How can I create a Template? What are Templates used for?

[Vova]

Templates are a great way to get started with new objects. You can create a template from scratch or use one already included with Anytype

Types support multiple templates, so you could, for example, have templates for different tasks or systems like GTD and OKRs. Or different templates for different kinds of books, like academic, fiction, non-fiction.

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Current template options:

• • Choosing the layout.
  • • Basic, profile, or action.
• • Featured relations.
• • Canvas blocks to build a visual structure.

Existing objects can be turned into templates using the ··· button.

[qualquertipo]

I finally tried out this feature and was surprised to see that changes done to a Template are not reflected in the Objects created based on it.

If I create a Book Template and create a few book Objects based on it, I would then expect to have the option to edit the Template so that the changes are reflected in all Objects I has already created.

From what I understand, currently once I decide on a layout for a certain Type, I need to either stick to it for life, or manually reapply it to all existing objects whenever I want to tweak it. This seems very clunky… Unless I’m missing something!

Any plans on implementing the option of allowing changes to a Template to be automatically applied to Objects using it?

(I read a discussion related to this last week in the forum but couldn’t find it to link here… If anyone remembers where it is please let me know!)

[lynxlove]

Difficult to create/modify types and properties (~Notion database properties)

Am I missing something or is there a lot of extra steps?.. I’m creating a type, adding properties. Then if I create an object from the type the properties do not show up. I then have to manually create a template where I add the properties again. This seems like quite the hassle. Also, if I wanna add an extra property I have to go back to the type and then go through all these things again.

This is the one that discussed about templates recently

[qualquertipo]

Thanks!

It’s kind of lost in the comments there.

I’ll see if I do a post (or more) focusing on a few of those points…

[Vova]

@qualquertipo

If I create a Book Template and create a few book Objects based on it, I would then expect to have the option to edit the Template so that the changes are reflected in all Objects I has already created.

Any plans on implementing the option of allowing changes to a Template to be automatically applied to Objects using it?

Thank you for your feedback, we share your opinion! First of all, we want to implement inline Sets and re-imagine templates after. We want to suggest templating covering whole use-cases not only single objects. We also consider implementing a different way of template applying, and changing the template after applying (similar to your logic) in further iterations

[qualquertipo]

Nice! Good to know. And thank you for taking the time to reply here.

@Vova

We want to suggest templating covering whole use-cases not only single objects. We also consider implementing a different way of template applying, and changing the template after applying (similar to your logic) in further iterations

Sounds promising! I elaborate a bit on this here, if you are interested:

More robust Templates (for more streamlined Object creation)

Yep! Thanks again for linking that. I might make a post/request for this (so it’s not buried in the comments there).

[ccrawford]

How do I create a template with an in-line set inside the template that dynamically filters the content based on if it’s linked to the new object that is created from the template?

For example, I want to have a template for projects that has an in-line set for tasks. The in-line set should filter tasks based on if they are linked to the current project. So the template would need a way to dynamically populate this.

Notion handles this well by allowing you to select the template as the object to filter by and then it will dynamically replace that with the new object.

For example, the in-line set in the project template would be filtered by tasks linked to the project template. Then if I created a new project called “test project,” the in-line set would automatically update to filter tasks by “test project.”

Am I missing something or is this not possible? The default project (called get value from anytype) that comes with the new beta version includes an inline set with no filtering so if a new task is added to the in-line set it’s not connected to the project. This seems like a bad system.