IBM Business Analytics

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  • 1.  Modify Cognos Analytics Homepage

    Posted Thu October 12, 2023 01:57 PM

    Hi,

    I am in the process of customising the homepage of our 11.2.1 install to give it more of our corporate brand.

    i used style.css to change the welcome banner background from the standard dark colour to a pale blue, but now the welcome title and description are hard to read as they remain in white.

    how do I change the colour of the text to black (or navy)? I can't seem to find anything to call and change these parameters via themes or css extensions.



    ------------------------------
    Lindsay Young
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  • 2.  RE: Modify Cognos Analytics Homepage

    IBM Champion
    Posted Fri October 13, 2023 03:47 AM

    Hi Lindsay,

    You might want to check with existing theme samples located in the <installation_location>/samples/themes folder.

    You will find user interface elements in the following page:

    https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cognos-analytics/11.2.0?topic=roles-creating-themes

    Best regards,



    ------------------------------
    Patrick Neveu
    Positive Thinking Company
    IBM Champion
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Modify Cognos Analytics Homepage

    Posted Fri October 13, 2023 03:57 AM

    Thanks for this Patrick.  I have tried going through this example and whilst I can change the wording of the welcome text I still cannot fathom how to change the colour of the text.



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    Lindsay Young
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    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Modify Cognos Analytics Homepage

    IBM Champion
    Posted Fri October 20, 2023 09:14 AM
    Edited by Jim Boland Mon October 23, 2023 09:02 AM
      |   view attached

    Hi Lindsay, 

    As Patrick says, the best place to make styling customizations for the CA UI is with a CA theme. However, as you've notice, there is a limited set of styling elements you can change with a CA theme (elements mostly targeted towards "skinning" the CA UI). There is another approach you can take to change a broader range of the Cognos UI - and that is through a CA extension. Similar to themes, you can create your extension zip file, then upload it as a customization into CA. Extensions can be used for a lot of purposes, but one of these is the goal you are trying to accomplish (modifying styling of the UI). To do this, the extension introduces its own CSS file(s) to override the default styling of the targeted elements in the CA UI. Besides the CSS, the extension can also have other resources for the styling changes (such as new fonts, or image files).

    A while back I uploaded such an extension that overrides many aspects of the CA UI to create a Halloween themed extension to the CA UI. It overrides things like:

    • uploads a custom font and applies it to the UI elements
    • CSS animation for the spiders
    • applying some CSS to various elements of the CA home page (to set colors, background images, etc.)

    You can find the extension here

    Here's a short video of the results of the extension UI modifications.

    You can also do a simple extension using this approach to change the color property (in your CSS file) to whatever broad or specific scope of text elements that you want to target with the override. (I've attached a second extension to this post - blurry.zip. It is probably closer to what you want - it just overrides one CSS property - the text-shadow for all text (don't ask why I created this ;-) ). If you modify the blurry.css file in this extension you could replace the text-shadow override with the color override that you want.) 



    ------------------------------
    Jim Boland

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimboland
    Website: https://coreinsightz.com
    Email: jimboland@coreinsightz.com
    ------------------------------

    Attachment(s)

    zip
    blurry.zip   5 KB 1 version
    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: Modify Cognos Analytics Homepage

    Posted Wed October 25, 2023 09:51 AM

    @Jim this great info. Thanks for sharing. Is there a way to specify where the extension or a theme gets uploaded? If I upload a new theme, where does it go? Samples folder?



    ------------------------------
    Will Phillips
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    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: Modify Cognos Analytics Homepage

    IBM Champion
    Posted Wed October 25, 2023 10:00 AM

    Hi Will,

    There is no feature to choose where it is uploaded.

    On the file system, you will see all your extension in the following folder:

    <install_location>\temp\extensions

    Best regards,



    ------------------------------
    Patrick Neveu
    Positive Thinking Company
    IBM Champion
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 7.  RE: Modify Cognos Analytics Homepage

    IBM Champion
    Posted Wed October 25, 2023 10:26 AM

    Hi Will,

    When you upload a customization - theme or extension - it is actually uploaded to the Content Store (CM). As CA starts up (more specifically as each CA appserver starts up) it fetches the extensions information from the CM and caches information/files from it locally on the appserver. Each appserver periodically polls for any new extensions that have been uploaded  (or modified or deleted) to CM,  to update its cache. (The cache location is where Patrick mentioned.) The fact that it is stored in CM (versus just a local file) is important for a couple of reasons:

    • For a CA installation with multiple appservers, you only have to upload it once, and it is applied to all appservers
    • If you export a CA deployment, you can include the extensions (and themes) in the deployment. This means that the extensions aren't "lost" or need to be reapplied if you are importing a backup deployment.
    • An admin (with the respective capabilities for managing customizations) doesn't need access to the file system of the CA installation

    Extensions (and themes) can all be managed from the CA UI (assuming your CA userid has the correct capabilities/permissions). You do not need access to the actual file system of the appserver. This includes uploading/deleting/modifying themes/extensions, but also the ability to download any extensions/themes currently applied to your CA instance. (If you are using CA Cloud, take a look how at many extensions are pre-installed - you might be suprised to see how many IBM is adding to customize the CA environment for CAoC ;-) ).



    ------------------------------
    Jim Boland

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimboland
    Website: https://coreinsightz.com
    Email: jimboland@coreinsightz.com
    ------------------------------

    Original Message