Customizing the home page

The home page of the Identity Service Center displays a list of tasks that the user is permitted to perform. The home page can be customized in various ways to meet the needs of your organization.

Before you begin

You must have read and write access to the customizable files and the directories where they are maintained. See Location of Identity Service Center customizable files and Customization of Identity Service Center files for specific details of where these files are located. Contact your system administrator if you do not have the necessary permissions.

About this task

Use the following sections to work with the configuration files or the configuration properties from the IBM Security Identity Manager virtual appliance console:
The IBM Security Identity Manager administrator console is used to manage view definitions by:
  • Assigning tasks to views.
  • Associating groups with those views.
  • Managing the members of the groups.
IBM provides an initial set of ready-to-use Service Center tasks. You can also create custom tasks to launch your own web applications from the Identity Service Center user interface. Both the tasks that are provided by IBM and your custom tasks can be displayed on the home page. However, the method of customizing of the appearance and organization of tasks is different for each of these types of tasks. For information about adding custom tasks, see View management.

Each task on the home page is represented by a card. The card provides information about the task, such as a task name, a description, and an image. You can customize the appearance and organization of these tasks on the home page to suit your needs.

The tasks on the home page adapt to the user's authorized views so that only tasks the user is allowed to perform are shown.

The config/Homepage.json file defines the appearance and organization of the tasks that IBM provides on the home page. The contents of this file are maintained in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format, which is a way of representing structured data. Each section in the config/Homepage.json file is enclosed in braces and defines the appearance of one task on the home page. For example, the following section of the config/Homepage.json file defines the Request Access task.
 {
        "actionId":"SVCENTER_REQUEST_ACCESS",
        "btnLabel": "SVCENTER_REQUEST_ACCESS_BUTTON",
        "desc":  "SVCENTER_REQUEST_ACCESS_DESC",
        "img": "./custom/ui/images/homepage/requestOthersAccess.png"
    },
    {
        "actionId":"SVCENTER_REQUEST_ACCESS_FOR_MYSELF",
        "btnLabel": "SVCENTER_REQUEST_ACCESS_BUTTON",
        "desc":  "SVCENTER_REQUEST_ACCESS_FOR_MYSELF_DESC",
        "img": "./custom/ui/images/homepage/requestMyAccess.png"
    },
actionId
Specifies the name of the property in the nls/headerLabel.properties file whose value is displayed for the task name.
btnLabel
Specifies the name of the property in the nls/headerLabel.properties file whose value is displayed for the label of the button for the task.
desc
Specifies the name of the property in the nls/headerLabel.properties file whose value is displayed for the description of the task.
img
Specifies the location of the image that is displayed for the task.

The steps in this procedure use the Request Access section of the config/Homepage.json file as an example. The actual property names in the nls/headerLabel.properties file depend on the section of the config/Homepage.json file that you are customizing.

Procedure

  1. Optional: Customize the text for a task that IBM provides on the home page.
    1. If you have not previously completed this task, make a custom copy of the nls/headerLabel.properties file.
    2. Open the custom copy of the nls/headerLabel.properties file in a text editor.
    3. Optional: To customize the text for the task name, find the property that matches actionId field, such as SVCENTER_REQUEST_ACCESS. Change the value.
    4. Optional: To customize the text for the task button, find the property that matches btnLabelfield, such as SVCENTER_REQUEST_ACCESS_BUTTON. Change the value.
    5. Optional: To customize the text for the task description, find the property that matches desc field, such as SVCENTER_REQUEST_ACCESS_DESC. Change the value.
    6. Save the file.
  2. Optional: Customize the image that is displayed for the task that IBM provides. You can use either of two methods.
    • Create a custom image file in PNG format with the same name as the image provided by IBM, such as requestAccess.png in the previous example. Place the image file in the images/homepage folder of your customizable files. The custom image is used in place of the requestAccess.png image that is provided by IBM.
    • If you have not previously completed this task, make a custom copy of the config/Homepage.json file. Create a custom image file in any image format and with any file name, for example customImage.jpg. Place the image file in the images/homepage folder of your customizable files. Edit the custom copy of the config/Homepage.json file. Change the value of the img field for the task to specify the location and name of your custom image custom/ui/images/homepage/customImage.jpg. Save the file.
  3. Optional: Change the organization of the tasks that IBM provides on the home page.
    1. If you have not previously completed this task, make a custom copy of the config/Homepage.json file.
    2. Open the custom copy of the config/Homepage.json file in a text editor.
    3. Move the sections so that they are in the order that you want them to be displayed on the home page.
    4. Save the file.
  4. Optional: Customize the appearance and organization of custom tasks on the page header menus.
    The IBM Security Identity Manager administration console can be used to create custom tasks to launch your own web applications. To create these custom tasks, the administrator specifies parameters that define the appearance of the task, such as:
    • Label
    • Description
    • Icon
    For information about creating custom tasks, see View management.

Results

The appearance of the home page is changed to reflect your customizations.

What to do next

In a managed-cluster environment, you must wait until after the configuration is synchronized to the application servers in the cluster. For information about synchronizing, see Synchronizing a member node with a primary node. Log in to the Identity Service Center and verify that the home page reflects the customizations that you made.