Starting with IBM API Connect v12.1.0, the CMS Developer Portal now includes a new set of onboarding tutorials designed specifically for admin users. These tutorials make it easier to customize the portal to your organization’s branding, security requirements, and functionality needs - without having to dig through documentation to figure out where to begin.

The CMS Developer Portal is almost infinitely customizable. While that flexibility is powerful, it can also introduce complexity when you’re not sure which customization to do first or how to implement common scenarios. The new admin tutorials are designed to help bridge that gap by providing guided, hands-on examples for popular customization use cases.

The tutorial series walks admin users through important customization tasks, including:

• Installing custom modules

• Enforcing Content Security Policy (CSP) rules

• Customizing and extending the portal theme

• Customizing the hero image

These tutorials provide a fast, practical way for admin users to get up and running with CMS Developer Portal customization.

How the tutorial experience works

The tutorials appear in a slide-out panel on the right side of the CMS Developer Portal. This panel remains visible while you complete the steps, allowing you to follow instructions without switching tabs or losing your place.

When you’re finished, simply click the X to close the panel.

Each tutorial includes clear images and code snippets with a copy-to-clipboard button, making it easy to reference viusals and quickly copy configuration examples or commands directly into your editor.

On first login, new admin users are automatically notified that a getting-started tutorial is available, helping them discover this feature right away and start customizing with confidence.

The experience is built using the drupal-off-canvas library. On top of that, we added custom logic to keep the tutorial panel persistently open, improve the layout, and apply consistent styling across steps.

For teams that prefer not use the tutorial module, it can be disabled directly from the admin settings.

What’s next?

These initial tutorials focus on some of the most common customization scenarios, but we see this as just the beginning. If you have ideas for additional admin tutorials or guided scenarios you’d like to see built into the CMS Developer Portal, we’d love to hear from you.

Let us know what would help you most as an admin user.