Oracle HCM Redwood customisation and skins

Enterprise Platform Experience

Your platform does the work. We make it feel like yours.

McAwesome is an independent studio in Dubai that designs and builds custom employee experiences and brand skins on Oracle Fusion HCM Redwood, using Oracle Visual Builder Studio. We work on site in the UAE or remotely, and no vendor code changes.

Start a conversation → See the before and after
The problem

The same screens for everyone.

Three identical mock HR portal screens side by side, each with the same grey header and grid of tiles, showing how standard SaaS looks alike from one company to the next.

Leave it standard

Enterprise platforms are built for every customer at once. An employee at a logistics firm sees much the same screens as an employee at a retailer, and your brand barely shows up in the tools they use every day.

Apply a skin or theme

A skin gives the pages your colours, fonts and logo. It's a quick, sensible fix, and we offer it too. But it mostly changes how a page looks. What each person sees, and what they should do next, stays much the same.

Customise at the vendor level

Changes that reach past the supported tools carry real risk. They can break at the next update, and someone has to own that problem every quarter.

Most teams settle for one of the first two because the third one scares them. There is another route: build on top of the platform with the tools the vendor supports, and change what the page does for each person, not only how it looks.

Client name withheld

Onboarding, rebuilt inside Oracle HCM.

Preboarding and onboarding journeys for a regional banking group with three entities. New joiners got Oracle's standard journey pages: a grid of identical cards, a grey banner and a list of tasks. It worked, but it said nothing about the bank they had just joined, or what would happen next.

Here is what those same pages became, built in VB Studio and still running on Oracle underneath.

Before: Oracle's standard pages, with task text obscured. After. Screens recreated from a production build. Brand, names and content changed.
Read what the film shows
  • Before: the platform, out of the box. Oracle's standard My Journeys page, journey page and task page.
  • So we asked a simple question: what if the platform knew who just walked in?
  • Inside Oracle HCM, built with VB Studio: a welcome that knows your name, your first day, your route, stories for your team, only what matters now, and help on the page.
  • It changes with you: before day one, week one and settling in.
  • One platform, every brand.
  • Progress you can see, from 0 of 5 tasks to 5 of 5.
  • Every state, every screen.
  • Enterprise platforms, made to feel like yours.

A welcome that knows who you are

My Journeys became a personal landing page. It greets the joiner by name, shows their first day and lays every journey out as one route with "You are here". Below it sit only the tasks that matter now.

Oracle HCM's standard My Journeys page: a grid of seven identical journey cards with stock artwork and task counts.
Before: Oracle's standard page.
Redesigned My Journeys before day one: a night-to-dawn sky with the greeting 'Welcome aboard, Alex. We're glad you said yes.', a first-day card, a route of journeys with 'You are here', a story strip, the next tasks and the joiner's manager.
After. Screens recreated from a production build. Brand, names and content changed.

Progress you can see

Every journey opens on a sky that moves from night to dawn to daylight as tasks are completed, over a city skyline.

Oracle HCM's standard journey page: a grey gradient banner with the journey title, a Resume button and a plain task progress bar.
Before: Oracle's standard page.
Redesigned journey page at 0 of 5 tasks: night sky over a city skyline, 'Begin your journey', a countdown to day one and the route to day one.
After. Screens recreated from a production build. Brand, names and content changed.

Always clear what comes next

Each task page keeps the whole journey in a side rail, says what is next, and always offers a way back.

Oracle HCM's standard task page: a dark side list of five tasks beside a white page, with the task text replaced by grey bars.
Before: Oracle's standard page. Task text removed.
Redesigned task page: 'Back to journey', a progress rail of five numbered tasks, a sky header with 01/05, the task text, 'Next up' and 'Mark as completed'.
After. Screens recreated from a production build. Brand, names and content changed.

Built for the phone too

The rebuilt pages have their own narrow layout, so a joiner on a phone still gets the greeting, the first-day card and the route.

Oracle HCM's standard My Journeys page on a phone: one large card per journey, stacked.
Before: Oracle's standard page.
Redesigned My Journeys on a phone.
After. Screens recreated from a production build. Brand, names and content changed.

