Card Designer: User Card

Everywhere Aeon shows users as a scrollable list — the Users list and the user results in global search — each person is drawn as a compact card. A user card always starts with a fixed top line (the username and a status badge), and below it shows whatever fields you choose: full name, department, email, expiration date, and so on. The User Card Designer is where you decide what goes on those lines.

You don't need this to run Aeon day to day. Aeon includes a default user card, and most sites leave it alone. You reach for the designer when the default doesn't surface the information your staff scan for — for example, if your front desk needs to see each user's organization and expiration date at a glance instead of department, or you want patron email on the card so staff don't have to open every record.

When you'll use this

• The default user card hides a field your staff rely on (for example, you want Organization and Phone visible in the list).
• You want to reorder or restyle what's already on the card — bigger name, muted secondary line, an icon next to the email.
• You're setting up Aeon for a new site and want the user list to match how your reading room actually identifies people.

note

This designs the list card, not the user record

The User Card Designer only changes the small card shown in lists and search results. It does not change the full user record you open and edit — that layout is controlled separately by the Form Designer: User Form. Editing a card never changes any user's data; it only changes how users are displayed.

Opening the User Card Designer

1. Open Customization Manager from the main navigation.
2. In the Designers area, choose Card Designer, then select the User Card tab. (The Card Designer also has Request Card, Request Card (Wide), and Activity Card tabs — make sure you're on User Card.)
3. The designer opens with the heading User Card Designer and the subtitle "Customize how user cards appear in lists."

You can also go straight there with the URL /customizations/card-designer/user.

Permission to use the designer

The Card Designer is part of Aeon's configuration tools. You need the Designers configuration capability on your role to open it and save changes. Staff without that capability won't see the Customization Manager entry. See Editing a Role: Configuration Capabilities for how this is granted.

How the screen is laid out

The designer is built around a live preview of one user card, with the tools arranged around it:

Area	Where	What it does
Template bar	Top	Pick which template you're editing, and save. See Working with templates.
Designer toolbar	Below the template bar	A circular-arrow discard button (reverts unsaved edits), plus Undo and Redo.
Fields palette	Left	Every field you can add, grouped by category. Search box at the top.
Preview (the card)	Center	The card as users will see it. Click a field to select it; drag to rearrange.
Properties	Right	Settings for the field you've selected. Shows "Select a field to edit its properties" until you pick one.

The fixed top line

Every user card begins with a line you can't edit or remove: the user's username followed by a status badge (for example, Cleared). This line is built in so user cards stay recognizable and the status is always visible. Everything you design sits below it.

Building the card

Add a field

The Fields palette on the left lists everything available, grouped into categories — Name, Identity, Contact, Organization, Address, Access, Custom Fields, and Special. Use the Search fields… box to filter by name.

There are two ways to add a field:

• Click a field in the palette to drop it onto the card (it lands in the row of whatever field is currently selected, or the last row).
• Drag a field from the palette onto the card and release it exactly where you want it.

The new field appears on the card and is selected, so its settings open in the Properties panel on the right.

Custom fields are available too

Any user custom fields you've defined show up under the Custom Fields category in the palette, so you can put site-specific user data on the card alongside the built-in fields. See Custom Field Definitions.

Move and reorder fields

• Within or between rows: drag a field on the card and drop it where you want it. Drop it onto another field to place it before that field, or onto empty space in a row to append it.
• Keyboard: select a field, then press Ctrl/Cmd + ↑ or Ctrl/Cmd + ↓ to move it to the row above or below.
• Reorder whole rows by dragging a row to a new position.

Remove a field

Select the field and either press Delete (or Backspace), or click Remove Field at the bottom of the Properties panel. Press Escape to deselect a field without deleting it.

