Creating a Custom Style

Use the style management utility to create custom styles that you can use to affect the appearance of IBM® Cognos® components.

For IBM Cognos Connection and IBM Cognos Administration, after creating a custom style, you make changes to the style.xml file to use custom colors and images. You are not required to edit the associated cascading style sheets.

For IBM Cognos Report Studio, IBM Cognos Viewer, IBM Cognos Query Studio, and prompt pages, instead of editing the style.xml file after you create a custom style, you must manually edit the associated cascading style sheets.

For information about creating and deploying a custom style for IBM Cognos components using the style management utility, see one of the following:

Procedure

  1. Launch the style management utility.

    On Microsoft Windows operating system, run the batch file stylemgr.bat located in the c10_location\bin\utilities\StyleManager directory.

    On UNIX and Linux operating systems, run the shell script stylemgr.sh located in the c10_location/bin/utilities/StyleManager directory.

  2. At the prompt, type your user name, password, and namespace.

    Use the namespace user id for the user name.

  3. At the prompt, type

    new style_name_existing style_name_new

    Example: new business standard

    The new style, standard, is created in the c10_location\temp directory.

    If you intend to use the new style to customize the appearance of IBM Cognos Connection or IBM Cognos Administration, open <style>.xml in an XML or text editor, modify the colors and images, and save your changes. For more information, see Modifying the XML Style File.

    If you intend to use the new style to customize the appearance of IBM Cognos Report Studio, IBM Cognos Viewer, IBM Cognos Query Studio, and prompt pages, proceed to step 5.

  4. After the changes to the new style are completed, return to the style management utility, and validate the style file. At the prompt type

    validate style_name

  5. To create the additional files associated with a style, at the prompt type

    generate style_name

    Respond yes when prompted to save the style.

    The generate command creates a folder for the new style in the c10_location\temp directory on all IBM Cognos Business Intelligence gateways. The folder contains all the files needed for the new style, including the .css and image files.

  6. Zip the folder created by the generate command. At the prompt, type

    zip style_name

  7. Extract the files from the .zip file created in step 7 to the c10_location\webcontent\skins folder on all gateway locations.

    After the files are extracted, you need to publish the style.

  8. Launch the style management utility. At the prompt type

    publish style_name

    Publishing a style makes it available to your end users.

    After publishing a user-defined style, you can create other custom styles based on the user-defined style.

  9. Exit the style management utility. At the prompt type

    logoff

Parent topic: Using the Style Management Utility