Working with Templates

Creating Templates

Navigation

From your Single Day Dashboard, click on Settings in the bottom left hand corner of the screen.

Once in the settings screen, enter the Templates section, which is located under the heading of Actions. This will bring up the Template Editor.

Creating/Editing Templates

With the Template Editor open, the user can now view the list of templates in BestNotes. To edit a template, click the template title in the selection pane found in the upper right hand corner, then click the edit button found below the template selection pane. To create a new template simply click Create New Template. This will open a blank untitled template. Add a title in the blank field in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

The selected template now appears in the main editing pane on the left side of the template editor.  With the selected template open, the user can begin editing.

The template editor has some of the same basic functionality as any word processing program. The user has the ability to select text size and make text bold, italicized, or underlined. Text can be aligned to the right, left, or center. The user can add bullets or numbers and create indents. Tables and horizontal lines can be added as well.

A template provides the structure for a document by assigning the location where key text and their corresponding AutoNote collections will appear.

When recreating an existing document in the template editor, begin by identifying the sections of the document that could be made into AutoNotes (any section where a predefined set of responses exist) then take the remainder of the document and use it to create an outline in the template editor.

After typing in the outline of the template, begin adding AutoNote collections. There are two scenarios associated with adding an AutoNote collection to a template. The first is creating and adding an AutoNote collection to the template the second is adding an AutoNote collection that already exists to the template.

DO NOT copy directly from Microsoft Word into a template. This will break the template if copied directly from Word.  First copy the information from Word into a Notepad, then from Notepad into the template builder.

Creating a Table within a Template

To create a table, click on the table icon at the top of the template builder. A dialogue box will appear asking for percentages separated by commas. Enter the percentages based on the width you would like that column to be. Example: 25, 25, 25, 25. The next box will pop up and ask how many rows you would like to create. Fill in the number of rows and click OK. This will create a table to begin entering information in.

When modifying a table, do not add columns after you create a table. The column will not be the correct width. If another column is needed, recreate the table and adjust the percentages. Rows may be added by clicking the down or up triangle to the side of the cell.

Creating an AutoNote Collection

To create and add a new AutoNote collection to your template:

1. Click on the Create New Collection link at the bottom right side of the template editor.
2. Type a name for the new collection (it will be automatically capitalized).
3. Click Save.

Adding to collection list

The created AutoNote collection will appear at the bottom of the Collection Library list. Highlight your collections, then click Add to List. This will move the collection to the AutoNote Collection list, which acts as a list of the collections used in the current template.

Ordering Collection Flow

When creating the list of AutoNote collections within a template, be sure to organize them in the order that they appear in the template by highlighting each AutoNote and clicking the Up and Down buttons to move them to the correct location.

Inserting Collection into Template

To insert a collection into a template, either type the collection name within square brackets at the location where the AutoNote is to be inserted.  Or in the template, position the cursor in the location the AutoNote should appear, then highlight which AutoNote should be inserted and click insert at cursor.

Special Fields

Using Template

To use the newly created template, navigate to a student’s page and in their activity log, click the add note icon and in the note type drop down menu choose the new template.