Platform apps — turn Explore and Beacon on or off for everyone

Platform apps is where Realsmart turns its own products — Explore and Beacon — on or off for the whole platform at once. These are master switches, not per-school settings: they sit above every school's and trust's own configuration.

Who can see this {#step-1}

Same gate as SmartLogin SPs: Platform apps only appears in the sidebar (under Platform) when you're an admin with full access, actively working within the Realsmart platform school — not MAT overview, and not any other school. Switch into that school to reach it. Schools and trusts never see this page; they have no equivalent control.

What each switch does {#step-2}

Explore — school & MAT analytics. Turning it on publishes the Explore tile to every school's launchpad (for admins and mentors); turning it off removes it and stops accepting sign-ins until it's turned back on.
Beacon — the support helpdesk (shared inbox, help docs, messaging). Which trusts and schools actually get Beacon is decided by Realsmart on the separate Beacon access page — this switch sits above that, as an all-or-nothing platform master. Schools and trusts can't turn Beacon on for themselves.

The master-switch semantics — this always wins {#step-3}

This is the important part: turning an app off here overrides everything else. If Realsmart has enabled Beacon for a trust on the Beacon access page, turning the Beacon platform switch off makes Beacon unavailable for that trust too, immediately — the per-trust enablement isn't changed or lost, it's just overridden while the platform switch is off. Turn the platform switch back on and every enablement takes effect again exactly as it was.

In other words: the platform switch can only make an app less available than the per-trust / per-school enablement asked for, never more. A school Realsmart never enabled Beacon for still won't see it just because the platform switch is on.

Both ship off {#step-4}

Both Explore and Beacon start off platform-wide. Nobody sees either app until a platform admin explicitly turns each one on from this page.

Turning an app on or off {#step-5}

Each app is its own card, showing its current status (On/Off) and — once turned on — who turned it on and when.

Turn on — takes effect immediately; no confirmation needed.
Turn off — asks you to confirm first, and tells you plainly what turning it off means (for Beacon: that it overrides any trust already using it; for Explore: that it disappears from every school and stops accepting sign-ins).

Every toggle is recorded in the admin audit trail, with who made the change and when.