Castle Travel — Program Administrator Guide

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Program Administrators view student travel data — you don't create or edit a plan on a student's behalf. If a student needs a change made for them, that still goes through the student's own account or a direct email exchange.

System Administrators also have a Student Access panel (section 3 below) to manage individual student permissions without a code deployment, and a Persistent Access panel (section 4 below) for dual-role staff/student accounts.

1 Sign in

Same sign-in as everyone else — select Sign in with Emerson and go through Duo. The app recognizes your Program Administrator role automatically and shows you a different Home screen from what students see.

Show screenshot

Program Administrator Home screen with a Students button highlighted in the navigation bar

2 Open Students

Click Students in the navigation bar. This opens the Student Travel Viewer, which has two tabs.

This Weekend

A roster of every student in the program for the current weekend, so you can see who's staying in, who's traveling, and who hasn't registered yet.

AllSACOvernight⚠ Unregistered

A summary line gives you totals at a glance (e.g. "88 students · 12 SAC · 40 Overnight · 36 Unregistered"), and a city filter narrows the list to students traveling to a particular place.

Column	Shows
Name	Last, First
E-Number	Emerson ID
Email	Emerson email address
Status	SAC, Overnight, or Unregistered for this weekend
City	Destination city, if traveling

Show screenshot

This Weekend tab with filter tabs, a city search box, and a summary count line

Students

The second tab is a directory of every student in the Castle Travel program, searchable by name, E-number, or email. Click a name to open that student's full travel summary — every current and prior weekend, with the meals they signed up for and every destination they logged.

This is where you'd look something up if a student emails asking whether their plan went through, or if you need their emergency contact details before reaching out.

3 Student Access System Admin only

The Student Access card at the bottom of the Admin page lets a system administrator manage per-student permissions without touching the application code. Changes take effect at next login.

Access columns

Column	Default	Effect when unchecked
Allow Email	✓ on	Student is silently excluded from Tuesday, Wednesday, and weekly notification emails. Useful if a student has opted out or the address is bouncing.
Login	✓ on	Student is redirected to Account Access Restricted on next login attempt. Use this when a student leaves the program mid-semester. Admins are never blocked regardless of this flag.
Program Admin	✗ off	When checked, grants Program Administrator access to this student's account — identical to listing their email in `PROGRAM_ADMIN_EMAILS` in `config.py`. This is the preferred way to grant temporary or one-off program-admin access.

Checkbox changes are saved immediately via an inline PUT request. A brief green flash confirms success; a red alert reverts the checkbox if the save fails. Hovering over a row that is being saved disables all checkboxes in that row until the request completes.

4 Persistent Access System Admin only

Oracle's CTRS_STUDENT table is refreshed each semester and drops anyone no longer actively enrolled. The Persistent Access card handles dual-role people — staff who are also Castle Travel students — who need to keep signing in after that refresh removes their student record.

Capturing and removing access

Enter a person's E-Number and click Capture before the semester-end refresh, while they're still in CTRS_STUDENT. This snapshots their name, email, and Oracle student ID into a separate table the app checks at login — nothing is written to CTRS_STUDENT itself. Because the original Oracle ID is preserved, the person keeps full access (not just the ability to sign in) after their live record disappears.

Click Remove to revoke a captured entry once someone no longer needs the carve-over — for example if their dual role ends.

System-admin access (who can see this panel, Connectors, the Audit Log, etc.) is controlled separately via ADMIN_EMAILS in config.py, and is independent of whether someone is captured here — being a system admin does not by itself add or remove a Persistent Access entry.

5 Notification emails & timezone

All scheduled emails use Kasteel Well, Netherlands time (CET/CEST, Europe/Amsterdam). Deadline times are shown in both Amsterdam and Boston time so students in either location aren't confused.

⚠ This schedule can be turned off per-environment via SCHEDULED_EMAILS_ENABLED in config.py (e.g. DEV/TEST during a UAT pause) without affecting Production. Check the app's startup log for "Scheduled emails disabled" to see if it's currently off in the environment you're looking at.

Email	When (Amsterdam)	Content
Tuesday Reminder	Tuesday 10:00 AM	Individual email to each unregistered student with the Wednesday deadline in Amsterdam and Boston time.
Wednesday Countdown	Wednesday 9:30 AM	Urgent blast to still-unregistered students — 30 minutes remain.
Wednesday Deadline Report	Wednesday 10:00 AM	Sent to `NOTIFICATION_EMAILS`. Lists unregistered students (or "all clear"). Includes a meal plan totals table — per-meal-slot headcount for the weekend (Friday Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner, Saturday Brunch/Dinner, Sunday Brunch/Dinner) plus any dietary notes students have entered. Also shows the report-generation time in both Amsterdam and Boston.
Weekly Status Report	On-demand	Full SAC/overnight/unregistered breakdown with counts, to admin only.

? Where things live

Screen	What it's for
Home	Welcome screen — points you to Students in the nav bar.
This Weekend	Roster of everyone's status for the current weekend, filterable by plan type and city.
Students	Searchable directory; click through to a student's full travel history.
Student Access	System admin only — per-student email, login, and program-admin permission checkboxes.
Persistent Access	System admin only — capture/remove login access for dual-role staff/student accounts past Oracle's semester-end refresh.