While developing Course Assist I've tried my best to automate as many of the processes involved in the project as possible but certain processes can't be automated such as the expert registration process and the expert earning payout process. For me to efficiently work on these processes in production I had to organize their respective model records in an orderly way, I did this by customizing the admin interface to properly suit my needs. In this article, I'll walk you through how I went about customizing the Course Assist admin interface. Let's dive in🏊‍♀️...

How I customized the admin interface 🎨

The Course Assist backend is a Django backend and Django fortunately offers an already-made admin interface that can be customized to suit your specific needs😁. In the case of Course Assist I customized the user model records and the expert earnings records.

• User model records👤 : I customized the user model records so that I could easily see which users have been approved to be experts or not, approve those that meet the requirements and revoke their expert status if necessary. I did this by simply creating a custom user admin class and adding what users' details should be displayed on the user list. This includes the user's email and their expert status. I also added search functionality and a filter to better find users.

  The picture below is of how the user model records look in the admin with some dummy records.

  

• Earnings model records💰: I customized the earnings model records so that I could easily see which experts are supposed to get paid, how much they made and when they made their earnings. I did this by also creating a custom earnings class and adding the user email, earning amount, date created and payout status. I also added a filter based on date and a search bar based on the earner's email to easily find earning records. The picture below shows the customized expert earnings model records with some dummy records.

With the admin interface now customized the Course Assist backend is nearly ready to be deployed. I'll be deploying soon after one last pre-production system test. With the launch of Course Assist now just around the Corner you'll not want to miss what comes next so stay tuned to the blog. Thanks for reading and see you in the next one🙏.