UI Personalization

The UI personalization application enables you to provide certain users of the website with a simplified user interface. This is useful for business users who don’t need to see all the applications, tabs, menu items, or parts of UI pages which they do not use. Setting up a personalized UI can significantly decrease the learning time for users new to the system and makes the system generally easier to use and understand.

Kentico consists of modules. Modules contain UI elements. A UI element can represent one of the following:

  • application
  • tab
  • menu item
  • group of controls on a page

For each of the UI elements, you can say whether you want users in a particular role to see the UI element or not.

UI personalization and administrators

UI personalization does not apply to users who have the Administrator or Global administrator privilege level. Administrators always have access to all UI elements, regardless of the system’s UI personalization settings.

UI personalization vs. Permissions

Do not confuse UI personalization with the permission system in Kentico. Permissions control what users can do, such as create or modify objects, while UI personalization controls what users can see. A user may be able to see a part of the UI but still not have permissions to perform any actions.

Learn more about permissions and UI personalization

Enabling UI personalization

UI personalization is disabled by default. To start using UI personalization:

  1. Open the Settings application.
  2. Search for “UI personalization” or click the Security & Membership category.
  3. Select the Enable UI personalization checkbox.
  4. Save the settings.

The system enables UI personalization for the selected site. Users on the selected site see the administration interface according to the configured restrictions.

If you want all Kentico users to have full access to the administration interface without worrying about the UI personalization settings, keep the Enable UI personalization setting disabled.

Configuring visibility of UI elements

Kentico allows you to show or hide UI elements based on user roles.

  1. Open the UI personalization application.
  2. On the Administration tab, select a site and a role. Selecting a module is optional.
  3. Browse the UI element tree and select or clear the check boxes that represent the parts of the UI that you want to show or hide.

The system automatically saves the settings as you select or clear check boxes in the UI element tree. The system hides the parts of the UI that have their check box cleared from users in the selected role. If a user tries to access such UI element, the system displays an access denied message.

If a user is a member of multiple roles, they’re allowed to see UI elements from all their roles combined.

Configuring visibility of editor buttons

With Kentico, you can show or hide buttons from the integrated editor toolbar. Each button in the toolbar is represented by a UI element.

  1. Open the UI personalization application.
  2. On the Editor tab, select a site and a role.
  3. Browse the UI element tree and select or clear the check boxes that represent the editor buttons.

The system automatically saves the settings as you select or clear check boxes in the UI element tree. The system hides the buttons (UI elements) that have their check box cleared from users in the selected role.

If a user is a member of multiple roles, they’re allowed to see UI elements from all their roles combined.