Layout & Templates

Managing Template & customizing forma layout

• Templates
• Dashboard Configuration
• User Area LMS

Templates

Forma templates are located in your forma installation under root/templates/[template]

Yon can create unlimited templates and assign them to different orgchart nodes and domains

Adding templates

To add a new template:

1. duplicate the "standard" template
2. rename your copy
   

Avoid editing the standard template, you may lose your changes during forma upgrades

Customizing Templates

1. upload and overwrite images under \templates\[template]\images
2. create a file named \templates\[template]\style\custom.css and add your custom styles

Template priority

When a user logs to the platform and multiple templates are assigned to nodes and domains, forma will load the template following this priority order:

1. Template assigned to the domain

2. Template assigned to the user node

3. Default template

In any other condition or unexpected configurations will be used the default template

Dashboard Configuration

The main settings for the dashboard configuration (from Forma 3.x onwards) are available under: 

Admin > System configuration > Dashboard Configuration

You can create a new dashboard or:

• Clone/Duplicate
• Edit an existing layout
• Assign view permissions for each dashboard layout
• Delete an existing layout

Creating a new dashboard

• Dashboard name: Name of the dashboard. It's just for internal purposes, it's not visible to the users.
• Dashboard layout caption. This is the caption that appears when you hover on the dashboard button.
• Select a status: Draft/Published.

Duplicating a layout

Duplicate an existing layout and set its Name, Description, and status

Editing a layout

Adding a new block

You can delete blocks using the 'X' button, or you can create new blocks:

The available blocks are:

• Ads/Announcements: this block displays a list of announcements from the courses the user is enrolled to.
• Image / video banner: this block adds an image banner, that can be linked to a video opening in a popup.
• Calendar: this block displays courses start/end dates and classroom days on a calendar layout
• Certificates: this block displays a list of the latest certificate available to users
• Courses: this block displays the next courses about to start or close or classroom days.
• Messages: this displays a list of private messages received by the user
• Welcome message: this block sets a custom welcome message on the dashboard page. If you don't set a custom message, the default one from the languages will be used.

Concerning the welcome message, we recommend using and/or customizing the default text in the language management, because it can include the user's first and last name, and it can be localized according to the user's preferred language.

Editing blocks 

For each block, you can set:

• Type: Number of columns
• Title: a title that will be displayed to users
• Specific parameters for each block

Block width and position

The dashboard layout is based on a grid of 4 columns:

• Width: each block will occupy a variable width of 1 to 4 columns, for a maximum of 4 columns occupied on the same row
• Position: Every block can be dragged and dropped horizontally or vertically.

Viewing Permissions

Set the users, nodes or groups assigned to view each layout: with this feature you will be able to assign different dashboard layouts to different users.

Example

This is a good example

Let's see how it's configured in the backend.

On the first row, two blocks of 2 columns each. The Welcome message has been customized here, so this will override whatever message is in the language management.

The banner is 600 × 120, and it's linked to a YT video. You can also use slightly different sizes: in general, the banner should have a rectangular ratio.

Let's see the second row: three blocks, the calendar has 2 columns and the other blocks have 1 each.

User Area LMS

From this area, you can activate and set visibility options for most of the frontend layout modules.

Admin > Settings > Elearning Configuration > User Area LMS

Main Menu Links

Activate / Deactivate the main menu items.

Click on the user icon to assign visibility on this item only to some users or groups.

MyCourses Tabs

Activate / Deactivate tabs for the MyCourses section

Click on the user icon to assign visibility for each tab only to some users or groups.

Click on the “Home” icon to define the default tab to be shown when opening “MyCourses”

User Panel Blocks

Activate / Deactivate blocks and buttons in the side user panel.

Click on the user icon to assign visibility on this item only to some users or groups.