Templates are a great tool that make it easier to add a new contact or
project. Using templates you can customize the add and edit person,
company and project pages. A template is a set of ordered fields that
you specify. Each field has a type (i.e. email, phone, address, text,
number, list, etc.), a label, a help text, a regex validation rule and a
default value.
You can create a template for every type of contact or project you
need to track. For example, for people, you could have a news reporter
template, a politician template, a lawyer template, a real estate broker
template, a movie producer template, etc. When you then create a new
contact, a news reporter for example, you just select the "News
reporter" template on the add person page and fill in the template
fields.
Create a new template
To create a new template:
- Click on "Settings" in the Timetonote left navigation panel
- Select the "Templates" tab
- Select the "Person Templates", "Company Templates" or "Project Templates" tab to determine the type of template you want to add
- Click on "Add a new template" button and input the template name and define the template fields
- Click on "Save template" to save the template
For example, here is how you could define a person template and it's fields for a news reporter:
There are three types of templates: person templates, company
templates and project templates. A person template is used to add or
edit a person. A company or project template is used to add or edit a
company or project respectively. After you save the template all users
in your Timetonote account will be able to see the template under the
"Use template" drop down list on the add and edit person, company or
project pages, depending on the template type.
Template fields
Use template fields to capture information about contacts or
projects. For example, email, phone, media market, employees, election
year, etc. whatever is relevant to your business. Each template is
basically a collection of ordered fields. You can reorder template
fields at any time by clicking on the up and down arrows next to the
field on the add or edit template page. The type of fields that you can
add to a template depend on the the template type. For example, these
are the fields that you can add to a person template:
The available standard fields are: Email, Phone, Address, Web site,
Birthday, Instant Messaging, Date and Background info. The available
custom fields are:
- Text: plain text
- Number: a numeric value (either float or integer)
- Choose from a list: a drop down selection list
- Text area: plain text on multiple lines
You can also add section headers if you'd like to divide your template in sections to make it easier to read and fill out.
Each field has these properties that define how the field displays
and collects data from the user when the template is selected to be
used:
- Label: the text displayed to the user
- Help Text: additional help text to help the user fill in the field. The help text is displayed when the user hovers the mouser over [?].
- Default Value: a default value that will automatically be
used to fill this field. You can use a default value when a field has
often times the same value. This will help the user input data faster as
the field will already be set.
- Regex validation rule: you can validate user input for this field using any arbitrary regular expression.
For example, to validate double-digit numbers 10 to 99 you could use
this rule: [1-9][0-9], or to validate an email address you could use
this rule: ^[a-zA-Z0-9._%+-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,4}$.
- Make this a required field: the user will be required to input a value for this field.

Edit and delete templates
On the templates page you can view all the templates in your
Timetonote account and you can edit or delete any template by clicking
on the "edit" or "delete" links next to the template:
Note: When you edit a template and rename or delete a template field
the data collected in contacts or projects using that template is not
updated. Also, when you delete a template, the data collected in
contacts or projects using that template is not deleted.
Using templates
After you've created your templates, you can use them on the add
and edit person, company and project pages. For example, to add a news
reporter person, select the "News reporter" template on the add person
page:
Using a custom template of fields, instead of the more generic
default template, enables you to quickly add fields. Fields that are
required are marked with a red * and users will have to input a value
for this field before they can save the entity. Also, if the field has a
regex validation rule, users will have to input a valid value,
otherwise they will be presented with a "Invalid value" message for that
field.
When you create a contact or project using a template, the same
template will automatically be used when you edit that contact or
project. However, you can select another template or the default generic
template to edit a contact or project.
User permissions
Only the Timetonote account owner has access to the templates
management page to add, edit or delete templates. To give another user
access to the templates management page, enable the "Can manage
templates" permission for that user on the "Users" page.