Reference

Templates

Create, edit and delete your agency's own templates — starting points for articles, guide introductions and checklists that authors pick on the New content screen.

A template is a starting point for new content: a standard outline every SOP in your agency should follow, the introduction page your guides share, or the sections and steps of a checklist you run again and again. Open this page from the sidebar: Content → Templates. Older links to /settings/templates land here too.

Templates only seed the first draft. Content started from a template is ordinary content from then on, and changing or deleting the template later never touches anything already written from it.

Who can use it

The sidebar shows Templates to people who hold Manage taxonomy, and only they see New template and the edit and delete buttons. Every member of your agency can read the templates, because authors pick from them when creating content. Creating, changing and deleting templates are refused by the database for anyone without Manage taxonomy.

Templates belong to one agency. The list, and the picker on the New content screen, show only the templates of the agency you are working in — including for ROK platform staff visiting your agency.

The list

The tabs filter the list: All, Article, Guide intro and Checklist, each with how many templates it holds. All groups the templates by type, alphabetically within each. With none at all, the page reads "No templates yet. New articles can still start from the built-in templates."

Each row shows the template's name and description, with two buttons for Manage taxonomy holders: the pencil (Edit template) and the bin (Delete template).

New template and Edit template

New template opens the form above the list, set to the type of the tab you are on (Article from All). The pencil on a row opens the same form with that template loaded.

Field	What to enter
Creates	Article, Guide intro (the introduction page of a new guide) or Checklist. Fixed once the template exists. Changing it on a new template clears the body.
Name	What authors see in the template picker, e.g. "Swiftwater SOP". Required, and unique among your agency's templates of the same type: an article template and a checklist template can share a name.
Description	A short note on when to use it. Optional; shown under the name in the list.
Body	For Article and Guide intro: the same rich-text editor as articles — headings, lists, callouts, tables, links. For Checklist: Sections and steps, with notes and reordering, edited exactly like a checklist in the content editor.

Select Add template (or Save template when editing). The list and the picker update straight away, and a message confirms it. If the name is taken, or the save is refused, the reason appears above the button and your work stays in the form. Cancel closes the form without saving.

A few things are different from writing real content:

Templates hold text only. There is no image upload, media-library picker or document import in a template's editor, and any image pasted in is removed when you save. Add images to the article itself after starting from the template.
Blank checklist steps are dropped when you save. A section left with no steps stops the save and is named in the message, so you can add a step or remove the section. Step notes are kept.
There is no autosave. Nothing is stored until you select Add template or Save template.

Delete a template

The bin asks you to confirm, naming the template. Confirm with Delete template and it is gone from the list and the picker. Content already started from it is unaffected, but the template itself cannot be recovered.

Where authors use templates

On New content (opens the admin console), a Template picker appears for Article, Guide and Checklist:

Article lists ROK's built-in templates first — Blank, Procedure / SOP and Field reference — then your agency's article templates by name. The built-in ones always appear and cannot be removed.
Guide and Checklist start with Blank, then your agency's templates of that type. The picker appears only once your agency has at least one.

Picking a template fills the editor with its body: the article text, the guide's introduction, or the checklist's sections, steps and notes. Each checklist made from a template gets its own copy of the steps, so operators' progress on one never shows on another.