New: Record templates

[Helen_Zeng]

Hi everyone! I'm Helen, a Product Manager here at Airtable and I'm very excited to announce that we're launching the new Record Templates feature to all Pro and Enterprise users.

This feature enables you to create templates for your frequently repeated projects and automatically create relevant tasks as linked records every time that template is used. 

With Record Templates, you will now be able to:

• Create pre-defined templates for the types of records you find yourself creating over and over again
• Link related templates together to bulk-create records across tables
• Set default field values (including date dependencies) on those templates
• Surface templates to end-users in interfaces as record creation options that they can further customize

Some example use cases:

• A creative team tracking asset delivery. The marketing team specifies the type of asset(s) needed, and the relevant tasks for that asset type are automatically added and linked to the request.
• A product team adding a new feature to the roadmap creates placeholder tasks for product, design, and engineering.
• A marketing team working on social media campaigns across multiple social media platforms, with different tiers of campaigns. 
  

How to get started:

Start creating templates in your base by navigating to the Tools menu on the top right. 

 

Set up your template for linked record creation in related tables by additional additional records

Include record template options in places where users can create records 

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Other questions? Check out our support article for more details on how to use the feature. 
We’re looking forward to hearing what you think, please let us know if you have any questions!

[Chris_Herrmann]

@Helen_Zeng 

Is it possible to apply record templates through interfaces, apart from the plus button in the scrollable section of the record review view?

For instance, can I set the 'Add Record' button of one of my related tables to pop up with the record template options? 

[Karlstens]

Settling on some final feedback for now after further exploring - what we're needing is a cleaner Automation trigger that executes upon a template being used to create a new record.

This idea below works, but it's not as tidy as an official trigger for "When Record Created By Template" could be.

If revising Automation triggers is on the development roadmap, we're also needing others that have been previously discussed, such as trigger on Record Duplication, etc.

One thing I'd like to commend, is the ability create records via the "Create Record" action - that's great, I'll have to explore that further. 🙂

[Londya_E]

@Helen_Zeng 

Just reported this bug, but posting here because I forgot to include the pics in the bug report and was hoping someone may be able to get to this faster.

My base is set up where subtasks are nested in the same table as tasks. I am unable to link my subtask template to task template. When I try to click "choose template" to link the 2, the search results bar pops up, but no task templates are there, even when searching for them by name. I have attached some pics to demonstrate.

 

[kendallodom]

Great feature! How can users add a record template from interface?

[Andrew_Petrus]

Request: Create a template from record. Stick it right under "Apply template" to record.

[COMVproductions]

I second @Andrew_Petrus idea about creating a template from an existing record. 

Additional problem we are running into is when creating a template based off a record with a date we can select "Set relative date for [FIELD]" but there is no option to choose what the time should be on creation. 

For example if we create a template for a schedule we are building out, we want the template records to all have a predefined start and end time (Record 1 starts at 10am, Record 2 starts at 11am, etc), and have the Month/Date/Year be set to be relative to the linked record. 

[Helen_Zeng]

Hi @Andrew_Petrus and @COMVproductions !

You can convert existing hierarchical records into record templates in List View. Currently, templates can only be created from a list view within the base. This can be done by right-clicking on the top level of the record and clicking Create record template. This will create a record template for each record in the hierarchy and copy over field values. These fields can be edited further before the template is saved.

Note that list views need to be created at the most granular level of your linked record hierarchy. So for a set of linked Projects > Tasks > Subtasks tables, the list view needs to be created at the Subtask level within the base. 

I hope that's helpful!

[leonrw]

Hello! 

Just jumping to second @COMVproductions comment to set a time, but leave date relative. I'm also wondering if its possible to set a 'relative date' from within a top-level template, rather than only from child templates. 

I would like to use templates for our staff schedule - create a series of templates for each staff role, and containing standard times per our operating hours (12-6, 6-10pm etc), with the actual date relative - say, if I'm in calendar view on a certain date and create a record with one of these templates it automatically sets the shift start/end times fields to the date the record has been created, with the shift times prefilled with standard hours. 

[Yonatan_Langer]

The tool is super helpful, especially for small companies. We need to define all kinds of processes in record templates, but the limit of 100 records is way too low. How can the limit be increased without going to Enterprise license? 

[Karlstens]

@Yonatan_Langer- those have been my thoughts too. A workaround of an automation triggered by the user of a template can be used to create dependant records - rather than absorbing multiple templates to create linked records - such as, 1 project and 5 starter tasks consuming 6 templates... which simply isn't right when working within a max budget of 100 templates. With the workaround, simply have your project template trigger off a script to create the other task records, the catch being that one automation is now spent for what should be a user workflow.