SharePoint Templates Manager With Client For Desktop Office

Templates Manager for SharePoint V2 has been released!  The new version has a client application, so now users can select the SharePoint templates in their local Excel, PowerPoint or Word. Version 2 of Templates Manager also has some enhancements of the SharePoint installation.

No need to open SharePoint
With the new client installation, users who prefer to work with their desktop Office applications can use the SharePoint templates in their PCs without even noticing that they get the templates from SharePoint.

After a manual login to SharePoint the first time, Templates Manager Client knows what templates library to connect to. The user can just click on the Select Template button in the ribbon to select a template.

SharePoint enhancements
The Office desktop applications have more features than the online versions, but working online also has its benefits, for example that several people can work on the same document. Therefore some users will continue using the browser, and for those users we have given two enhancements.

Templates Manager shows the templates sorted by category, and users can also search all templates. New in version 2 is a possibility to filter the templates for document type to get a more handy selection. If you know that you want to create, for example, a presentation, you can filter the templates so that only .pptx files are displayed. Then you can browse or search as before.

Many admins prefer to use another SharePoint theme than the default one that we always show in the kalmstrom.com demos. Earlier the "choose template" dialog always looked the same, but in V2 it will fit in better as it picks up the colors of the selected SharePoint theme.

Upgrade
All kalmstrom.com Subscribers have free upgrades, and I recommend current users to upgrade their installations. This time we have had to add one more step in the process, because of Microsoft's decision to deprecate server-side code in sandboxed solutions.

Earlier we kept a very small amount of server-side code, to make installs, uninstalls and upgrades simpler for administrators. Now we have to bother our admins with some more clicks at uninstall and upgrade to make it possible to continue supporting Office 365.

The upgrade page shows the process clearly in a step-by-step instruction and in a demo, and if you are using Templates Manager in many sites we can give a PowerShell script that takes care of everything. Please contact us if you have questions!

Try it!
The process at first installation of Templates Manager is also changed because of the server-side code deprecation, but it is hardly noticeable. Here we have managed to keep the number of clicks the same as before and the installation is still easy to manage for evaluators – and of course for current subscribers who want to install Templates Manager in more site collections. We allow an unlimited number of installations and users, so subscribers can very well have more than one installation.

Peter Kalmström
CEO and Systems Designer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions