User Interface Customization

You can customize the Ad Hoc Transfer Plug-in for Outlook to provide your own branding for the user interface. The following product components can be customized:

  • Text labels and icons in the user interface
  • Help topics

The following topics describe what you can customize, and how to customize the interface, then provides a walk-though of a sample customization.

What You Can Customize in the User Interface

Most of the icons and text that can change are part of the WS_FTP Send tab on the Outlook New E-Mail (Compose) page, as highlighted on this screen:

You can also have customized icons and text for the WS_FTP Connector program that runs in the Windows system tray, the WS_FTP Connector Configuration dialog, the Default Send Options dialog, and in some error messages.

Location of Files for Customizing the Interface

On any system on which you have installed Ad Hoc Transfer Plug-in for Outlook, you will find (within the Program Data Directory) the following folder:

C:\ProgramData\Progress\Ad Hoc Transfer Plug-in for Outlook

The default icons used in the Outlook user interface are embedded in an executable program. Any new icons that you want to use need to be placed in the folder mentioned above. In this folder, you will also find the customizations.xml.sample file, which contains the options that let you override the text labels and icon files. The available options are shown in the following table:

Option (in customizations.xml)

Default Value

User Interface Location

Product Name

WS_FTP

WS_FTP Send tab; WS_FTP Attach File button; Send through WS_FTP button; WS_FTP Plug-in Help button; WS_FTP Outbox folder; Default Send Options dialog; WS_FTP Connector, Configuration dialog.

Company Name

Progress, Inc

WS_FTP Connector, Configuration dialog

Tab Label

WS_FTP Send

WS_FTP Send tab, Default Send Options dialog

Attach File Image Location

WS_FTP Attach File button

Default Send Options Image Location

Default Send Options button

Send Through Server Image Location

Send through WS_FTP button

Help Image Location

WS_FTP Plug-in Help button

Icon Image Location

WS_FTP Connector - system tray

Note: If you customize this icon, you should also change the icon for the shortcut in the Programs > Startup > Progress WS_FTP Connector properties.

Icon Failed Image Location

WS_FTP Connector - system tray

How to Customize the User Interface

You should implement and test any customizations on your local installation of the Outlook plug-in. You can then deploy the customization files to each end user's computer using a script or group policy.

To change (or override) the default icons and text labels in the interface, you will need to:

  1. Create the icons you want to use and place then in the folder: 
    C:\ProgramData\Progress\Ad Hoc Transfer Plug-in for Outlook

    All replacement images require 32x32 and 16x16 bitmaps in an icon file (.ico)

  2. Open the customizations.xml.sample file (found in the above mentioned folder) and save it as: customizations.xml
  3. Edit the customizations.xml file to make any text label changes and to add the references to point to your own icons.

    You need to remove the comment tags (<!-- and -->) from any CustomizationOption that you will use.

    Note: If you use extended ASCII characters (for example, the umlaut character), you must save the customizations.xml file as a UTF-8 encoded file.
  4. Close Outlook and restart Windows.

The new text and icons will be displayed.

Note: When you upgrade to the latest version of Ad Hoc Transfer Plug-in for Outlook from version 2.1, a new customizations sample file is installed. This is necessary because the schema for this XML file has changed. In order to maintain your customizations, you need to copy the entries from your existing customizations.xml file to a new customizations.xml that is based on the new sample file. The new sample file can be found in: C:\ProgramData\Progress\Ad Hoc Transfer Plug-in for Outlook\customizations.xml.sample
Note: If you are upgrading from version 2.2 of Ad Hoc Transfer Plug-in for Outlook, any changes that you have made to the customizations.xml file are maintained.