When working with SharePoint for various organizations I have seen the need for a template management system for the SharePoint libraries. I have experienced that people have difficulties in finding the correct template, and administrators have no easy way to publish their templates on SharePoint so that everyone in the organization can use them. Now we are doing something to solve this problem.Template management for the organization
Today I can give you the first presentation of what will be a new kalmstrom.com Solution: Templates Manager for SharePoint. With this solution, templates can be categorized and distributed to the whole organization, because Templates Manager uses only one Template library for the entire SharePoint farm.
Use any file with the right look
One of the many advantages with SharePoint is that you don't have to create a real template. You can use any document of the same type that have the background, header and footer, font, colors and so on that you wish to use in new documents.
Template Search
The heart of Templates Manager is the Search page. Here all the templates are gathered, grouped by category. When a category is expanded, all templates in that group are displayed. Icons show what kind of document the template is intended for.
Find template
When Templates Manager is installed and a user clicks on "Add document" in a SharePoint library, he will not see the standard dialog. Instead the Template Search will open, and the user can write in a search word or phrase. Then all those templates that do not fit the search word will be filtered out, and only those who comply with the search will be left to select among.
Use template
When the user clicks on one of the templates it will be copied to the document library and opened, and the user can directly start working with the document. It will now have the correct formatting, metadata and everything else that is pre-defined in the template.
Upload template
Templates Manager creates a new Templates library, to where all files that you want to use as a template should be uploaded. When the file is uploaded, enter a template title and description and select a category in a dropdown. These categories are fetched from the settings, where you can add the categories you wish to use.
Under the Library tab in the Template library, Templates Manager adds a new ribbon button, Publish Templates. This button is used when you have uploaded templates to the library and want to publish them. The templates can be published at the same time to all sites in the SharePoint farm.
From idea to product
For some time Templates Manager has been presented in the kalmstrom.com section for product ideas. What I describe there is something I still want to offer in the future, but we will start with a more basic solution only for SharePoint.
I am looking forward to showing you more of Templates Manager!
Peter Kalmström
CEO and Systems Designer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions
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