Getting your institute: the customer portal

Someone who wants to run an institute on Institflow starts at the customer portal: request one, wait for the vendor to approve it, then use the same page afterward as your institute's own read-only control panel for everything the vendor — not you — controls.

Already have an institute set up for you?

If the vendor created your institute directly (rather than approving a request you submitted), you don't need to request anything: create your Institflow account (or sign in, if you already have one) with the exact email the vendor used, and the portal below opens automatically — no request form, nothing to wait on.

What it is, and where

The portal lives at id.institflow.com/portal, behind the same Institflow account every student and guardian signs in with — it is the exact same account type, sign-up and all. It only matters here to whoever is requesting or already owns an institute; a student or guardian signed into their own Institflow account never sees a reason to open it.

Requesting an institute

Sign in at id.institflow.com and open Portal. If your account doesn't already own an institute, you'll see a request form:

  • Institute name — what your own staff and students see once you're in.
  • Wished address — lowercase letters, digits and hyphens only, hyphens never leading or trailing, 3 to 42 characters. This becomes your install's address at <name>.institflow.app, previewed live as you type. A short list of names (institflow, admin, www and similar) is reserved and can't be used.
  • Country.
  • Size — Small (up to 300 active students), Medium (up to 1,000), Large (up to 3,000), or more than 3,000: the same bands the server-sizing guide later uses to recommend a server for you.
  • Phone (optional) — international format, e.g. +15551234567.
  • Agreeing to the terms of use and privacy policy.

You can have only one request open at a time. If the address you asked for is already taken, you'll find out when you submit — there's no way to check while typing.

What happens next

The vendor reviews your request and emails you either way.

  • Refused — the portal shows the reason next to your request, and a button to submit a new one.
  • Approved — the same page now shows your institute instead of the request form: licence, install command, and everything below.

The institute dashboard

Once approved, the portal becomes your institute's own control panel:

  • Licence — its state (valid, expired or locked) and expiry date. Nothing here is editable: only the vendor ever changes a licence — see License lifecycle.
  • Install — before you've installed anything, an install command: a single-use token, good for 24 hours, shown once. Run it on your own server exactly as the self-hosting guide describes. Every command you generate is also listed here, so you can revoke one you haven't used yet if you no longer need it. Once your server has installed and reported in, this card replaces the command with your install's own summary instead: version, state (running, still provisioning, or unreachable), when it was last seen, and which update channel it's on.
  • Registry credential — the login your server uses to pull Institflow's own container images. Creating one shows its secret exactly once and automatically revokes whichever credential was active before it, so there is never more than one active credential at a time. You can revoke it yourself at any point too.
  • Messaging — your relay balance, any overdraft you've been given, and a statement of every charge and top-up, newest first.

Read-only, on purpose

Nothing about your licence, plan or grants can ever be changed from the portal — only the vendor controls those, from their own console.

Once your install exists, the same licence details also appear inside your institute itself, under Settings → License.

Opening your institute

Once you've installed, the dashboard header shows your address and an Open my institute link that takes you straight to https://<your address>/login.

Signing in later from the site

You don't need to remember your install's address every time. institflow.com/login is one email-first form: type your email and press Continue.

  • If it's the email you signed up with, or one your institute has chosen to publish for staff, you're sent straight to the right place automatically — your own Institflow account (with a chooser afterward, since you both own an institute and may belong to others), your institute's own login page, or the platform console, whichever matches.
  • If it matches more than one of those, you're shown a card for each and pick one.
  • Otherwise the site says it doesn't know where that email signs in, and offers your institute's own address as a fallback (or a link to sign in with your Institflow account).

Your password is never typed on institflow.com itself — only at your own institute's login page, or on id.institflow.com, exactly as always.

Signed in on id.institflow.com and you own an institute? You land on a chooser with two actions — Institute portal (this page) and Open my institute — plus any other institutes you belong to as a student or guardian, if any.

Troubleshooting

  • Address not claimed yet — the dashboard shows this instead of an address until your server has run the install command above and reported in for the first time.
  • Install not reachable — your server has stopped checking in; confirm it's running and can still reach the outside hosts the self-hosting guide lists.
  • Lost your registry secret — create a new credential; the old one is revoked for you automatically.
  • Lost your install command — generate another one; revoke the old one first if it's still unused and you no longer want it around.

See also: Self-hosting & licensing, Your Institflow account, Inviting students and guardians.