How do I customize the text on eCenter?
All the text that is displayed on eCenter and all the e-mail messages that are generated by eCenter can be customized by your center. OutreachSystems has provided you with some out-of-the-box text that can be changed to reflect your centers’ operations. In fact, there are two ways to customize the text that is displayed on eCenter. Each center within your network can customize their text and create their own look and feel on eCenter. Their customized text will be shown only when they use "deep links" and send users specifically to their eCenter pages.
Deep links provide a hyperlink that points to a specific page or image on a website, instead of that website's main or home page. However, if a particular center within your network chooses not to customize the text shown on eCenter then the text that is entered by the WebCATS system administrator will be used.
Note: If your program consists of a single center, then you will want to follow the steps outlined under the heading: "WebCATS System Administrator Edits" rather than edit the eCenter configuration on the Center record.
WebCATS System Administrator Edits
There is a lot of text on eCenter and all of it can be edited and customized to your liking. You will need to correlate the eCenter text block with the correct text block in WebCATS. The naming convention used is fairly self-explanatory but it is good to refer back and forth between the two systems to make sure you are editing the correct information. For purposes of this FAQ we will look at the text on the Welcome page and document the steps to edit this information.
The eCenter Welcome page has several blocks of text and several titles that can be edited as demonstrated with the orange highlights below:
Each of these blocks of text highlighted in orange above, represent a separate area to be edited in WebCATS. If you are a WebCATS System Administrators who can edit the Manage/eCenter Configuration pages then you would click on Manage/eCenter Configuration to enter your the default text to be used on eCenter in the absence of customization by the individual centers:
When you click to expand one of these areas you will be presented with an Edit option. Clicking the Edit button, you can edit the text as appropriate. As soon as you save your newly edited text, it will be shown on eCenter (you may have to refresh to see your edits).
You would repeat the edit process for each block of text that needs to be customized to your program's operations. Again, it is important to point out that these steps highlight the process for WebCATS Administrators. Now let's take a look at how the same process can be performed by the individual centers.
WebCATS Center Edits
As noted earlier, WebCATS Administrators can edit the default text blocks program-wide, but each individual center within your program can overwrite these edits with their own information that will only be reflected when users visit their Center specific pages. In order to edit the information displayed on eCenter at an individual center level, you will need permissions to edit the center record. If you don't have the necessary permissions to edit the center record then you should contact either your Center's directory or the WebCATS System Administrator.
Note: OutreachSystems cannot alter your permissions. You must contact your administrator for changes to your WebCATS permissions.
Assuming that you have the necessary permissions to edit your center's record, then you should go to the center record by choosing View/Centers from the left hand menu and click on your center's name. On the center record you will see the same "eCenter Text Messages" section as shown above. You can expand the areas and edit the text areas that need to be updated.
Click OK, to save your edits and the new text will be reflected on visitors to your eCenter records.
While editing the various text sections it is best to refer to your eCenter direct interface regularly. You can go to your eCenter deep link by clicking on the "[Public Link]" at the top of the center record. This not only shows you real-time the edits that you have made, this URL is the same URL that you will use when referring clients directly to your center's version of eCenter.
Clients that navigate to eCenter on their own, in other words those clients that were not directed to eCenter via a deep link, will always see the default text as entered by the WebCATS administrator. We encourage you to work with your Webmaster to incorporate the deep links into your center's normal Web site. This way, when a client visists your center's Web site you can quickly link them to your customized eCenter pages.
Using Variable Fields
There are some text areas within eCenter where you may want to display different information depending upon who is visiting the page. For example, when a user is logged on to eCenter at the bottom of the page they will see the name, phone number and e-mail address of their specific counselor. However, different clients will have different counselors that they work with and for that reason we cannot "hard code" a name into the text. Instead you want eCenter to be "smart" and display the name of the appropriate counselor depending upon who the client is.
The integration between eCenter and WebCATS allows you to use variables that are expanded with the correct information. Variable fields are highlighted in bright yellow in the edit box:
When you go to edit a text box and you want to add a new variable all you have to do is right-mouse click in the edit window and a list of available variables fields will be presented. You can scroll through the list and by simply clicking on one of the variables you will automatically add it to your text box. When a client sees the text on eCenter, the correct information will automatically be displayed for them, based upon the information found in the WebCATS database.
If you decide to add a new variable field to a text box, then the new field will be inserted in the location where your mouse curser was at the time that you invoked the variable list. All message boxes can include variables if so desired, even those that do not show the use of variables by default.
Note: You should not remove the brackets around the variables or change their name. In order to use the variables correctly you must maintain their formatting.
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