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This guide covers institution-level setup at deandesk.com. See Institutions & Schools for how these levels relate.
The institution dashboard at deandesk.com/dashboard is where you configure the parts of DeanDesk that span all of your schools — your institution’s branding, public-facing landing page, schools, staff identities, and DeanDesk subscription.

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Open institution settings

From the institution dashboard, go to Settings → Institution.

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General settings

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Branding

The Branding card on the institution settings page controls how your institution looks on deandesk.com and across its public pages. Use the Save branding button at the bottom of the card to publish changes. Branding edits don’t affect individual school portals — see School branding for those.

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Institution domain

Your institution’s public pages and dashboard live on the domain you chose at registration. You can change it later from institution settings. Two kinds of domain are supported:
  • Managed subdomain — any available yourname.deandesk.com subdomain, provisioned automatically.
  • Custom domain — bring your own domain (e.g. portal.yourinstitution.org). Custom domains work at the institution level, not just for schools.
www is treated as the same domain — www.yourdomain.org and yourdomain.org resolve to the same institution, so you don’t need to register both. DeanDesk validates the domain before saving and shows a clear error if it conflicts with an existing platform — “This domain is already taken” or “This domain is already assigned to a school”. If DNS provisioning fails, the save is blocked and your current domain stays in place.
After you change your domain, the old domain keeps working — existing links and bookmarks don’t break.

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Public portal navigation

The Public portal navigation card on the institution settings page controls which tabs and schools appear on your institution home page. All three toggles are on by default. Hiding the Membership or Donate tab also disables the corresponding public pages — visitors who open those URLs are redirected to your home page.

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Visible schools

When the Schools tab is on, a Visible schools panel lets you choose which schools appear publicly. Check or uncheck individual schools, or use Show all and Hide all.
Until you customize the list, all current and future schools are visible by default.

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Schools

Manage your schools from Platforms in the dashboard sidebar.

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Sales currency

When creating a school, choose its Sales Currency: USD - US Dollar (the default), GBP - British Pound, or EUR - Euro. All of the school’s product prices use this currency. School cards and the platforms list display each school’s sales currency.
Sales currency is immutable after creation — the school edit page shows it disabled with an “Immutable” badge (“Set at school creation and cannot be changed”). Pick the right currency when you create the school.

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Subdomain provisioning

When you create or edit a school, the Subdomain field is automatically suffixed with .deandesk.com. DeanDesk validates the subdomain (lowercase letters, numbers, hyphens only — no www. prefix) and checks that it’s available before saving. Once saved, DNS is provisioned automatically and the school is reachable at the new URL within minutes.

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Admin Console quick-jump

Both the school cards on the institution dashboard home and each school’s detail page (/dashboard/platforms/[id]) include an Admin Console button that signs you straight into that school’s Admin Dashboard via SSO — no separate login required. See Institutions & Schools.

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Staff identities

Identities are institution-level accounts that can manage your dashboard and access any of your schools. Manage them in Identities. See Identities for managing identities, viewing AI insights, and using global search.

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DeanDesk subscription & billing

The Billing section covers your DeanDesk subscription — the plan you pay DeanDesk for the platform itself. The subscription status shown here reflects your live Stripe subscription in real time (for example Trialing, Active, Past due, or Canceled). Your subscription is billed once at the institution level and covers all of your schools. This is separate from the Stripe account you connect to receive student payments. See Stripe setup for that.