Office 365 custom organization themes
Intranet site branding is very important to organizations and is a one of the major factors for creating positive brand recognition among employees. With this in mind, Microsoft has introduced some important changes to the way custom organization themes are applied. Rolling out first to Targeted Release customers in early May and to the remaining tenants in June is the change of where organizational logos are placed on the navigation bar. The custom organization logos will move from the center of the navigation bar to replace the Office 365 logo on the left side. Currently, clicking “Office 365” in the navigation bar navigates a user to the Office.com web site. Now, with the change in logos clicking on the “Office 365” link in the app launcher will take the user to the Office.com site. An example of the logo change is displayed below
All other abilities related to setting custom themes and managing configuration options will not be changing. The options available to organizations to customize:
- Custom logo
- URL for a clickable logo
- Background image
- Prevent users from overriding theme
- Accent color
- Nav bar background color
- Text and icons
- App launcher icon
Changes are applied to the page right away. There will be a slight delay to see the changes propagate throughout the site
Some Best Practices
- Use a transparent white logo if you do not set a Navigation bar background color
- Use high contrast ratios for the Navigation bar color and text icons
2549