How to… UI Theme Designer – Transportation
Transporting the theme created with the UI Theme Designer is possible. I think this is a workaround, so bear in mind this can change. The workaround is necessary since transporting it via a normal way does not work yet.
Please note!
First try to transport the portal theme as you did before. Add the portal theme to your transport package and transport it. If it does not work properly, try the workaround below.
What happens when you edit a theme?
When you use the UI Theme Designer, all changes are stored in the Web Resource Repository. A new folder has been created called theming. Here are all the LESS files stored, but also the generated css files. Do NOT edit the css files. But you can edit the less files (see my previous post).
Besides the LESS and css files, you will also see the theme appear in the PCD themes folder.
Step by step workaround
Step 1: Create a portal transport package
Go to System Administration > Transport > Export and navigate to your transport folder. Right click and create a new tranport package. Now you can add the theme.
Step 2: Add your custom theme to the package
Select in the PCD the theme folder and then your custom theme. Right click on it and add it to the transport package.
Step 3: Add WRR folder theming
Now add the WRR folder theming to the transport package. If you have multiple themes, you will have to expand the folders below till you see your custom theme to transport. Since I have only one custom theme, I selected the whole theming folder.
Step 4: Finish the portal transport
Now you can transport the theme package to the acceptance server. But….. There is no trigger to rebuild the theme on the acceptance server. You will need to do this manually.
Step 5: Rebuild theme on acceptance
Open the acceptance server, go to Content Administration and select Portal Display. Open the UI Theme Designer and select your theme. Edit it.
Now the theme is being loaded. You will see the Test suites in the preview pane, UR Control Previews and Portal Control Previews. The thing you need to do is to Publish your theme again, but that option is not available at first. Select UR controls and check one of the UR controls (doesn’t matter which one).
Now in the preview pane the UR control is being displayed. The Quick and Expert tab will display information. You don’t need to change anything however.
Step 6: Publish theme
Now the Publish option is available in the Theme menu. Publish the theme and you might get a warning that it will take long. Just wait…
When it is done publishing your theme should be available at acceptance!
Step 5 and 6 can also be done with a portal application. I never tried it (since I was told by Itzik and Shani to use the UI Theme Designer :-), but the application is:
http://[servername]:port/irj/servlet/prt/portal/prtroot/com.sap.portal.themes.archive.download
In this case replace the servername with your acceptance server.
Hope this helps you 🙂
Happy branding!
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Noël Hendrikx – SAP Portal consultant @ Peppie Portals.
Specialized in Corporate branding SAP Portal / Adobe Interactive Forms.
UI Theming blog series
Portal theming – also waited a couple of years?
How to… UI Theme Designer – Installation
How to… UI Theme Designer – Migration
How to… UI Theme Designer – Locating elements
How to… UI Theme Designer – Transportation
How to… UI Theme Designer – Make use of the Custom CSS tab in the Portal!
Other blogs:
Tired of zipping / unzipping portal theme?
Tips for the Portal Content Studio
DSM Terminator and popup blockers (or not)
My best development friend – Autoresponder FTW
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Okay so the key thing here is to manually include the WRR folder. I wonder why SAP can't provide that information.
True, and don't forget to regenerate the theme again! I think I was lucky I attended the feedback session last year and had direct connections to the developers
Sure. That is actually documented in SAP note 1890375 since importing the WRR folder is comparable to manually editing the LESS files.
I guess SAP (development) support haven't had internal KT from the developers yet...
Hello Noel and Samuli,
The above described workaround was the solution for a specific issue Noel encountered (which we weren`t able to reproduce on SAP`s systems
).
WRR folder should not be manually added to the transport package, as described in the blog above. The transport mechanism is alredy taking care of it in the background.
Have a wonderful day,
Shani
Portal Product Owner
I know it should work automatically when using the transport mechanism but it doesn't. When importing the transport package, the WRR in the destination portal won't get updated. I have customer incident open (16888 / 2014) in case you or one of your colleagues wants to jump in.
Hello Samuli,
As this is not the correct scenario, and we saw it on Noel`s system only till now, we will take over the message for investigation of your system.
A developer from development support team of UI Theme Designer for Portal will soon contact you through the message.
Thank you for pointing this out!
Have a wonderful day,
Shani
Hi Shani,
So the transport mechanism should be: add portal theme to the transport package and that should be it?
After transporting, the theme will be generated as well? Wonder why it doesn't work yet, but maybe we should investigate it also, like Samuli.
cheers,
Noel
Hi Noel,
Yes, this is exactly how it should work and this is also how it is working on our local systems.
I guess we can keep this post updated with the final answer in Samuli`s message (no need to open a new message on the same issue
).
Have a wonderful day,
Shani
Today SAP support came back to me with the following: the correction will be provided with NW731 SP12 and it won't be backported to lower SP levels as a patch.
Thanks for sharing, Samuli. Too bad there is no Dislike button
Hi,
Just to clarify, the issue that you described above occurred only with sap_goldreflection theme. As stated above it was solved in NW731 SP12. The import\export of other themes should work in previous SPs. If you still have issues with the import and export please contact us.
Cheers,
Tuvia
That's interesting. The original problem was with a custom theme based on SAP Corbu. I still have the customer incident open, I guess I should send it back...
Latest update on this: a patch will be provided for NW731 SP9 (and others as well I assume) that should fix the transportation issue.