Event Templates: Reusable Starting Points for Events

An event template is a reusable event setup. When an event is created from it, the template builds the event's starting structure, such as its collaborators, areas, activities, tasks, advances, and permissions, so every job of a kind starts the same way instead of being assembled by hand.

Templates are most useful as an event type's base template, where every event of the type is built from them automatically. An event created without a type can also pick a template during creation.

Templates live under Templates › Event Templates in your organization's sidebar.

Create a template

There are three ways to start a template. Select Add template to open Create template.

• New template starts empty. Give it a name and an optional description, then select Create.
• From event builds a template from an event you have already run. Choose the Event and select Create from event. Its collaborators, areas, tasks, statuses, and other setup are captured, and the new template is named "Template from" followed by the event's name. This is usually the fastest way to a good template: set up one job the way you like it, then reuse it.
• Duplicate, from a template's row menu, copies an existing template as "Copy of" followed by its name. Templates marked Official BackOps Template are provided by BackOps; you can use or duplicate them but not change them. When an official template is copied, references to specific people and records from outside your organization are cleared.

Inputs

Inputs are the values a template asks for when an event is created from it, such as a load-in date or the person running the show. Open the Inputs tab, select Add input, and give it a Name, a Type (Text, Number, Date, or User), whether it is Required?, and an optional Default Value.

When the template is a type's base template, inputs can be filled from the type's attributes and roles, so the value is entered once on the event. See Base Templates.

Entities

Entities are the building blocks a template creates in each new event. Select Add Entity and choose an Entity Type. The builder groups them into tabs such as Collaborators, Areas, Activities, Tasks, Phases, Crewing, Permissions, Task Statuses, Task Attributes, Modules, Resources, and Advance Templates.

What a template can create includes:

• Collaborators and their permissions, and the event's own permissions
• Areas and area permissions
• Activities, phases, tasks, task statuses, and task attributes
• Advances, advance templates, and module templates
• Crew members, crew types, and crew attributes
• File folders, resource types and categories, content, surfaces, and views

Entities can depend on each other, such as an area permission that belongs to an area, so add the parent first.

Choose the default collaborator

Every template needs a default collaborator: one of its collaborator entities, which becomes the default collaborator of each event built from it. Open the template's ... menu, choose Edit, and pick it under Default collaborator in Template Settings. Add a collaborator entity first if the template has none.

Validate before you use it

Open the Validate tab and select Validate Template. The result is either Template is valid, valid with warnings, or a list of errors and warnings to fix. Validate after every round of changes and before connecting a template to a type, so problems surface here instead of when someone creates an event.