Customising Themes in the Unified Interface

Dynamics 365 themes include multiple options to set colours that reflect an organisation's brand palette but which parts of the user interface do these apply to?

To customise themes click Advanced Settings > Customisations > Themes

Each defined theme consists of a series of elements where colours can be edited.

These options haven't much changed since they first appeared in 2015 but the introduction of the unified interface has meant that many of these settings are no longer relevant in the new front end. Here, we'll focus on the most impactful theme settings for the latest UI.

Colours are defined using a hexadecimal code but as Dynamics doesn't include a colour picker, an external colour selector is an essential resource. There are plenty of free options such as http://www.colorpicker.com to assess new theme colours, get ideas on contrasting colours and copy HEX codes.

Logo

A new image file can be uploaded gif, jpg or png format to replace the default Dynamics 365 display. Recommended dimensions for uploading a new image logo is up to 400 x 50px.

Click the search option on the logo field:

Then select new to open a new window:

This requires a new logo name to be entered and confirmation of the file type. To complete, upload the relevant image file then save and publish.

Navigation Bar Fill Colour

The most prominent theme setting defines the appearance of the nav bar.

Consistent with the background of the custom logo we have uploaded, the navigation bar has been set with HEX colour #DE070E. 

Main Colour

This setting is applied to various elements within the Unified Interface. In this example, the main colour is set as orange (#FFA352).

The main colour is set for buttons within guided process flows.

This will also define the underline colour that appears on forms and views...

... as well as the colour of warning notifications and confirmation boxes.

A lighter gradient of the main colour will also be shown in other areas of the interface. For example, selecting records in a list view:

This will also be applied to highlight the current selection in a record set list. 

Accent Colour

Updating the accent colour will adjust the main display of guided process flows for cases, leads, opportunities and other entities where flows are enabled.

Here, an accent has been set as blue (#1E49F7). Again, a lighter gradient is automatically applied to some elements.

Helpfully, Dynamics will automatically adapt text to reflect the selected colour.

For example, when a lighter accent colour is set (#9EECFF) the text overlay has switched to black. 

Link Colours

As implied, this theme option sets the colours of links to related records in a look-up field. This includes contacts, accounts, leads and opportunities.

This does not apply to links for phone numbers and email addresses.

Other Theme Colours

Many of the additional theme settings are the legacy of controls for the deprecated web client. These include fill colours for panel headers and page headers, shelf navigation, entity colours and selected link colours. Some of these settings continue to appear in advanced settings but as these are now only be visible to administrator their value has decreased.

Next Steps

Please get in touch if you have any questions about creating or customising a theme in Dynamics 365.

Receive CRM and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Updates

Join our mailing list to receive emails about the latest updates and events from Preact