Your time is better spent learning simpl windows. Once you do.. you free yourself from trying to edit/add/delete/fight/trick System Builder. VTPro should be pretty much a no brainer for you guys by now. The UI editing stuff is similar to RTI and every other UI editor. Similar enough to create buttons and pages anyway.

Once you learn simpl you can create your template with whatever GUI you want.. add in all your pages.. come up with a standard navigation scheme and add all your join numbers.

With each project start from this template and edit your channel favorites.. add subtract source icons and edit room names etc.

Obviously you CAN edit the theme but IMO your going to spend as much time going page to page checking each button as you would if you just continued to do things the way your doing right now.