In many deployment scenarios, users will find that they need to repeatedly create articles that have the same general form and content. Two cases include (1) loading a template article into an email reply or add new article form or (2) launching a template from a section (see Doc22: Sections Overview). This page focuses on the first case.
An existing article can be loaded into an Add New Article or Email Reply form. This is especially common in the case of email replies (so the example below is organized around the email reply use case). You can designate any user's collection as the set of templates to use for email replies or any new articles.
Consider a collection like the one below (for more info on collections, see The Collector)
The articles in the collection can form the basis of email replies.
Collections to use for Templates can be designated in two places:
1) Personal Templates: My Account | Preferences | Editing - Article Templates. Just select one of your Collections and hit Apply.
2) Shared Templates: Server Setup | Email | Composition - Shared Article Templates. Select a User and then select one of their Collections, then hit Apply. Note: While all users will be able to see the contents of a given user's shared collection, the list of articles is permission filtered.
Now when you click Email Reply (or Add New Article) to an article posted via email,
You can choose a template from the Choose Draft / Template control.
After choosing the desired template, click the Load Template to the right of the template selector.
The template entry's title, body, labels, plain-text mode setting, sections, and entry style are copied into the Email Reply form, and can be edited and personalized as necessary.
Notes:
The templates visible to the user will depend on the user's permissions to read the template articles. Templates in projects a user can't read won't appear in the list of templates from which that user can choose.
The person who owns the templates collection can add or remove templates over time.
