Interface Customisation - Allowing for your personal needs

We provide you with the options to customise the interface to suit your needs, without the worry of making the system difficult to upgrade.

Theme (Skin) support for CMS interface

From the ground up, when creating the CMS user interface we created it with Themes or Skins, as you may refer to them, in mind.

This functionality allows you to copy and create a Theme that meets you needs. We often recommend that significant changes to the appearance of the user interface should be treated with care as the documentation and context-sensitive help will not necessarily reflect what the users are using.

Normally the Theme support is used to add a particular logo into the interface, for example.

Themes can also be used to offer different colour schemes, such as high contrast for visually impaired users, for example.

To implement a new Theme, all you need do is copy the standard Theme, and then change the Theme path in the system configuration; we would always recommend testing Theme changes on a development server first.

Toolbar Customisation

Customisation of the interface is achieved by adding a "Toolbar XML" override file. All of the menus in the system are controlled by a set of XML toolbar files. These files can be overridden to change buttons, add buttons or even change the group or role that is allowed to see a particular button, for example.

A regular use of this functionality is to allow for the addition of custom reports in the user Interface, or a link for marketing directly through to the stats package of your choice, for example.

We have identified below the different Zones that can have the tool bars modified, and if you tally this to the Theme Customisation, you can achieve almost any changes you desire to the look of the CMS, without impacting on our Always Upgradeable philosophy .