Configuring a Mobile theme

The Mobile theme defines the appearance of the IBM® Cognos® Mobile application welcome page. By default, the client applications use the default theme that is built into the product. You can create your own Mobile theme to customize the appearance of the application and configure the theme to make it available to the user groups and roles that you choose. At any time, administrators can revert to the default theme.

About this task

The configuration tasks include enabling support for Mobile themes; adding, editing, or deleting the themes; and defining which groups and roles can use the themes.

The same user can belong to different groups and roles and can, therefore, have access to different themes. To ensure that proper themes are applied for the users, the administrators must carefully consider which groups and roles they can choose when configuring the theme.

The Cognos Mobile default theme is defined in the defaultTheme.zip template that is installed with the product. Administrators can use this template as a starting point when creating a custom theme. Other than that, this template is not required for the product to function properly. For more information, see Creating a custom Mobile theme.

Procedure

From a desktop browser, log on to IBM Cognos Connection with mobile administrator privileges.
Go to IBM Cognos Administration, and click the Mobile tab.
Complete the following steps to ensure that theme support is enabled for the Mobile service:
1. Click Server Configuration.
2. In the Policy group of settings, locate the Mobile theme support setting and ensure that the value of themesOn is specified for this setting.
3. Click the Apply mobile configuration button to save the configuration.
Open the Mobile UI Configuration page.
To add a new theme, click the New Theme icon.
In the Mobile Theme Configuration page, complete the following steps:
1. In the Specify a name for the theme box, type the theme name. You can specify any name that is meaningful for your environment.
2. In the Specify a theme file to upload box, browse for a zip file that contains the theme resources.
3. In the Specify a group or role box, click the Choose Group button and choose the groups or roles that need to use the theme. You can choose groups and roles from the Cognos namespace or from other active namespaces.
4. Click OK when all parameters are properly specified.
The theme name appears in the Mobile UI Configuration page.
If you want to edit the theme, click its Set properties icon in the Actions column. You can edit any of the theme parameters.
If you want to delete the theme, select its check box and click the Delete icon in the toolbar.
To revert to the Cognos Mobile default theme, delete the theme that is currently configured. The users who were using this theme automatically return to using the default theme when they connect to the Cognos BI server the next time.
Using an iOS device, connect to server for which the theme was configured to test if your changes were properly applied.

Results

The users can continue using the application while the theme resources are downloaded to their devices. The theme is applied when the users connect to the Cognos BI server the next time or refresh their application.

When a user wants to connect to multiple servers that might have different themes configured, the theme that is applied for the user is the theme that is configured for the server to which the client successfully connected first. Connecting to other servers does not change the user's theme even if the servers use different themes. To change the theme to the one that is configured for a different server, remove the connection to the server with the current theme. Then, the user can connect to the server that uses the required theme.