Three brands, one platform

The group runs three entities on one Oracle tenant. Each joiner's experience follows their Business Unit, read live from the platform. Every colour is a token, so a new entity is a short theme file, not a rebuild.

Same page, three brands. Pick one.
Redesigned My Journeys before day one: a night-to-dawn sky with the greeting 'Welcome aboard, Alex. We're glad you said yes.', a first-day card, a route of journeys with 'You are here', a story strip, the next tasks and the joiner's manager.
Bank: Its own colours, type and story set. Screens recreated from a production build. Brand, names and content changed.
My Journeys for an Islamic Bank joiner: burgundy and gold theme, its own type and a story set led by 'Islamic banking'.
Islamic Bank: Its own colours, type, story set, and wording suited to Islamic banking. Screens recreated from a production build. Brand, names and content changed.
A Group Services joiner in Islamic retail banking: the Bank theme with a Group Services story and the Islamic banking primer added.
Group Services: Shares the Bank theme, with its own stories on top. Screens recreated from a production build. Brand, names and content changed.
Platform
Oracle Fusion HCM Redwood
Built in
Oracle VB Studio
Scope
Preboarding and onboarding, from offer accepted to day 90, with an AI assistant
Delivered with
HR, HRIS and communications teams, on site
Concepts, not case studies

Onboarding is one example. Any page your people use is a candidate.

Nothing in that work is tied to journeys. The same approach, reading who someone is and shaping the page around them, carries across the platform.

Home and landing pages

A front door that reflects each person's brand and role, and what needs their attention today.

Learning

Learning that feels like your own academy, showing each person what is due and what comes next.

Benefits and pay

Enrolment and pay pages that explain themselves in your words, so fewer questions reach HR.

Time and absences

Balances and requests that are easy to read, with a clear view for managers planning their team.

Performance and goals

Goals and check-ins that read like a conversation rather than a form.

Hiring and internal moves

Candidate and internal job pages that carry the same brand as the rest of your company.

These show where the approach can go. They aren't delivered projects. What can change differs by page and by tenant, so discovery tests yours before anyone commits to a build.

How we work

From discovery to handover, on-site in Dubai and the UAE, or remote.

STEP 01

Discovery

We test the platform first: what can be extended, what security roles expose, what your tenant blocks.

STEP 02

Design

Screens and flows for one audience, in your brand, shaped by what discovery proved possible.

STEP 03

Build inside the extension model

Page modules and styling in the vendor's own tooling, which means Oracle VB Studio on Redwood.

STEP 04

Delivery, on site or remote

We work alongside HR, HRIS and communications teams, in the room or remotely, so questions and sign-off don't wait.

STEP 05

Handover

Your team takes over the code and the content tools. HR runs the content from there.

Two services, one team

Oracle HCM Redwood customisation that stays supported.

Oracle Fusion HCM Redwood comes first. The same approach carries to Workday, SuccessFactors and ServiceNow.

Full experience build

We change what each page does for each person: content that follows their brand, stage and progress, guided tours and an AI assistant, designed around what they need next.

Changes
Look, content, logic and guidance
Suits
Teams that want pages to work differently for each person
Delivery
On site in the UAE, or remote

Brand skin

Oracle branding without a full build: your colours, fonts, logos and spacing across the platform, styled in CSS. There's no new page logic, so it's a smaller project at a smaller price.

Changes
Look only
Suits
Teams that need the platform on brand quickly
Delivery
Remote, or on site in the UAE

You can start with a skin and build on it later.

The disciplines behind them

  1. Experience design

    Home pages, self-service, guided flows and manager views, designed for the people who use them. We work with one audience at a time.

  2. Front-end extension engineering

    JavaScript page modules and styling on vendor-rendered pages, built to survive quarterly updates. On Redwood, that work happens in Oracle VB Studio.

  3. Personalisation from platform data

    Brand, division and lifecycle stage come from the platform's own REST APIs, within each user's security role. People see what applies to them and nothing they shouldn't.

