How to design an alternative home page

Owned by David Gonsalves (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Nov 30, 2016 by Martijn Rademaker (Unlicensed)
3 min read


This How To describes how to create and design alternative home pages where users of CXO-Cockpit are linked to other reports


Don't forget ...

Do not forget the following:

  • Make sure to set security on the alternative Homepage and any other reports linked to this Homepage
  • Create separate alternative Homepages per user group, to avoid security issues
  • Select pictures from the internet or create your own pictures which you want to show on your alternative homepage and save them as .png files

Example alternative home page

In this example, you will be redirected to another report by clicking on either of the 5 underlined labels

Step-by-step guide - Profit And Loss example


  1. Create a new Free Format Report and give it a name
    1. Add the Web View Control to the Free Format Report
    2. Add the Link to Report Control to the Free Format Report

    3. The layout and control settings are the following:

      *Make sure to indicate which control is placed where to be able to adjust the content of these controls in the next steps.

    4. If considered obsolete, remove the unused controls at the bottom (Comment/ precision and info are automatically as default controls attached to a free format)
  2. Save and Exit Layout mode
  3. Open the Link to Report Left Top Settings
    1. Set the Link Text to “Profit and Loss”  (in Plain text mode, as formatting will be adjusted via the control format in step 3c)
    2. Set Navigate To to “Profit and Loss”
    3. Create a new format where both Alignment and Vertical Align is set to Center and name it “ALT HOMEPAGE” and set the Format
  4. Open the Web View Left Top Settings
    1. Set URL temporarily to http://www.cxo-cockpit.com/ to solve all the errors on the report
    2. Unselect Hide URL Bar
    3. Go to the Report Preview Pane and select the “Upload a file” button
    4. Select the .png file you want to use as background
    5. You might need to play with the size of the picture you want to use as background or web view control settings before all looks exactly as you want to have it in CXO
    6. When the background picture is exactly how you want it to be in CXO, please copy the url which you see in the Preview pane to the Web View Left Top Setting
    7. Check the Hide URL Bar setting


The steps above describe how the Profit and Loss tile is set up in details; regarding the bottom part, the only difference is that a container is placed around the 2 sections. Please see below screenshots of the Report itself as well as the Layout of the Free format report.

Important information: the white background of the container is visible because “Show Border” is ticked in this example