Customising the Client Home page

Firstly a general comment – RefTracker manages your questions, requests, projects, offers, or whatever else you want to call them.  And similarly you might call your end users clients, requesters, patrons, customers, etc.  Whatever you call these things, your terminology can be reflected in RefTracker.  Just contact your RefTracker support representative and let them know what you want to call your requests and requesters and we will make the change by changing the Request (system name Question) and/or Requester (system name Client) table names (in Code tables>System>Database tables).  The effect of this change is to change what is inserted wherever the {question}  or {client} variables are used throughout RefTracker – for example “Check existing {question}” can become “Check existing question”, “Check existing request”, “Check existing project”, “Check existing offer”, etc. according to the change you make here.

A number of aspects of the client interface can be easily changed via parameters. Where a parameter controls the item, the relevant parameter number is indicated on the screen layout above.

Colours can be changed by amending the css directory (see the Customising colours section later in this manual), and the entire header can be changed using the customisable client interface header and footer. When customising the RefTracker client interface pages to suit your web pages, we recommend that you start by providing a customised header (see the later section about how to do that), and then change the css after that – using this approach will ensure that css changes are kept to a minimum.

The diagram above shows the parameters that you can use to change a large number of attributes of what shows in this screen. You can find information about each of these parameters in the appropriate Parameter help pages.

**** The Required (Mandatory) image and bullet image (in fact all of the images used throughout the product) can be changed using the RefTracker 3.x parameters, and such changes apply to both the client and the staff interface.

Header bar note – Links in the header bar of every client page: 

Ask new question – It is unlikely that you would want to remove this, but it can be removed by setting all request forms for this Location in the Request forms summary screen to Disabled or Explicit access for clients. Doing this will also remove the Ask new question link from the body of the Welcome page. Note that if you only have one Request form in your system set to Selectable or General for the client interface, this link will take you directly to that form. If you have more than one form set to available, this link will go to the screen that lists all of the Request forms available for use at this location.

If you want to change the wording of this link, or other similar menu links, you can do that by going to System>Code tables menu>System and then clicking on the Application functions code table name.  In that table, search for the link you want to change (using ctl f) and then change the relevant descriptions in the Function and Brief description columns.

You can insert this specific page into your web pages using <Your RefTrackerDomain>/reft120.aspx

Click here for information about how to customise individual request forms, and insert individual forms into your web pages.

Check existing question – Can be removed by setting parameter 6.6 to No.   

You can insert this specific page into your web pages using <Your RefTrackerDomain>/reft200.aspx

Subject Guides – Only appears if parameter 6.15 is set to Yes.The content of these Subject Guides is provided by you according to the areas of interest of your client base.  Click here for information about setting up and maintaining Subject Guides.

You can insert this specific set of Subject Guide pages into your web pages using <Your RefTrackerDomain>/refs000.aspx

Knowledge base – Can be removed by setting parameter 0.15 to anything other than Public.
– The number of Q&A result sets returned in each page of this function is controlled by parameter 0.17.
– The amount of information presented about each Question/Answer returned by the search is controlled by the clientSearchResults.htm file using the Template editor (text). 

You can insert this specific page into your web pages using <Your RefTrackerDomain>/reft290.aspx?sdb=2

FAQ – Can be removed by setting parameter 0.16 to anything other than Public.
– The number of Q&A result sets returned in each page of this function is controlled by parameter 0.17.
– The amount of information presented about each Question/Answer returned by the search is controlled by the clientSearchResults.htm file using the Template editor (text).

You can insert this specific page into your web pages using <Your RefTrackerDomain>/reft290.aspx?sdb=3 

Other resources – Can be removed by setting parameter 6.5 to blank, or you can link it one of your own pages using that same parameter.

Comments – This link can be removed by setting the availability for clients of the Comments & Suggestions form in the Request forms summary screen to Disabled. Doing this will also remove the Ask new question link from the body of the Welcome page and the Comment form from the Summary of available Request forms that shows when a client clicks on “Ask new question”.

Home – This link cannot be removed (without removing the whole menu bar), but parameter 6.7 allows it to link to either this RefTracker Welcome page, or to a specific URL defined in that parameter. Using a specific URL you can link to a generic library help services page (example following), or a customised RefTracker entry page (example following). 

You can insert this specific page into your web pages using <Your RefTrackerDomain>/reft000.aspx

Header and footer for the client interface

Your library can apply its own headers and footers to the RefTracker client interface. Developing library specific headers and footers simply require the provision of HTML header and/or footer files that you web site manager can easily provide. (More about how to do this in the “Header, footer customisation” section.)