Surprise your users with an April Fool's Day OWA 2003 theme
Customizing OWA themes is quite simple to do. Here's an example of a theme I just put together, I call it "MOOWA":
The fun part about this theme isn't so much the graphics as the sounds: included are a "mooooooooo" for the new mail sound as well as a cowbell[1] for the reminder sound.
For more information on customizing themes, here is a comprehensive article. But if you want quick steps on how to get the above one up and running, here they are:
- Log into OWA as a test user with IE. Go to the Options page and choose the "Silver" theme.
- Download the zip file and save it to your server. Unzip it.
- Copy reminder.wav and notify.wav to C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\Exchweb\Img, or wherever Exchange is installed on your server. Make sure to make a copy of the existing ones first.
- Go to C:\Program Files\ExchSrvr\Exchweb\Themes
- Make a copy of the "2" folder and name it 2.original
- Copy the files from the zip into the "2" folder, overwriting the ones already there.
- Use notepad and open "OWAColors.css" in the "2" folder and make the following changes:
Explanation Before After Puts the cowprint behind the list of messages .msgViewerCont, .msgViewerGroupCont{ background-color:white;} .msgViewerCont, .msgViewerGroupCont{ background-color:white; background-image:url(/exchweb/themes/2/logo.gif);} Makes the bar above the message view black. .fldrTitleBar{ background-color:#706F90;} .fldrTitleBar{ background-color:#000000;} Makes the background behind the MOOWA logo in the upper-left black. .nbTableMain{ background-color:#706F90;} .nbTableMain{ background-color:#000000;} Makes sure that the column you're currently sorting on still shows the background image .vwSortCol{ background-color:#F5F5F6;} .vwSortCol{}
All that's left to do is Ctrl+Refresh IE while logged in as the test user from step 1 to make sure everything's kosher.
[1] While testing the theme, I demo'd the sounds for my husband. He said "Play that one again" about the reminder sound, which I did. Then he said "It needs more cowbell."