In this walk-through, you’ll learn how to create a Templates Board in your content management system and the TeamSlide Web Portal. Before setting up a Board, make sure to read through our informational article about Boards.
What are Templates boards?
Templates boards provide an easy way to organize template slides into customizable categories (e.g., Agendas, Charts, Concepts) and sub-categories. This provides a browse-friendly way to find template assets that have less content on each slide. In addition to categorizing your slides, you can define the icon for each category too.
Step 1: Setting up a templates folder structure
The first step in creating a Templates Board is to determine how you’d like to setup template categories. There are many ways to set up your Templates Board, but a common and effective way to do so is to setup a folder structure. Alternatively, you can use other metadata to define the category structure.
To setup a folder structure, start by looking at your content management system (CMS), such as Box, OneDrive, or SharePoint. Within your CMS, you can create or locate a folder that will serve as your template category and then it’s sub-folders will be your sub-categories. The content in these folders will need to be connected to TeamSlide and replicated by creating a replication task prior to creating your new custom property.
In your content management system (CMS):
1. Create a templates folder in your CMS. This will be the parent folder in the hierarchy structure. Within that folder, you can create organized folders that will act as template categories (Ex: ‘Agendas’, ‘Charts’, ‘Concepts’, or ‘Timelines’). Within the those category folders, you can create sub-folders that will act as sub-categories (Ex: ‘Flows’, ‘Trees’, or ‘Segmentation’).
The flow will look like this:
Templates > Category > Sub-category
2. In each sub-folder, you can optionally add an image file (.jpg or .png) that will display on your new Board as the category icon. Name the image: “image.png” or “image.jpg”
The image should have minimum dimensions of 144 x 216 px
Note: If you decide not to upload an image, only the category name will display in the TeamSlide pane.
3. Create a replication task to index your template files into a library. *In addition to PowerPoint files, be sure to check Recursive replication and Image files in order to include category icons.
Step 2: Setting up template categories
Now that you’ve set up the template folder structure and established a replication task, you can create a custom property to define the categories and sub-categories for your template content (that resides in your content management system). In particular, you’ll create a hierarchy property. This type of property can have a category and sub-category in one property, split by a symbol.
Let’s get started…
1. Log into the TeamSlide Web Portal.
2. In the Main Menu, select Property Settings. Select Add custom property at the top.
3. Enter a display name that will represent the template content you’re connecting. For example, “Template category”.
4. Under Data type, select Hierarchy
5. Uncheck Allow editing to prevent editing and ensure the value is only pulled from your CMS.
6. In the Import Settings section, set the Value Source to Relative path to folder. Here we are using the folder structure to define the categories and subcategories. The top-level folder is the category and the subfolder is the subcategories.
Note: If you prefer not to use the folder structure, you can use any metadata to define the category and subcategory.
7. Click Save.
Step 3: Creating a Templates Board
1. In the TeamSlide Web Portal. Click the Boards tab on the Main Menu panel.
2. Select the Add new board tab at the top.
3. Name your new board. Users typically want to choose a name that categorizes the content that users will be searching. For example, ‘Templates’.
4. Select the type Templates in the dropdown menu.
5. The display position can be adjusted to re-order the Board names. Adjust this number if you’d like your Board tabs to appear in a particular order with your other Boards.
6. Select 1 or more libraries to include in the Board search.
7. Under Category Property, select the custom property name that you created earlier.
8. Click Save.
9. Open PowerPoint and the TeamSlide pane. You’ll see your new Board at the top of the pane.
Note: If you don’t see your new Board, completely shut down PowerPoint and re-open it. Your new board should be visible!