MB2-716 (Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customization and Configuration) – Themes

As I prepare for my MB2-716 exam I’m producing a series of blog posts that collectively should help others revising for the MB2-716 Certification. (Microsoft Dynamics 365 customization and Configuration.) This time I will look at Themes.

Themes are a simple topic! But they are specifically mentioned in the skills measured statement, so don’t forget to revise them!!

Themes allow you to create a custom look to your Dynamics 365 solution. I often find that changing the colours to fit in with an organizations corporate branding and adding the company logo creates an interface users find inviting.

The themes option is available in the customization area of settings.

When you first load the themes option you will see that you only have a default option. You could change this! But leaving it unaltered and using the clone option to create a copy is probably a better option. That way we can revert back to the default if required.

Clicking clone with a theme selected will create a copy.

You can now open the copy and amend it.

Tip: With CRM2016 we could change the colour of the business process flow in themes. This feature is not available in Dynamics 365.

Name

You don’t have to change the name but it probably makes sense to give your theme a new name.

Logo

The logo field will initially be blank. Leaving this field blank will continue to show the default Microsoft Dynamics CRM logo. If you wish to change the logo you will need an image file that is 400 x 50 pixels. (Note: 400 is a guide as the width of the logo will scale accordingly but you should aim for 50px deep.)

By way of a demo I have quickly created a truly scary looking logo. I have simply created an image using “Paint” and then loaded it as a web resource.

Back in themes I selected my web resource as the logo. Then I saved my theme and selected the publish theme option. You always need to publish the themes to make them take effect. Finally, below you can see my updated theme with a “lovely” new logo.

Tip:
A theme doesn’t take effect until it is published. You can only have one default theme. And the default theme is the currently published theme. Meaning several themes can be defined but only one is active at any moment in time.

Tip: Themes cannot be included in your solution. Meaning they are not portable between organizations.

Logo Tooltip

Logo Tooltip lets you change the logo tooltip.

Navigation Bar Colour

Changes the navigation bar colour. Note, with all the colours you enter the hex colour code value. So orange is #EE7600.

Warning:
Changing the theme doesn’t always give pleasing results!!!!

Navigation Bar Shelf Colour

The “Shelf” is shown in yellow below.

Header Colour

The header colour is the colour of heading text in CRM. See below that mine is pink! (This colour is also used for tab names on Dynamics 365 forms.)

Global Link Colour

Changing my global link colour to pink effects all hyperlinks in the system.

Selected Link Effect

This colour is used when selecting links, say in a sub grid. As shown with my pink bar below.

Hover Link Effect

As you hover over links in CRM their colour changes. Below you can see that just hovering over an account in this list has turned it yellow.

Accent Color for Mobile Client

A new feature in Dynamics 365 is the ability to set the accent colour in the mobile client. This has replaced the older setting to change the colour of the business process flow bar.

Note:
Unfortunately I couldn’t identify any effect of changing this value! I did however observe that the header colour and default entity colours take effect in the mobile client.