbs never carry a count or a status; what is wrong is said in the page itself. Type in Filter navigation, above the groups, to narrow the rows by name.
| Group | Pages |
|---|---|
| Network | Outages (Current, Morning report, History), Sites, Health risks, Testing readiness, Device logs (with Scripts), Endpoint finder, Room diagnostics, Configuration changes, Access point policies, IP addresses and Circuits. |
| Equipment | Inventory (with Seen somewhere else), Storerooms (Stock and Asset tags), Modular buildings, Battery backups, Lifecycle (Approved versions, OS drift and Support dates) and Standards. |
| Work | Projects, Cases (Repairs, Loans, Disposals, Vendor cases and Purchasing), Audits and E-Rate. |
| Knowledge | Guides and Resources. |
| Insight | Reports: Reliability, Asset census, Replacement plan, Work trends, Explore and Saved. |
A page leaves the sidebar when a district turns its Features switch off, and some pages exist only in one edition; see K-12 and Enterprise editions.
Pages are named as nouns
Opal names pages as plain nouns in sentence case. The old names still find each page in the header search, and no address changed, so bookmarks, saved views and links open the same pages.
| Former name | Name in Opal |
|---|---|
| Today | Home |
| Find a device | Endpoint finder |
| Needs a decision | Decision queue (opened from My work) |
| Weak spots | Health risks |
| Room triage | Room diagnostics |
| Logs | Device logs |
| Configuration | Configuration changes |
| All equipment | Inventory |
| Counts and audits | Audits |
| Software and lifecycle | Lifecycle |
| Lifecycle (the tab) | Support dates |
| Cases and repairs | Cases |
| On loan | Loans |
| Leaving | Disposals |
| Owned | Asset census |
| Replace by year | Replacement plan |
| Analytics | Reports |
| Monitoring (the daily page) | Removed: its Runs are Settings › Monitoring › Runs, and its decisions are the Decision queue |
The header
- Search finds sites, equipment, pages and settings by name, including a page’s former name. Press ⌘K (Ctrl+K on Windows). It also finds endpoints by hardware address, IP address or host name, and text inside guides and resources.
- The outage signal appears beside search while an outage is open. It never shows a number: a ring marks a critical outage, a triangle a warning, and a question mark means Cenovel can’t tell what is down. Choose it for the worst open outages and Open Outages; see Work an outage.
- My work and Activity show a dot, never a count, when something is waiting. The Decision queue opens from the foot of My work.
- The account menu holds your Account page, background tasks, Dark theme and Sign out.
- Help, last, links to this documentation, the keyboard shortcuts, what’s new in your release and how to contact Cenovel.
The side panel is optional
Every page is complete without the side panel, and it is closed when a page opens. Open it with Show the side panel in the page head, or press F2; press F2 again to move to its top card. It stays open for the rest of your browser session.
It holds extras for the page you are on, such as a switch’s If it fails trace, a site’s Coming up, the repeating outages on Outages, and your Bookmarks. Selecting something that keeps you on the page, such as ports on a faceplate or a radio on an access point, opens the panel for that selection, and it closes again when you clear it. Rows in a register open their record directly: one click opens the record, never a side-panel card first. Use the up and down arrows to move between rows and Enter to open one.
Settings that live on their pages
Some settings moved from Settings onto the page they govern, so you change them where you see their effect. Each is changed by an Administrator EX unless the page says otherwise.
| Setting | Where it is now |
|---|---|
| Morning report schedule, email and signature | Outages › Morning report: Change on the Facts card, or More › Report settings. The same form is still in Settings › Reports and notices › Morning report. |
| Collect logs after an outage | Network › Device logs, in its own card at the foot of the page. |
| Find devices every night | A site’s Network › Devices, in the Nightly find card. It applies to every network, not only that site’s. |
| Call a discovered link stale after | A site’s Network › Blueprint, in the Stale links card. One setting for every site’s Blueprint. |
| Hold a reservation for | Storerooms › Stock › Pickups, in the card How long a reservation holds. |
| Kiosk sign-out and longest kiosk session | Storerooms › Stock › Badges, in the Kiosk sign-in card. |
| RFID doorway readers | Storerooms › Stock › Doorways, under What to show › Readers. Settings › Inventory data › RFID doorways links there. |
These docs write a place as its path, such as Settings › Monitoring › Schedule.
See also: What Cenovel is · Start your day from Home
Describes the release being prepared for deployment. Check the behavior on your installed release.