Customize Ribbon Panel Dialog Box Launcher

Ahh, vacation. It was nice while it lasted, but now Monday's here again and it's time to get back to work. Fortunately, I have a very fun tip to get things kick-started again.

On the LT 2010 ribbon, you may have noticed that some panels have a small arrow in the lower right-hand corner of their title bar.

This is the Panel Dialog Box Launcher, and its purpose is to...wait for it...launch dialog boxes. (Don't you love it when names make sense?) On this panel, it launches the Dimension Style Manager. Other panels launch the External References manager, or the Text Style manager...whatever makes sense for that panel.

However, not all panels have a dialog box attached by default. And maybe you'd rather change some of the built-in associations. With the CUI Editor, you can easily attach any command you'd like to a panel's dialog box launcher.

To do this, navigate to the panel's node in the CUI Editor. First, let's look at the Dimensions panel, which we saw above already has a command associated with the dialog box launcher.
If I wanted to change the associated command, I could just drag-and-drop a new command from the command list onto the launcher item. Instead, though, let's go to the Layers panel, which by default doesn't have a dialog box launcher.

Here's what it looks like on-screen:

And in the CUI:

Notice there's no associated command under "Advanced" on the right-hand side. Let's fix that. I'm just going to drag-and-drop the Layer Properties Manager from the command list onto the Panel Dialog Box Launcher.

Then the "Advanced" section is no longer blank...

...and after I say OK, the panel now shows the arrow to launch the Layer Properties Manager.

If you change your mind, you can delete your custom launch command by going back to the panel node in the CUI editor, right-clicking on the Dialog Box Launcher, and selecting "Remove Command".