Style a field (Properties panel)

With a field selected, the Properties panel controls how it's drawn:

• Custom Label — override the field's default name, or leave blank to use the default.
• Width — Auto, Fill, 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, or Full Width.
• Display Style — Plain Text, Icon + Text, Badge, or Template.
  • Icon + Text reveals an Icon picker (for example, a mail icon next to the email).
  • Badge reveals a Badge Style option (Default, Outline, Secondary, Destructive).
  • Template reveals a Template String box where you combine fields with {fieldName} placeholders — for example, {firstName} {lastName}.
• Text Size — Extra Small, Small, or Medium.
• Font Weight — Normal, Medium, Semibold, or Bold.
• Color — Default, Muted, Primary, or Accent.
• Hide if Empty — on by default. When on, the field disappears from a card if that user has no value for it, so cards don't show blank lines.

"Hide if Empty" keeps lists clean

Leave Hide if Empty on for optional fields like phone or organization. A user with no phone number simply won't show that line, instead of leaving an empty gap — so your list stays tight and only shows real data.

A worked example

Say you want each user card to read: full name in bold, then department and organization on one muted line, then email with a mail icon.

1. Add Full Name (Name category). In Properties, set Font Weight to Bold and Width to Full Width.
2. Add Department and Organization (Organization category) into the next row, both left at Auto width and Muted color.
3. Add Email (Contact category) into a third row. Set Display Style to Icon + Text and pick a mail icon. Leave Hide if Empty on.
4. Watch the center preview update as you go. When it looks right, Save (see below).

Saving, discarding, and undo

• The template bar shows a live status: Saved, Unsaved, or Saving….
• Click Save (or press Ctrl/Cmd + S) to save your changes. Save is disabled when there's nothing unsaved.
• Click the Discard changes button (the circular-arrow icon, shown only when you have unsaved edits) to throw away edits and snap back to the last saved version.
• Undo / Redo in the toolbar (or Ctrl/Cmd + Z and Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + Z) step through your edits.

Leaving with unsaved changes

If you click Back or switch templates while you have unsaved edits, Aeon warns you first — an Unsaved Changes dialog with Cancel and Leave Without Saving, or a "You have unsaved changes. Discard and switch templates?" prompt. Choosing to leave discards your edits, so save first if you want to keep them.

Reset to the system default

To abandon your customizations and return to Aeon's built-in user card, open the template menu (the ⋯ button) and choose Reset to System Default. Aeon asks you to confirm — the dialog warns it will "overwrite all customizations in this template" — and once you confirm it replaces the template's saved layout with the built-in default. This cannot be undone.

This is different from Discard (the circular-arrow button), which only throws away the edits you haven't saved yet and snaps back to the last saved version. Reset goes all the way back to Aeon's factory default for the template.

Working with templates (multiple card designs)

User cards are saved as named templates, managed from the template bar at the top:

• The template dropdown lists your saved templates; the built-in one is marked default.
• The template menu (the ⋯ button) offers New Template, Duplicate, Rename, Set as Default, Reset to System Default, and Delete.
• New Template and Duplicate open a small dialog where you name the template; New Template starts from your current design, Duplicate copies the selected one.

Which template a user actually sees

The default template is what Aeon uses for the user list and search unless a role says otherwise. You can build several user-card templates and assign a specific one to a role, so different teams see the user list the way that suits them — see Editing a Role: Layout Assignments. Setting a template as Default changes what everyone without a specific assignment sees.

Deleting a template

Delete removes the selected template after a confirmation. Deleting also removes any role assignments that point to it — those roles fall back to the default template. You can't undo a delete.

Editor review — remove this callout (and the HTML comment below it) before publishing

A couple of points an SME should confirm before this ships:

• Where user cards render: the page states user cards appear in the Users list and global search results (the two places the user card layout is consumed in code). Confirm there are no other surfaces (e.g. lookups/pickers) worth naming, and that "users list" matches the on-screen wording staff use.
• Default vs. per-role template at render time: confirm the product story that the user list/search uses the role-assigned user-card template, falling back to the default — the designer clearly uses named templates and roles can assign them, but verify there isn't a separate site-wide singleton that overrides this for the list.
• Screenshots needed: (1) the User Card Designer with palette / preview / properties; (2) the Properties panel for a selected field; (3) the template bar showing the template dropdown and the ⋯ menu.

The full generation metadata — sources, files read, and verifications — is in the HTML comment directly below this callout. When this page has been reviewed and approved, delete both this callout and that comment; a page with no Editor-review callout is one that's done.