Record Templates

Overview

A record template is reusable starting content for a record — the skeleton of a set of meeting minutes, the standard headings of an incident report, the fields an access request should capture.

Templates save you from rebuilding the same structure every time and keep records of the same kind consistent, which matters when an auditor reads a year of them side by side.

Core Functionality

Each template has a title, a unique slug, an optional description, and a body written in the same editor used for records.

A category can nominate one template as its default. Creating a record then starts from that content automatically. You can choose a different template at create time, or explicitly start blank.

Fields Explained

Copy Once, Not Linked

When a record is created, the template's content is copied into it once. There is no live link afterwards.

This means editing a template later never rewrites records that already used it. A record finalized last quarter keeps exactly the content it was finalized with, no matter how the template evolves. It also means a template change only affects records created from that point on.

For the same reason, templates are not versioned — they are mutable working material, and the immutable record is the version snapshot on the record itself.

Deleting and Archiving

Deleting a template is safe: categories referencing it simply lose their default, and records that copied it are unaffected. To retire a template while keeping it for reference, archive it instead — archived templates drop out of lists and pickers and can be restored later.

Best Practices

• Keep templates structural: headings and prompts, not filled-in content someone must remember to delete.
• Give each recurring category a default template so records start consistent without anyone choosing.
• Revise a template when the structure genuinely changes; existing records are safe from the edit.