Create and configure document templates

As an administrator, you can create and configure one or more document templates for each document class.

A document template can have:

  • a default title (unless calculated titles are configured in your document class – learn more: Create formulas for calculated titles)
  • default values for its properties
  • default attachments (one attachment in Team Folders and Secured Folders, up to five attachments in Document Management libraries)
  • a default description
  • a default folder (only in Secured Folders and Document Management libraries)

When creating a new document in the library, users can select an existing document template instead of creating a blank document. The property values, description and attachments of the document template are copied into the new document. Learn more: Create documents from a template.

After creating a template, you may want to set it as the default for your document class or restrict its visibility for document creators. Learn more: Manage your document templates.

This article explains how to:

Automatically generated table of contents


Access the list of templates in a document class

1. Access the library administration.

2. Select Document classes.

3. To open the templates panel you can do one of:

  • Select Edit templates in the More actions menu next to the document class you want to configure.

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  • Click the name of a document class to open the document class configuration, then select Templates.

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Create document templates

1. In the templates panel, click the Create template button.

2. In the Create new template dialog, enter a name for your template.

Note: The name must be unique within a given document class. You can't have two templates with the same name in the same document class.

Tip: You can copy-paste standard emojis in template (and document class) names. The emojis are visible wherever the list of document classes and templates is presented in the user interface, for example in the New menu. If you use an emoji at the start of a name, it is displayed at the end of the alphabetically-ordered list.
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3. Click Create.

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Note: When you create templates, users will still see the blank document class option when they create a new document, unless you set a template as the default.


Configure your document templates

1. Click a template name or select Configure template in the More actions menu.

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List of templates in a library using Google Drive (displaying the Attachments column)

2. The template configuration panel opens. To configure your template you can:

  • add properties, attachments and a description – when a user creates a document from the template, these elements will be defined in the new document.

Notes:
– You can add only one attachment to templates for Team Folders or Secured Folders.
– In Document Management libraries, the options available for adding attachments depend on which storage platform your library uses. Learn more about adding attachments in libraries using Google Cloud Storage or Azure Blob storage and in libraries using Google Drive.
– Any property values you enter must respect the data validation rules defined (if any). If you enter a value that doesn't respect a data validation rule, you can't save your template.

  • define a default folder – when a user creates a document from a template with a default folder defined, the new document is created in the default folder. Users can change the folder when they create their document.

Notes: The option to define a folder in templates:
– is available in Document Management libraries only if the folder option is enabled for your document class.
– is available in Secured Folders
– isn't available in Team Folders
– isn't available for the default template

  • define a title

Notes:
– You can configure the titles of templates for Document Management libraries but not for Team Folders or Secured Folders.
– In Document Management libraries, if calculated titles are configured for the same document class as your template, you can't define a title for your template. Learn more: Use calculated titles with templates

3. Save your changes or click Cancel to discard your changes and stay in the template configuration panel.

4. To return to the list of templates, click the arrow at the top left of the template configuration panel.

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Configure your document templates: visual example

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Configuring a document template

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Comments

5 comments
  • Is it possible to set an default relationship between the template and a document in a different class. E.g., I have each of my company's vendors set up as individual "Suppliers", and want to automatically relate contracts and invoices to a vendor's record by using a template linked to an email address. When configuring the template, I don't see the "related documents" section, which does show up when I create a new document in that class from scratch.

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  • I think this page needs a warning; If you've link a google document to the template as an attachment and you click the "Remove attachment from document" button and then save, the google drive document is unshared from everyone but the storage account, even if the document wasn't in an AODocs Library.

    As our storage account is not a user account and uses a randomized password, recovering those documents is really, really tedious.

    If you'd like to use a google document as an attachment to a template, I'd highly suggest that you create a copy first.

    Another important note, if you upload a PDF to a template as an attachment, the PDF will be converted into a Google Documents file when a member of the document class is created; that is, most formatting is lost along with PDF functionality.

    This, along with the fact that document templates don't currently work with the google forms add-on, means that we've essentially given up on templates for now. The first step of our workflows is generally "configuration" -- where we do everything manually that we hope templates will do for us automatically some day.

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  • Hi Lucas,
    For your question about removing attachments from templates: this is expected behaviour and there's a warning that appears when you delete the attachment from the template.

    For the PDF conversion problem: we tested this and the PDFs are not converted. Maybe it was a temporary bug that was fixed. Let us know if you still have this issue.

    Finally, there's a known issue with Google forms that prevents AODocs from handling them properly.

    Thanks for your feedback.

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  • How can I auto generate the document title, that is, if I want it to be created from 2 fields, for example Id + name?

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  • You will have to set up a simple custom script that executes upon document update that concatenates the values of your properties ID and Name to set the title. You can learn more about custom scripts here: https://support.aodocs.com/hc/en-us/sections/201077190-Custom-scripts

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