You don't need to know every page in detail — that's what the rest of the series is for. You do need to know where things live so you can find them when you need them. This lesson walks the admin panel left-side navigation top to bottom, group by group, and tells you what each item does at one-line resolution.
Problem: The admin panel has dozens of pages. If you go in cold, the navigation looks like an alphabet soup of nouns — agent instances, digest emails, picklist database — and you don't know which ones matter for what you're trying to do.
Horizon's answer: The nav is grouped by purpose, not by alphabet. The groups are:
Everything below "top level" is collapsed by default. Click a group header to expand it. Pages you visit often can be pinned for one-click access.
Always visible at the top of the nav, no expand needed.
| Item | What it does |
|---|---|
| Dashboard | account health at a glance — outstanding setup tasks, recent workflow runs, triage activity, team workload |
| Ticket Lifecycle | the rules for what should happen as a ticket moves through its states (new → triaged → assigned → resolved → closed) |
| Form Lifecycle | same idea but for custom form submissions |
| Workflows | the underlying engine that runs lifecycles and any other automation; mostly read-only for admins, but useful for inspecting runs and debugging |
Tip: When in doubt, you'll be on the Dashboard. Make a habit of starting your admin sessions there.
Expand the Components group. These are the building blocks of how Horizon handles tickets and todos.
| Item | What it does |
|---|---|
| Agent Instances | Horizon-side records for each helpdesk user that tickets can be assigned to |
| Assignment | policies that decide who gets a ticket — round-robin, next-available, queues, escalation levels |
| Bookings | booking link types that customers can use to self-schedule |
| DataTables | reusable lookup tables you can reference from rules and forms |
| Custom Forms | reusable forms agents fill out on tickets to trigger actions |
| Helpdesk Actions | account-level defaults for what should happen on the helpdesk side when tickets close (status, time entry, todo creation) |
| Ticket Routing | rules that decide where a ticket should go — which team, which queue — before assignment runs |
| Ticket Filters | reusable filter criteria used by boards, watchlists, triage, and rules |
| Time Estimates | policies that auto-estimate how long a ticket will take, used by next-available assignment |
| ToDos | scheduled todo policies — recurring or condition-driven todos that get auto-created |
| Triage | policies that classify and route tickets the moment they arrive |
| Watchlists | deadline monitors that surface at-risk tickets and can trigger automation |
This group is where you'll spend most of your configuration time.
Expand the Integrations group. Outbound connections.
| Item | What it does |
|---|---|
| AI | AI provider config and usage logs |
| Calendars | external calendar sync (Outlook, Google, CalDAV) — read busy/free, write bookings |
| Helpdesk | the connection to your PSA (ConnectWise, Autotask, Zoho, HaloPSA) — credentials, sync settings, callback status, widget setup, picklist database, user mapping |
| outbound email config and delivery logs | |
| Notifications | in-app and email notification settings, channels, delivery audit |
| Webhooks | inbound webhook receivers and outbound webhook config |
Helpdesk is the one you set up first, before anything else can work. The rest get layered in as the team grows into them.
Expand the People group.
| Item | What it does |
|---|---|
| Users | the humans who log into Horizon — agents, dispatchers, admins; manage account membership, team membership, notification routing |
| Teams | groupings of users; teams hold business hours, drive assignment policies, and own queues |
Most other configuration assumes Users and Teams already exist. Set these up early.
Expand the Settings group. Account-wide configuration.
| Item | What it does |
|---|---|
| Account | account name, timezone, onboarding status |
| Billing | subscription, usage, billing contacts |
| Business Hours | schedules that define when teams (and the people on them) are working |
| Digest Emails | scheduled summary emails sent to users or stakeholders |
| Panels | per-panel customization for Agent and Dispatch — which scope tabs appear, which actions are visible, which forms are wired up |
| Security | MFA requirements, session policies, API keys |
Business Hours sits in Settings because it's a foundational schedule that other features (assignment, watchlists, scheduled todos) depend on.