OK Steve looks great and can be a great benefit for a project I am working on where we basically have to install the same equipment at 20 different sites.

I have several task list loaded in the project blog and want to reuse them.

Do I have to start a new blog or can I add them to the same blog?

Dave

Hi Dave, You don’t need to start a new blog to reuse them i.e. you can insert a template into a project blog as many times as needed.

To clarify, you save all the activities on the existing project blog as a “template”.  A template can be inserted anywhere, any number of times.  If you need to change the template’s contents just re-save a set of updated activities using the same template name.

It seems to save OK but

When I mouse over the ‘insert a template activity’ I get a tiny little box next to the arrow but no text.

Dave

Having no options under insert or delete drop-downs would indicate the system does recognize you’ve saved any templates yet.

I now see I am getting a permissions denied when I go to create a template.

Do I have to be an administrator to save a template?

Dave

You don’t need to be an administrator to save or update a template.  Perhaps email us the particulars and we’ll take a look at your example; perhaps there is a particular activity type you’re using that we need to tweak.

Very cool Steve. THANK YOU.

quick question - can i apply a template to multiple contacts at once?  i.e. when i import 20 new contacts (prospective students or donors for my situation) is there a way to work around needing to open each contact and insert a template?

the things i’ve seen implemented over the last few months have only solidified my opinion of Solve - greatest product out there that i know of!

Thanks for the support Keith.

You can’t add templates “in batch” but if you are curious / inclined you could do it from basic commands ran from a command prompt / batch file calling our API

Taking the point a bit further (not sure if it applies in your case but I’ll offer it up as an example), you could use a standard webform on your website to capture the contact info, create the contact in Solve, set ownership, tags ... and add the template ... automatically (we use that process here to add a lead nurturing process to all new trial accounts).

i’ll look at the API suggestion, but will probably just keep with the system i have running now… thanks for the fast reply though.

your example is something i would love to implement in the long term, but i’m trapped within the bounds of a larger university web/IT/CRM setup at the moment :0)

Hey Steve, what would be the easiest way to get started with something like that? I’m playing with Solve to see if it would better serve my business, as well as clients. I love the Templates feature, but automatic template creation would be great. I have no interest in fulling with APIs myself, but I would love to see what’s involved in setting up web-to-lead functionality, similar to your Solve360 Trial account processes you speak of. Who would be a good person to coordinate with?

I’m not certain what “automatic template creation” is.  Do you mean automatically attaching a template of activities to a new contact via a web form?  If that’s it and your website supports PHP (a popular server scripting language) the process is not difficult because we provide a code example:

1) Create the template (summary below)
2) Get your webform working (see the web-form example in our API docs which is essentially a copy, paste, put in your own account info and uncomment a couple lines)

Creating the template:

Create a new contact or project blog page, layout the activities the way you expect to reuse (e.g. adding tasklists w/tasks, scheduled emails, events, etc), hover the mouse over the “Arrange activity template option”, choose “Save the current set of activities as”, give the template a name. 

Then when you want to add that set of activities to a new contact or project manually just hover the mouse on “Arrange activity template option” again and this time choose “Insert a template of activities…”.

The automatic template creation that I’m thinking of, is automatically attaching a template to a new contact.
We’re using Wordpress for almost all of our sites, with the cFormsII contact form plugin. The plugin supports many custom features. We probably wouldn’t want to create completely new forms for everything, because we have about 6-7 different forms for different parts of the sites. I’d rather get in touch with someone familiar with your APIs to see what it takes to add that functionality on our current system.

We’re not developers so we’d rather get help with PHP and API work. Any ideas of who to get in touch with to help us?

Thanks Steve!

The good news is that the structure / fields of web forms don’t need to change, they’ll just post the same information to the script that saves the changes to Solve.

I’d suggest posting a help wanted in the API forms with your contact info.  Perhaps someone will reach out there.  If not, let us know and we’ll see if there’s something we can do for you al a professional services.

I have created two activity templates in the past, but I can’t seem to do it anymore.

I have created a project blog and created a task list, but under “arrange activity templates”, “insert a template of activities” is the only option available.

Tried doing this in multiple places, both old and new project blogs, but the options just is not there. The two templates I have created earlier are available though.

Any idea why?

(and sorry for bumping this really old post…)

I’d check Workspace > Modify User Accounts > Templates and ensure you have Modify access selected.  It sounds like you have view only access to the templates feature currently.

Correct

Oh great, I was asking for this over the summer. Glad you put it in. So it will do email dripping if we put in a number of scheduled emails and save all the activities into the template, correct?

Ronald

Oh great, I was asking for this over the summer. Glad you put it in. So it will do email dripping if we put in a number of scheduled emails and save all the activities into the template, correct?

Yes it will, and actually it has always worked this way.

We also have a best practices article to introduce the concept for those who are new to it at http://norada.com/answers > Lead nurturing