Desk appearance

Enterprise feature (new in 1.19.4, helpdesk). See the Helpdesk overview.

The desk can show a picture behind its panels: one of the built-in artworks or your own, such as your brand’s. The panels turn see-through and frosted, so the picture shows through while text stays easy to read. Agents can choose their own background if you let them.

Only the desk changes. The main CompassDocs app, Get help, the customer portal and printed tickets are never affected.

Nothing changes on upgrade. Until an admin picks an artwork, the desk looks exactly as before.

Setting the desk’s artwork

Desk settings → Appearance (“How the desk looks for your agents. Each agent can change it for themselves.”). It needs the desk capability Helpdesk settings (Admins, out of the box).

Background artwork holds the library: your uploads first, then the three built-ins, Aurora, Night ridge and Sunrise. The ones in use are outlined.

Under the library:

• Light mode and Dark mode: the artwork for each, or None. They can differ, so a dark picture can serve dark mode and a bright one light mode.

• Transparency:

  Level
  Solid	“Plain panels: the artwork is hidden.”
  Subtle	“Panels mostly solid, the artwork softly behind them.”
  Glass (the default)	“Panels let the artwork show through.”

• Let agents choose their own (off by default): “From their menu: your artwork, one of their own, or none.” Until an admin turns it on, agents have no Desk background… row and can’t upload pictures of their own.

Preview shows your unsaved choices on your own desk until you choose Stop preview, save or leave the page. Save applies them for everyone. With no artwork in either mode, or with Solid, the desk is plain.

Uploading artwork

The dashed Upload artwork tile in the library takes a picture:

• JPG, PNG or WebP, up to 8 MB. The type is read from the file itself, not its name.
• At least 1920 × 1080, after the camera’s rotation is applied, and at most 100 megapixels.
• Landscape, at most 4:1: “That image is 1080 × 1920 pixels. Use a landscape picture, no more than four times as wide as it is tall.”

Each upload is re-encoded on the server as WebP at four widths (480 for thumbnails, 1280, 1920 and 2560 for screens), and its metadata is dropped: no EXIF, GPS position, XMP or IPTC survives. It is stored with your other uploads on the server, and served only to people the desk admits. An upload is in the library at once; it doesn’t need Save.

• The library holds up to 12 uploads: “The library holds up to 12 artworks. Remove one first.”
• Remove (the cross on an upload) deletes the picture from the server. If it is in use, that mode goes back to None.
• Each person may upload 20 pictures an hour: “Too many uploads. Try again in an hour.”
• The server works on at most two pictures at a time. A third upload in the meantime gets “The server is busy with other pictures. Try again in a minute.” (503, with Retry-After: 30).

Readable text, whatever the picture

The panels are frosted: the top bar, the rail, the queue list and the settings rail blur the picture behind them, and cards are tinted over the already-blurred picture. Where text sits straight on the artwork, such as the views column or the ticket pane, a layer of the desk’s own surface colour (the scrim) covers the picture.

The scrim adapts to each picture so that every kind of text on it keeps the WCAG AA contrast of 4.5:1. Each level has a starting strength (Glass 38%, Subtle 60%), and a picture that needs more for text to stay readable is covered more. Each picture is measured once, as the desk paints it (scaled to cover a 2560 × 1440 screen and blurred), using the darkest and brightest points of each part of the picture rather than averages, so a thin bright stripe on a dark picture still counts. An upload is measured when it is uploaded, and the built-ins by CompassDocs’ own tests, which fail if a ratio drops. Over the artwork the desk also uses stronger text colours, such as a darker grey for secondary text.

How much each built-in is covered:

Artwork	Glass, light	Glass, dark	Subtle, light	Subtle, dark
Aurora	51%	76%	60%	76%
Night ridge	80%	51%	80%	60%
Sunrise	54%	78%	60%	78%

So a dark picture in light mode, or a bright one in dark mode, looks less see-through. When a picture must be covered well past its level’s starting strength, the Appearance page says so under that mode’s choice: “In dark mode the desk covers Sunrise 78% so text stays readable.”

Menus, pickers, pop-up dialogs and the sticky Save row stay solid, since they open over text.

Each agent’s own background

While Let agents choose their own is on, every agent has Desk background… in the desk’s user menu. My desk background (“Only you see this.”) offers:

• Workspace artwork: the workspace’s choice, such as “Fernwood brand · Night ridge in dark mode”, or “Your workspace hasn’t set one: the plain desk.”
• My own: a picture of their own, with the same upload rules. A new upload replaces their earlier one, and only they see it: anyone else asking for it gets a not-found answer. Their browser checks with the server each time it shows the picture, so it is never served from the browser’s cache to another account signed in there. Choosing My own with nothing uploaded opens the file picker.
• None: “Plain desk, no transparency”.

and their own transparency level, Solid, Subtle or Glass. Every change saves at once and repaints the desk without a reload. Removing their picture asks first (“Remove your artwork? The picture is deleted from the server.”).

If you turn Let agents choose their own off, everyone gets the workspace’s choice. An agent who still has a picture of their own sees “Your admin has set the desk’s background for everyone.” and can only remove it.

When the desk stays plain

The plain desk is always the fallback, and in these cases the picture isn’t even downloaded:

• Solid, or None;
• Reduce transparency in the device’s accessibility settings: “People who turn on Reduce transparency in their device settings always get Solid.”;
• Increase contrast in the device’s settings;
• forced colours (such as Windows High Contrast);
• a data saver: the browser’s reduced-data setting, or Save-Data on the connection;
• printing: a printed page has a plain background.

On such a device, My desk background says “This device asks for less transparency or less data, so the desk stays plain here.”, and Preview says the preview stays plain.

The desk always draws plain first. The picture is fetched once the page has loaded, at the width that fits the screen, and the desk turns see-through when it has arrived, with a short fade (none with reduced motion). It sits on a fixed layer, so nothing on the page moves.

Privacy

An agent’s own picture is personal data:

• Removing their account deletes their picture from the server.
• A person’s data export includes their desk background choice and their own picture, whatever the export’s tickets setting says.

In the audit log

Action	Shown as
helpdesk.appearance.changed	Changed the desk’s appearance
helpdesk.appearance.art_uploaded / .art_removed	Uploaded / Removed desk background artwork
helpdesk.appearance.my_background_changed	Changed their desk background
helpdesk.appearance.my_art_uploaded / .my_art_removed	Uploaded / Removed their own desk background

Troubleshooting

Symptom or message	What to check
“Use a JPG, PNG or WebP image.”	Save the picture in one of those formats.
“That image is 1280 × 720 pixels. Use one at least 1920 × 1080.”	Use a larger picture.
“Artwork is limited to 8 MB.”	Save it smaller, or as JPG or WebP.
“That image could not be read. Try saving it as a JPG or PNG.”	The file is damaged, or not really an image.
“… Use a landscape picture, no more than four times as wide as it is tall.”	Crop it to a landscape shape, such as 16:9.
“The server is busy with other pictures. Try again in a minute.”	Two other uploads are being processed. Try again shortly.
The desk stays plain for one person	Their device asks for reduced transparency, more contrast, forced colours or less data, or they chose None or Solid.
No Desk background… in the user menu	Let agents choose their own is off (the default), and they have no picture of their own.
The picture looks heavily dimmed	It is dark for light mode or bright for dark mode, so it is covered more to keep text readable. Choose another for that mode.