Templates initiatives serve as models for new initiatives. They are useful for recurring projects. For example, as a Marketing agency, you may decide to create one initiative per client. Each initiative consists of the same projects, teams, and items. Instead of recreating the initiative from scratch for every client, you can use a template.
Throughout Planbox, template initiatives are marked with a watermark so you can differentiate them from regular initiatives.A template is very much like an initiative. It contains projects and teams, iterations and items. However there are differences:
- A template does not have a history or past iterations. It has Current, Next, other future iterations, and Backlog.
- No move to history occurs. A template is still in time.
- People you invite to a template initiative or any of its projects will NOT get an email.
- Email notifications are never sent for templates. Hence you will not spam your colleagues as you create and move items around.
A template can be created from an existing initiative. Here are the steps that you will need to follow:
- Go to the Initiative Settings page of the initiative from which you want to create a template
- Select "Actions" in the left navigation menu
- Click "Create template"
- You will be asked to give a name to the template. You can then work on the new initiative template.
- Once you have created templates, you will want to create new initiatives from this template.
When a new template is created from an existing initiative, this is what happens:
- Projects and team members are duplicated. Email notifications are turned off.
- You become the owner of the initiative. That automatically makes you an administrator.
- Items from the Current, Next, futurer iterations, and Backlog are duplicated into the new template initiative.
- The Current iteration's start date is set to today. Iteration length is set to the same as the original initiative.
In a similar way, the same events occur when you create a new initiative from a template.