  4. Multi-brand systems

    One code base serving several brands or entities, so a fix made once reaches all of them.

  5. Content operations

    Content lives apart from code, with admin and sign-off tools. HR can change a page without waiting for a release.

  6. AI assistant integration

    In-platform AI agents, such as those built in Oracle AI Agent Studio, placed where employees need them.

  7. Discovery on locked-down platforms

    Documentation only tells you so much about an enterprise tenant. We test what yours really allows before anyone commits to a build.

Platforms

Oracle is where we start.

Oracle Fusion HCM

Where the employee data and security roles live, and where the experience has to work.

Redwood

Oracle's design system and the pages employees see. These are the pages we extend.

Oracle VB Studio

Visual Builder Studio, Oracle's tooling for Redwood extensions and the place our code is built.

Also

Workday, SuccessFactors, ServiceNow

McAwesome is an independent studio, not an Oracle partner or reseller. All product names belong to their respective owners. We use them only to say where our work runs.

FAQ

Questions about Oracle Redwood, Journeys and working in Dubai.

Is this only for onboarding and Oracle Journeys?

No. Onboarding is the project we can show you so far. The same approach applies to the other pages your people use, such as home pages, learning, benefits, pay and hiring. What can change differs by page, because Oracle doesn't open every page in the same way, so discovery checks yours first.

How is this different from an Oracle skin or theme?

A skin or theme changes how a page looks: colours, fonts, logos and sometimes layout. If that's all you need, we offer it as a separate, smaller service. A full experience build also changes what the page does for each person: content that follows their brand, start date and progress, guided tours, and an AI assistant on the page. In our case study, a grid of identical cards became a personal landing page with a route and next steps.

How do you change the branding on Oracle Redwood pages?

Oracle's Themes page covers the basics, such as logos and header colours, and what it can change varies by release. Beyond that, a brand skin styles more of the page, and a full experience build also changes how the page works. Discovery shows which of these your tenant needs.

What is Oracle Visual Builder Studio used for?

Oracle Visual Builder Studio, or VB Studio, is Oracle's tool for extending Redwood pages. For HCM it replaces older tools such as Page Composer and Transaction Design Studio, and Oracle provides an instance for each of your non-production environments. We start there, on your test environment, before anything reaches production.

Can you customise Oracle Redwood pages without breaking updates?

Yes, by staying inside the extension model. We build page modules and styling in Oracle VB Studio, so Oracle's own code stays as it is and your extensions sit on top. Nobody can promise that a quarterly update will never affect a page, so extensions still need checking in a test environment before each update reaches production. We plan for that from the start and tell you which parts are most exposed.

How does this work with Oracle Journeys for onboarding?

Oracle Journeys is built for guided tasks and checklists, and an onboarding experience doesn't need to replace it. The design work covers what surrounds those tasks: welcome pages, brand and personalised content. Discovery shows how the two fit together in your tenant, and what the experience can sit on if you don't use Journeys.

Can one Oracle HCM serve more than one brand?

Yes. One code base can read each employee's brand from platform data through the REST APIs, then apply the right styling and content. Our onboarding project in the UAE worked this way across multiple brands and business units.

Do you work on-site in Dubai, or remotely?

Both. McAwesome is based in Dubai, and on our onboarding project in the UAE we worked directly with HR, HRIS and communications teams on site. We also work remotely, so being elsewhere isn't a barrier. Tell us where you are and we'll work out how much on-site time the project needs, if any.

Does the approach work on Workday, SuccessFactors or ServiceNow?

The approach carries over, but the details don't. Each platform has its own extension model and its own limits, which is why every engagement starts with discovery. Oracle Fusion HCM Redwood is our first platform, and we'll be clear about anything that would be new ground for us.

Are you an Oracle partner?

No. McAwesome is an independent studio. Oracle is a platform we build on, and we don't resell Oracle products. Your licences and your relationship with Oracle stay exactly as they are.

Make your platform feel like yours.

Tell us which platform you run, who the first audience is, and whether you want a skin or a full build. We'll start with what your setup really allows.

Start a conversation → mayank@mc-awesome.com