Unable to Override Redwood Master.css with Custom.css in OAS

Question

Hello all,

Our goal is to modify the existing styling template (Redwood theme) of the analytics web service.

We follow the instructions described in

https://docs.oracle.com/en/middleware/bi/analytics-server/administer-oas/customize-user-interface.html

We found the css classes of the elements we want to modify by inspecting each HTML element in the browser. We added our new styling classes in custom.css to override the ones already present in master.css, and deployed the new custom style according to the instructions above (we tried both approaches with the same outcome).

However, we could not see any of our custom.css changes or the file itself, as the style was reverted back to "blafp", the original style.

It seems that the custom template we created never gets deployed into the analytics EAR file, which would explain why the analytics web service cannot load it.

Thank you

Themis · Answer

@Gianni Ceresa

To clarify, we didn't try the 2 methods at the same time. We tried both methods, one at a time, but both of them failed. There were also some steps that where different in our infrastructure than the ones described in oracle docs. In more detail:

"Approach 1: Deploy the "bicustom.ear" File for the First Time?"

We followed all the steps as is from 1 to 6. In between step 3.i. and 3.j. the deployment asked for the deployment target, where I selected "bi_cluster", something not mentioned in the oracle docs. Also, at the 4th step, in administration console -> Domain Structure-> bi -> Deployments -> Control tab, bicustom was not present in the deployments table in order to select it and start it. It was only available in the Configuration tab, at state "distribute initializing". Finally, I restarted the presentation services just to verify that it didn't work.

Since Approach 1 didn't work, we removed the bicustom.ear and tried Approach 2"

Approach 2: Deploy Using Shared Folders". Our infrastructure is a dev environment installed in 1 machine, so I assume that shared folders should work. I would prefer if this approach works, as we want to deploy the custom style later to our prod environment in 4 machines. In any case, we followed steps 1, 2 and 3a to 3p. Step 3q requests to enter /analyticsRes in the Context Root box, however there is no Context Root box in the configurations tab. We followed the rest of the instructions to the letter. This also ended in failure, as our presentation service did not include our customized styles. I hope these details help.

I'm also curious about what you said here: <From there it is then a config to set your new custom style as default. But if you did override defaults into objects directly, it's possible it would be hardcoded in there already and you will need to revert back to "default" (no style/theme set in each object) or set the new value">.

Can you please elaborate more?

@SteveF-Oracle

We are talking about /analytics UI. We are trying tweak a bit the Redwood style, in order for some font sizes in the Dashboards to be a bit smaller (e.g. .dashboardSectionTitleWrap class to have font-size 16px). We take the custom template and  try to override some css classes on custom.css to fit our requirements.

Steve F-2 · Answer

To add…

….of the analytics web service.

Can you describe the use-case further… are you using /analytics (classic Answers/Dashboards) UI, or you are using the SOAP web services /analytics-ws, is this an embedding use-case?

Maybe it is the terminology that makes me question.

In addition to browser caching, do you have any other "front-end" caching (e.g. HTTP Server, CDN, etc.)

Gianni Ceresa · Answer

Thanks :)

Didn't try in OAS 2025 (8.2), I believe the last I tried myself was a OAS 2023. Therefore I can't affirm at 100% it does still work and there isn't a regression/bug somewhere, but let's be optimistic.

Go back to the process, pick the one you prefer between the 2 methods and make sure in your browser you can see the custom CSS you deploy with it (both methods will expose the content on a path of your WebLogic managed server).