Customizing the Menu

Administrators have the ability to customize the top navigation menu.

Proceed with caution. While the theme offers extensive flexibility, we recommend minimizing changes to site navigation. Dual Code has conducted usability studies across diverse healthcare organizations and designed a default navigation and menu structure that serves the needs of frontline staff, managers, and administrators. We also publish role-based user guides (administrators, supervisors, learners, etc.) aligned to this default layout.

If you alter navigation—especially by removing items from the top menu—you may introduce the following issues:

• Documentation misalignment: Users may struggle to follow our user guides or certification training if menu items no longer match.

• AI guidance mismatch: AI-driven virtual agents may suggest actions that don’t apply to your customized layout, as they aren’t aware of site-specific menu changes.

• Feature discoverability: New features (e.g., reports) may not be obvious to managers and team leads unless you add them to your custom navigation.

Example: A new supervisor report is automatically placed under “My Team” when using the default menu. If you customize the top menu, it becomes your responsibility to add such items—software updates will not automatically modify menus or layouts once they’ve been customized.

Step-by-step Guide

To customize the menu:

1. Go to Site Administration > Appearance > Custom theme settings > HCE Theme > Settings

2. Go to the "Other" tab

3. Define your own custom menu (see the "Structure of the Menu Entries" below).

4. Click on the "Save changes" button at the bottom of the page

Structure of the Menu Entries

Each line consists of required and optional parameters separated by the pipe “|” character. The parameters include:

• The menu text

• A link URL (optional)

• A tooltip title (optional)

• A language code (en or fr_ca) or comma-separated list of both codes for displaying the menu entry to users of the specified language only (optional)

• A capability or comma-separated list of capabilities for displaying the menu entry to users with the specified system capability only (optional).

Following is an example of a menu entry with all available options.

FAQ|/our-lms-faq |FAQ|en|local/dualcode:authenticated

In this example, a menu entry named "FAQ" will display HTML page called “our-lms-faq” when the site is viewed in English and the user is logged in.

Creating Submenus

Submenu entries are created by putting a dash “-“ at the start of the line. For example:

FAQ
-Standard Topics|/standard_topics
-Special Topics|/special_topics

In this case, FAQ would be the main menu entry and “Standard Topics” and “Special Topics” would appear in the drop-down menu when you click FAQ. 

Creating a Divider

Lines starting with ### makes a divider. For example:

Reports
-Compliance reports
-###
-Other reports

In this case, a divider line would appear between “Compiance reports” and “Other reports”.

Restricting Access to a Menu

Custom menus items will be visible to all users, including users who haven't logged in, unless you restrict access to them by specifying required capabilities.

A common requirement is to show different menus to authenticated users and non-authenticated users.  To facilitate this requirement, you should be aware of the following common capabilities: