How do I customise Workplace in BAW / CP4BA (branding, custom pages, task list columns)?

Question

Process Portal could be copied and modified as a process app. Workplace seems to be a fixed application - what can be customised (logo, colours, custom pages, columns) and how?

Answer 1

Workplace is configured, not forked. What you can change, and where:

• Branding: logo, product name, primary colour and login page text through the Workplace settings - on traditional BAW through the Workplace settings in Process Admin (Server Admin) and the <workplace> section of 100Custom.xml; on CP4BA through the Cloud Pak dashboard's branding settings (which Workplace inherits) and the Workplace options in the workflow section of the CR.
• Custom pages: any client-side human service exposed as a dashboard appears in Workplace's navigation for its team - that is the extension point for custom pages (team dashboards, admin tools, reports). Order and grouping follow the exposure settings of the process apps.
• Task list: users add columns from the business data exposed by the process apps (the variables you exposed as searchable) and save filters; administrators define shared saved searches that all users see (federated saved searches through PFS).
• Task UI: the coach of the task renders inside Workplace; the house style comes from the UI Toolkit theme / your coach views - Workplace itself has no theme file to edit.
• Actions: claim, reassign, comments, due date changes are governed by teams and roles (the same rules as before); there is no per-action toggle in the UI - restrict through team managers and custom dashboards.
• Not possible: changing Workplace's own JavaScript / layout, adding menu entries that are not dashboards, replacing the task list component.

If a requirement cannot be met by configuration + dashboards, the supported route is a custom front end on the REST APIs (question on headless portals) rather than modifying Workplace.

References

• BAW documentation - Workplace configuration
• CP4BA - Workplace