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How to Change the Colours and Switch Between Light and Dark Mode

ABM Service lets you choose its colours and whether it is light or dark, from Appearance in the menu. You pick a colourway, which sets the colours of the whole application, and a mode: Light, Dark or System. Every screen changes at once, and ABM Service remembers your choice on that browser.

How do I change the colours of ABM Service?​

Open the menu and use the Appearance section, under the list of screens: select one of the eight colourway names to change the colours, and select Light, Dark or System under them to change the mode. The screen behind the menu changes as soon as you select, with no need to reload or save.

  1. Open the menu: select Menu on the Home screen, or Navigation menu at the top of the filter rail on the Calls, Customers or Scheduler screen.
  2. Select a colourway in the Appearance section of the menu: Pine, Harbour, Plum, Ink, Navy, Lagoon, Ember or Meadow. The one in use is marked as chosen.
  3. Select Light, Dark or System under the colourways in the Appearance section.
  4. Close the menu by pressing Escape (Esc) or selecting outside it.

Each colourway's name has a small sample beside it, drawn in the mode you are using now, so you can see what choosing it would look like.

The colourway and the mode are separate choices: every colourway has a light and a dark version, and you can combine any colourway with any mode.

Until you choose anything, ABM Service uses Lagoon in Dark mode.

The sign-in page uses the same choice, so it opens in your colours too on a browser where you have chosen them.

The call screen and the customer screen have no menu; change the appearance from a list screen or Home, and the call and customer screens follow it.

Can I make the writing in ABM Service bigger?​

ABM Service has no text-size setting: Appearance in the menu holds only the colourways and Light, Dark or System. To make everything larger, use your web browser's own zoom, or Windows' display scaling in the ABM Service desktop app.

  • In a web browser, press Ctrl and the plus key together (Ctrl+plus) to zoom in, Ctrl and minus (Ctrl+minus) to zoom out, and Ctrl and zero (Ctrl+0) to go back to normal size. Every ABM Service screen grows with it.
  • In the ABM Service desktop app, zooming is switched off, so Ctrl+plus and Ctrl with the mouse wheel do nothing. To make everything larger there, choose a larger scale in Windows' own display settings (in Windows Settings, under System and Display).
  • In a call's Details or Resolution document, use Zoom in on the document's toolbar, up to 200 per cent. It changes only how large the document is drawn for you, never the document itself.

What do the ABM Service colourways look like?​

ABM Service has eight colourways in Appearance in the menu. Each changes the background, panels, buttons and highlights of every screen, in both light and dark mode.

  • Pine: warm paper and pine green. The dark version keeps a green-charcoal family.
  • Harbour: cool slate greys and a harbour blue, the conventional office look.
  • Plum: a faintly warm neutral with an aubergine accent.
  • Ink: paper and ink, with charcoal and stone and no accent colour at all, so colour is kept for your data: status chips, call type dots and appointments.
  • Navy: two-tone, with a deep navy side panel beside light content, and navy buttons.
  • Lagoon: bright turquoise on cool, sea-tinted paper; the most colourful of the single-tone set.
  • Ember: warm through and through, with cream paper, a terracotta accent and amber highlights. A good choice if you find the greens cold.
  • Meadow: two-tone in leaf green, with a deep forest side panel beside a warm green page.

Whatever colourway you choose, the colours that carry meaning stay the same: call status chips, call type colours and the colours on the Home screen's charts mean the same thing in every colourway, and are tuned for dark mode rather than simply inverted. Every colourway has been checked so that text stays readable against its background in both modes.

What do Light, Dark and System mean in Appearance?​

The three mode buttons in Appearance in the menu decide whether ABM Service is light or dark:

  • Light keeps ABM Service light on every screen, whatever your computer is set to. The menu says Light on every screen, whatever the system says.
  • Dark keeps ABM Service dark on every screen, whatever your computer is set to. The menu says Dark on every screen, whatever the system says.
  • System follows your computer's or phone's own light or dark setting, and changes when that setting changes, even while ABM Service is open. The menu says Following the system setting — followed by light or dark, whichever your computer is using at that moment.

System is useful if your computer switches to dark in the evening: ABM Service switches with it. Choosing Light or Dark stops that, and ABM Service stays as you chose.

In Dark mode, the documents on the call screen, such as a call's details, are shown on a dark page with light text so that they match the rest of the screen. Only the display changes: the document itself, and what is saved, is exactly the same as in Light mode.

Buttons, scroll bars and date pickers that come from your browser also follow the mode.

Why are my ABM Service colours different on another computer, or after the desktop app restarts?​

ABM Service remembers your Appearance choice in the browser you made it in, not with your ABM user. So your colours follow the browser, not you:

  • On another computer, or in another browser on the same computer, ABM Service starts with its own choice, which is Lagoon in Dark mode until somebody changes it. Choose your colours there too.
  • On a shared computer, whoever uses the same browser after you sees the colours you chose, and a change they make changes it for you as well.
  • At another company's ABM Service address, the choice is separate too, because each address remembers its own. Choose your colours once for each company.
  • If your browser's saved data for the site is cleared, or you use a private window, ABM Service goes back to Lagoon in Dark mode.
  • In the ABM Service desktop app, the choice lasts only while ABM Service is running. Closing its windows keeps it, but when ABM Service closes completely, with Exit on its icon beside the clock, when the computer restarts, or when an update is installed, it starts again as Lagoon in Dark mode. Choose your colourway and mode again in Appearance each time.

Within one web browser the choice applies everywhere at once: every ABM Service tab and window changes when you change it in one of them, and it stays through reloads and after signing out and in again.

The colours you give to items in the filter rail on the list screens are a different setting: they are kept with your ABM user, not with the browser, and Appearance does not change them.