SDL Tridion 2011 introduced the new dashboard (or control panel) in the CME. Under User Preferences > View Settings on that page, it is possible for a user to change their start-up view to load the main view rather than the dashboard. Is it possible to set this as a system wide setting for all users?
We are interested in doing this because we have a default custom page that we want our editors to see, but this page is no longer loaded due to the dashboard being loaded by default.
User preferences are saved in application data on each User with an Application ID of “cme:UserPreferences”. It is saved as an XML fragment (in Unicode).
The starting folder has a type (1 = SDL Tridion Dashboard, 2 = Main View) and optionally an item URI for the “Start on specific Folder” option.
These are saved in the StartScreenType and StartItemId elements in the XML. Note that the XML is stored without a root element (which is added by the data extender reading it and is currently named “Cme”).
Example XML:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Cme>
<SearchMaxResults>50</SearchMaxResults>
<ToolbarMode>maximized</ToolbarMode>
<LastSelectedLocation>
<Publication ID="tcm:0-5-1">
<Item Type="tcm:16">tcm:5-10-2</Item>
<Item Type="tcm:8192">tcm:5-8-2</Item>
</Publication>
</LastSelectedLocation>
<PublishDialog/>
<StartScreenType>2</StartScreenType>
<StartItemId>tcm:0-5-1</StartItemId>
</Cme>
As an example, here are a few lines of PowerShell scripting that reads it for the Administrator user:
$client = Get-TridionCoreServiceClient
$prefs = $client.ReadApplicationData("tcm:0-11-65552", "cme:UserPreferences")
$encoding = New-Object System.Text.UnicodeEncoding
$encoding.GetString($prefs.Data)
Please note that you would be overwriting users’ explicit preferences just to ensure that they see this new Custom Page. The users would then have to change their preferences back again.
