Create a Theme with the UI Theme Designer

The UI theme designer is a business service integrated in the SAP Build Work Zone, standard edition service and can be accessed from your site.

1. Access any SAP Build Work Zone, standard edition site.
2. Choose the user profile icon in the top-right corner to open the dropdown menu. Choose Theme Manager.
   

3. Choose Launch Theme Designer in the bottom-left corner. In the UI theme designer you can see an overview of all available custom themes, and you can create new ones of your own.

   

4. The theme designer opens and you get an overview of your existing custom themes if any exist.

   

From the overview of the UI theme designer, you can create a new custom theme or open an existing theme. You will create one for this tutorial.

Every custom theme is based on an SAP theme (e.g. SAP Horizon, SAP Quartz)

1. Choose Create a New Theme in the top right.

   

2. You get a list of possible SAP themes you could use as the base for your custom theme. Choose SAP Morning Horizon and click on Create Theme.

   

3. Now, you see a screen with three parts. On the left, you will see the list of available preview pages. The selected preview page is displayed in the middle . On the right, you get a list of parameters that you could change, this includes colors, images, fonts, and other values.

   

You can select which preview pages are shown. It’s best to start with Shell, Tiles and Cards to preview the changes you’re planning.

1. In the left area click on the ⊕ besides the Preview Pages.
2. Select the Test Suite SAPUI5 Controls.
   

3. Deselect all preview pages except for Shell, Tiles and Cards.

4. In the left area, choose Shell, Tiles and Cards.

Replace the SAP logo with your company logo. For the purposes of this tutorial, you can use this demo logo. Right click on the link and choose Save Link As…, save it into a folder where you can access it.

1. In the list of parameters on the right, on the top, choose the tab Quick.
2. Look for the Shell part and click there at the gray box next to the text field.
   

3. Drag and drop the saved demo company logo demoLogo.png from your file explorer/finder to the box Drop image files here or press to browse

   

4. After the image is uploaded, choose it and click on OK.

   

5. You are done, the logo should be updated in the top-left corner of the preview area.

You need to save your custom theme. This has to be done latest at the end of your design process but it’s a good idea to do it often as you make changes too.

1. In the menu on the top-left choose Theme → Save.

   

2. When saving a theme the first time, you need to enter some metadata for it.

   

3. Enter my_first_horizon as the custom theme’s ID.

4. Enter My First Morning Horizon as the Title.
5. Choose Save.

Your theme is now saved. You should do this often during development—you won’t see the popup window for entering the data after saving once.

Your theme ID can contain characters (a—z), digits, and underscores, but it has to start with a character and can’t start with sap.

While you can enter color values by hand, it’s a good idea to define often used colors (e.g. brand colors) and give it a name—this will allow you to reuse these colors later consistently.

1. In the properties area on the right choose the Palette tab (if it isn’t visible you need to choose More first).

   

2. Enter Primary1 for the new parameter’s name.

3. Enter #f59f00 for the color’s value .
4. Choose the ⊕ icon to add the new parameter.
5. Repeat this step with the parameter name Primary2 and the color value #2b4460. Don’t forget to click on the ⊕ at the end.

Besides defining a company logo a common use-case is using brand colors to make the UI more familiar. For this, it’s helpful to define the most important colors as palette colors (as shown in the previous step).

1. In the parameters area on the right choose the Quick tab.

   

2. Look for the Main section and there for the Brand Color. Enter the text @Primary1.

3. Look for the Shell section and there for the Icon Color. Enter also the text @Primary1.
4. Choose the Detailed tab.
   

5. Scroll down to the section Tiles and Cards. Enter the text @Primary2 for Title Color.

6. Look Enter the text @Primary1 for Icon Color.

By choosing the colored box to the right of a color value, you can interactively select a color. If you change parameters in the Quick area of the parameters many Detailed and Expert parameters are changed automatically unless you change them individually. So, you can change the overall experience by changing a handful of color—but in case you’re not getting the desired results for a specific design that you had in mind you can do that with more specific changes.

As with the company logo you’ll upload a background image for the site. For this tutorial you can use this demo background.

1. In the parameters area on the right choose the Detailed tab and look for the Shell Canvas section.
2. Choose the gray box next to the text field for Background Image.
3. Drag and drop the demo background image demoBackground.jpeg that you saved into the area Drop image files here or press to browse.
4. Choose OK.
5. Drag the slider right of Background Opacity to 0.4.
   

At the end, you need to publish your custom theme so that users are able to select it.

1. In the top-left menu, choose Theme → Save & Publish.

   

2. The theme is published and you can return to the theme designer overview page via Theme → Close.

You need to (re)publish your theme every time you make changes so that the changes can be seen by the users.

The theme is now available but it needs to be enabled for the end users in the Theme Manager.

1. Back in the site choose the Theme Manager as before via your user profile icon.

   

2. Select your newly created theme My First Horizon Theme.

3. Choose Enable User Selection.
4. Choose Save.

Now, your users will be able to select this theme via their Settings.