Custom AWI logo in SVG format

[Michael A. Lowry]

Starting with AWI v21, the default Automic logo that appears in the upper left corner of the AWI (and login window) is actually an SVG file.

It's also possible to use your own custom logo in SVG format.

Property in colors.properties	Environment variable	Example (PNG)	Example (SVG)
logo.filename	AUTOMIC_LOGO_FILENAME	awi-logo.png	awi-logo.svg
logo.mimetype	AUTOMIC_LOGO_MIMETYPE	image/png	image/svg+xml

The dimensions of the logo should be in a ratio of approximately 5:1 (width:height).

If you use a PNG file, the image should have a height of 96 pixels and a resolution of 72 dpi.

[Michael A. Lowry]

There's another way to specify a logo, using base64-encoded text of the logo file. This eliminates the need to include a separate file when deploying the AWI. This capability was likely added specifically to enable more dynamic AWI theming in container-based AAKE installations.

Property in colors.properties	Environment variable	Default	Example
logo.base64	AUTOMIC_LOGO_BASE64	null	*

This is especially handy when combined with a lightweight SVG logo. For logos consisting of text and geometric shapes, SVG files are almost guaranteed to be considerably smaller than PNG equivalents. They're also scalable without loss of sharpness or fidelity.

 (*No example is provided here because the base64-encoded text tends to be hundreds or thousands of characters long.)

The property white.background can be used to set a white background color.

Property in colors.properties	Environment variable	Default	Example
white.background	AUTOMIC_WHITE_BACKGROUND	false	true

There's also an undocumented configuration property, logo.background that lets you set the background to any named color or hex RGB value.

Property in colors.properties	Environment variable	Default	Example
logo.background	AUTOMIC_LOGO_BACKGROUND	null	#1E1E1E

If both white.background and logo.background are set, white.background takes precedence.

For what it's worth, the shade of very dark gray used in the spirograph image behind the Web Interface header text is hex RGB #1E1E1E. 

[Michael A. Lowry]

A related theming option is the session.colors property. It works a bit differently. It accepts only hex RGB colors but allows you to give them your own names. The format is

hex-rgb-color[ - name][, hex-rgb-color[ - name]...];

Property in colors.properties	Environment variable	Default	Example
session.colors	AUTOMIC_SESSION_COLORS	#BF2F1F - Red, #E76456 - Flamingo, #E88E35 - Orange, #D6246E - Cherry, #8953B0 - Lilac, #4E61C2 - Blue, #0A786F - Green, #6BC84C - Apple, #736D00 - Olive, #E1D828 - Yellow;	#ff9900 - EXP2, #fcfc39 - EXP, #216eb7 - DEV, #2ab82a - TEST, #fa0505 - PROD;

The AWI automatically translates the ten default RGB values listed above to names even if the names are not specified in session.colors. These names are Red, Flamingo, Orange, Cherry, Lilac, Blue, Green, Apple, Olive, Yellow, and Grey. These color names are hard-coded in the AWI and do not correspond to  the named colors supported by most browsers.

The documentation page for the colors.properties file describes how to assign names to RGB colors, by using a dash to separate each RGB value from its assigned name. Broadcom appears to have thought this might be useful for shops that run multiple environments on the same AE system. One can then devise a color scheme, and name one session color for each client.

The example above, #ff9900 - EXP2, #fcfc39 - EXP, #216eb7 - DEV, #2ab82a - TEST, #fa0505 - PROD;, produces the following Session Colors menu.

This is a nice idea, but it is somewhat hobbled by the fact that there is no way to enforce a one-to-one relationship between a given client number and a particular session color.

In our case it doesn't matter, because we run only one client per system. Each of our systems has a unique main color, and we set the session colors to one or two variants of the same color.

There is no way to set a default session color.

There also is no way to disable the No Color option.

[Michael A. Lowry]

When the user is logged in to the AWI and selects a session color, the AWI will try to set the favorite icon (favicon) based on the selected color. If one of the ten default session colors is selected, the AWI will load one of the built-in solid-color ICO files*.

These files are located inside the AWI package:

awi.war:
WEB-INF/bundle/webui-vaadin-framework-theme.jar
→
webui-vaadin-framework-theme.jar:
VAADIN/themes/oneui/

If you replace these icon files with your own icons of the same name, the AWI will happily use them instead. The only requirements are that the RGB hex value of the chosen session color must be one of the ten defaults, and the corresponding ICO file must exist.

If you use non-standard session colors, the AWI will dynamically generate ICO files for these colors at startup, and will place them in the root AWI application directory with names in the format favicon_hex-rbg-color.ico, e.g., favicon_2CADA7.ico.

* The AWI v21.0.5 package actually includes four additional solid-color icons that do not correspond to default session colors:

• Cyan (#2CADA7)
• Grey (#847C6D)
• Magenta (#DE3F81)
• Purple (#A671DC)

The AWI does not recognize and automatically assign names to these colors as it does with the ten defaults. It also does not load the built-in files, but generates dynamic ICO files for these colors.

[Michael A. Lowry]

See this comment for instructions for overriding the default solid-color favicons.

I discovered that if the favicons corresponding to custom session colors already exist with the expected filenames, the AWI does not overwrite them with dynamically-generated ones, but uses the files that are already there. One can take advantage of this mechanism to deliver one's own custom favicon files - one icon per custom session color.

[Leon Carroll]

Thanks for this Michael.

I think this is a seperate issue but the session colour selection is lost on login, or at least with SAML.  Saving the session colour once logged in works, but as soon as you log in again, it is reset to no color, despite picking a colour in the logon screen. 

It would be handy if we could set the default session colour from no color 

[Michael A. Lowry]

@Leon Carroll wrote:

I think this is a seperate issue but the session colour selection is lost on login, or at least with SAML.  Saving the session colour once logged in works, but as soon as you log in again, it is reset to no color, despite picking a colour in the logon screen.

Yes, we started seeing this beginning with version 21. I believe it's a bug.

It would be handy if we could set the default session colour…

Agreed. In April of 2018, I requested the ability to override the default session color as part of my idea Automic Web Interface customization.

Last year, Broadcom deleted the idea without warning, along with most of my other ideas. Fee free to submit a new idea if you like.

[Leon Carroll]

I've raised the bug with the SAML log on losing the session colour with Capture.  Log on without SAML works ok

I'll add another enchancement request for V23.  

default client

default session colour

default department

default login method

Most of the requests for help I get are just for logging in, even with people who have used it for a long time.  Having the default client as 0 - the administration client, doesn't help for most users.