Frontend access
Next Boards runs in the Joomla administrator and on the public side of your site. The frontend is the way to give boards to people who should never see the Joomla backend: staff, volunteers, clients.
It is the same application with the same data. A board looks and behaves the same in both places.
Adding Next Boards to a site menu
- In the Joomla administrator, open Menus and choose the menu the link should go in.
- Click New.
- For Menu Item Type, choose Next Boards → Boards.
- Give it a title, for example "Boards", and set Access to Registered (or a more specific access level).
- Save.
Signed-in users who open that menu item get the whole application on the page. Guests are sent to Joomla's login page and brought back after signing in.
One menu item is enough. Boards, cards, My Tasks and every other page live under it, and each has its own address you can link to or bookmark.
What frontend users can do
Everything their roles allow. There is no reduced "frontend mode".
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Do they need backend access? | No. They work under their normal site login and never see the administrator. |
| Which boards do they see? | The same as anywhere: boards they own or are on, boards shared with their workspaces, and public boards. See Access and permissions. |
| Can they create boards? | If they hold the Create boards permission. On a fresh install every registered user does. |
| Can they reach Site permissions, Apps and Settings? | Only if they hold the matching capability. Most frontend users will not see the Configuration menu at all. |
How the page looks
Inside your site template, Next Boards shows its own navigation as tabs (Overview, Work, Configuration) under the template's header.
The fullscreen button in the Next Boards header switches to a layout without the site template: a sidebar on the left and the whole window for the boards. The choice is remembered per person. Most people who work in Next Boards all day prefer it.
On a phone, the phone app opens full screen by itself.
For the best result inside a template, give the menu item a page with no side modules, so the boards have the full width.
Sessions and signing in again
Joomla ends a session after a period without activity (set under System → Global Configuration → System → Session Lifetime).
- Shortly before that, Next Boards shows Session Expiring Soon with a Stay Logged In button.
- If the session has ended, a sign-in form appears over the page. Sign in and you carry on where you were; the action that was interrupted is sent again.
- The countdown follows your activity in any open tab of Next Boards, so working in one tab keeps the others alive.
If a different person signs in on the same browser, the page reloads so that nothing of the previous person stays on screen.
Administrators on the frontend
When Joomla's Shared Sessions option is on (Global Configuration → System), someone who can sign in to the administrator is signed in on both sides at once, and the frontend page talks to the administrator directly for them. With it off, the default, the site and the administrator have separate logins. Both work; nothing needs to be set in Next Boards.
E-mail links
Links in notification e-mails open in the administrator for people who can sign in there, and on the site's Boards menu item for everyone else. Next Boards finds the menu item by itself. If you have several, you can name the one to use in the options of the Send notification e-mails task; see Scheduled tasks.