Eric Wagner

Internal Admin Tool Redesign

Thrive Global / Lead Product Designer / June–August 2022

Redesigned company detail page for VantagePoint Ventures, showing Identity Settings with sign-up codes, email domains, sign-up methods, and company select

Background

Thrive Global's admin tool is used by internal Customer Success, Customer Support, and Implementation teams to set up customer accounts and configure their access to the Thrive app. With a migration to a new identity provider (IdP) underway, the existing tool would be deprecated in 4–6 weeks.

Team: 1 designer (me), 1 product manager, 1 tech lead, 3 engineers.

Goals

  • Enable Customer Support and Implementation to go from contract signed to company onboarded as fast as possible
  • Keep all existing functionality through the IdP transition
  • Address known usability issues
  • Design a modular, extensible framework for future features

Research

Understanding the technology

The new identity provider changed relationships in the database schema. For example, Walmart Associates, Walmart Executives, and Walmart SSO shifted from a company value to a group value — a subtle but impactful change that affected how the UI needed to present data.

Diagram comparing the old data model, where company mapped directly to sign-up code, to the new model, where a company has multiple groups that each map to a sign-up code

Understanding the users

I interviewed users across Customer Success, Customer Support, and Implementation to surface their pain points. Two themes emerged: the need to better categorize information for findability, and the need to reduce slips and mistakes in high-stakes onboarding tasks.

Roster of interview participants spanning Customer Support and Customer Success, including directors, product support, implementation managers, solutions architects, and customer success managers
Collage of support emails from customers asking for their group sign-up code
Affinity map clustering research notes into groups: group codes, key metrics, email domains, learn modules, company selector, avoiding slips and mistakes, UX heuristics, and automation

An affinity map of research notes surfaced recurring pain points around group codes, key metrics, email domains, and the company selector — along with themes about avoiding slips and mistakes, UX heuristics violations, and opportunities for automation.

Design process

I started with rough sketches to establish the new framework, looped in the team for feedback early, then moved to high-fidelity designs using real data.

Low-fidelity wireframe of the admin tool home screen, showing a search bar, recently viewed companies, and a full company list

I created prototypes and had users complete their three most common tasks, measuring success rates to validate the direction.

Mid-project, new requirements arrived: new companies would now automatically receive default content via CMS, which changed what needed to live on the company detail page. I adapted the design — bringing Identity Settings forward and adding a dedicated Licenses tab — to keep the page useful without the removed content cards.

After: redesigned company detail page showing only Identity Settings and Licenses, with the CMS-managed content removed Before: company detail page with the Courses, Journeys, and Role models cards crossed out in red, marking the content that moved to CMS-managed defaults Before After

Key design decisions

Group code visibility

Users who forgot their group code accounted for 31%+ of support tickets. Added clear descriptions for group and sign-up codes so CS could identify and share them quickly.

Sign-up codes card showing group, description, code, start date, and end date columns

Improved company search

Users can now find "CliftonLarsonAllen" by typing "CLA." Cleaned, deduped data enables company relationships and new self-serve CRUD actions, eliminating requests to the identity team.

Company search dropdown showing matching results for the letter W, including Walmart and its subsidiaries

No more copy slips

Implementation managers had to copy a customerID from the URL — slips were common. Added a persistent, fool-proof copy control to eliminate the error.

Toast confirmation reading company ID copied to clipboard, triggered from the copy icon next to a company's ID

Integrated usage metrics

Embedded Google Analytics adoption data directly into the tool so CSMs could respond to customer usage requests without a separate system.

Licenses tab showing total unique users, license utilization rate, and active users by week and month charts

Modular, extensible framework

Built new components, rules, and states from the design system so future teams could add features without starting from scratch.

Component set built for the redesign: add/edit sign-up codes modal, manage groups modal, edit sign-up methods modal, company search, copy confirmation, and edit courses modal

Results

The new tool became the one-stop shop for managing Thrive for Call Centers configurations — keeping all existing functionality, handling the new IdP data model, and leaving the codebase in a state the next team could build on.

Final All Companies list view, showing active company cards with IDs, subscriptions, and sign-up code counts

"I'm glad admin [dashboard] is looking great. When I joined, people wanted to use retool.com. My argument was that if we use the same stack for admin tool, we don't fragment people's training and skillset — and looking at your design, looks like it's working."

— Francois, UX Engineering

"Thanks for the thoughtful work you're doing on this tool, I really appreciate your passion for usability."

— Marie, Customer Support