Customizing Look and Feel
Biscom Delivery Server is easy to customize to match the look and feel of your company. Biscom Delivery Server provides two areas that are easily customizable: the logo that appears on the top of every page and the colors, fonts, tables, and other user interface attributes as controlled by a Cascading Style Sheet or CSS file. The user interface is controlled through the server configuration utility in the application, which allows an Administrator to specify the location of a custom logo, and specify a different CSS file.
Using your own CSS file
Update the property for the CSS style sheet location.
A default CSS file is provided. To change the behavior of a style, update the default CSS file (typically by overriding the existing styles) and rename it. Reference this new CSS filename in the CSS property.
The CSS file can reside either at a URL location that is accessible via a hyperlink, or located in a location under the Web server document root.
Changing the Logo
Any image can be used to replace the Biscom Delivery Server logo. The image can be any width but because the application window is resizable, this may produce
undesirable effects if the browser is resized too small. One way to minimize the effects of window resizing is to use a logo with a relatively small width, and use a background color that blends in with the logo background:
#layoutLogo {
height: 50px;
background-color: #002c77; width: 100%;
}
Change the background-color value to the color that best matches the logo, often this is the logo’s background color. The image can reside either at a URL location that is accessible via a hyperlink, or located in a location under the Web server document root. ; and the text labels in the Web application and notification messages
Customizing Text Labels
Editing Static Messages
All the text labels in the Web application and the email notification messages can be customized. A properties file called application.properties contains key-value
pairs, where the key is the message name and the value is the actual message displayed. For example:
label.delivery.date.available=Date available
The value for this key is: Date available
Messages can also contain placeholders for variable data. These placeholders are numbered and surrounded by curly braces:
msg.password.length=You must enter a password that is between {0} and {1} characters long
Although the application.properties file cannot be modified, administrators can edit a file called bdsCustom.properties to change the text that appears for a particular key in application.properties.
Note: Administrators cannot define new keys, only modify the value of existing keys.
The text customization file is located here:
<BDS HOME>/config/custom/resources/bdsCustom.properties
If this file does not exist, simply create a new text file in this directory and name it bdsCustom.properties.
Example:
To change the text “Date available” to “Available date”, you would add the following line to bdsCustom.properties:
label.delivery.date.available=Available date
Now, whenever the application looks up the label.delivery.date.available
key, the value “Available date” will be inserted instead of “Date available”.
Note: If you accidentally enter keys with the same name, the value used will be the key that is defined last in the bdsCustom.properties file.
After editing the bdsCustom.properties file, restart the application server for your changes to take effect.
Editing Dynamic Messages
Administrators can also modify and customize messages that contain dynamic text. For example, a delivery notification email will contain content that is specific to the delivery, such as the delivery name, who viewed the delivery, and when it was viewed. The message that defines the delivery notification is
email.delivery.view.notification.body=Your delivery \ has been viewed.\n\n\
Delivery : {0}\n\ Delivery viewed by : {1}\n\ \n\ Delivery sent on : {2}\n\ Delivery viewed on : {3}\n\ \n\ Package : {4}\n\ \n\
62
\n\
Please note: This email was sent from a \ notification-only address that cannot \ accept incoming emails. Please do not \ reply to this message.\n
The curly braces surrounding the number indicate a substitution field. {0} is the variable or placeholder for the delivery name. {1} is the variable for who viewed the delivery. The numbering is important – each number represents a different value, and the same numbers much be used in any customized content. As an example, we may want to change the delivery notification email from the default message above to:
email.delivery.view.notification.body=Your delivery \ has been viewed.\n\n\
The delivery {0} was viewed by {1}\n\ on {3}\n\
\n
We would enter this edited key-value pair into the bdsCustom.properties file and restart the application server for the change to take effect. Note that we’ve removed several variables in the new message – the variable {2} no longer is part of the message, but {3} is still in the message.
Note: Messages that span multiple lines use the backslash character to indicate that the message is continued on the next line. The control character \n inserts a new line into the message. Some characters are reserved for use – such as the single quote and the curly brace. If you need to have a single quote or curly brace appear in the displayed message, use single quotes around the character. To show a curly brace, use ‘{‘. To display a single quote, use two single quotes: ‘‘.
Customizing Online Help
Online help in the BDS Web application is accessible by all users by clicking the Help icon in the main menu. BDS provides administrators the ability to create their own help file and link to it from the built-in help icon. The help pages can be a “mini site” that contains multiple pages.
To specify the location of your custom help, enter the URL of the first or index page in the User Interface section of the Server Configuration page. When you specify a custom help site, a new browser window will open when users click the Help icon. To revert to the default help page, remove the URL from the custom help text field.
Error Pages
When the Biscom Delivery Server is offline (i.e. the application server is shut down), or another problem occurs, error pages are predefined that will be delivered to the
browser user by the web server. Administrators may want to modify or customize these error pages to reflect the problem better within their environment and customize the look and feel to match the application or organization’s web site. The pages are under the Apache document root directory:
<BDS HOME>/components/apache-2.0/htdocs
With file names:
error404.html, error500.html, error503.html
error503.html is shown here as an example:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html> <head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>Biscom Delivery Server not available</title> <style type="text/css">
body { background-color: #eee; margin: 0px; font-family: Tahoma,Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; width: 100%; vertical-align: top; } #header { height: 50px; background: #fff url('/images/bds_logo.gif') no-repeat; } #footer { height: 34px; background:
url('/images/powered_by_biscom.gif') no-repeat right; }
#container { background: #fff; } #message { padding: 10px 75px 75px 75px; } h1 { font-size:1em; color:#333; font-weight: bold; padding-bottom: 10px; } h2 { font-size:.8em; color:#505050; font-weight: normal; } </style> </head> <body> <div id="container">
64
<div id="header"></div> <div id="message">
<h1>
The server is currently unavailable. Please try again later.
</h1> <h2>
If you continue to have problems accessing the server, please contact your system administrator.
</h2> </div> </div> <div id="footer"></div> </body> </html>