Custom Workspace Section Templates

Section templates customised to your brand and your story aims, and available to use by anyone in your workspace.

Team leaders can create and manage section templates that are available to all members of their workspace (or contact us to arrange for our professional story designers to create a set of workspace templates for you).

Multiple templates can be created for any of Shorthand's section types.

If you are a team leader, creating a workspace section template is very similar to creating a personal template. First, create the section or choose one from an existing story, then in the Editor, click the star next to its thumbnail image:

The section chooser opens, overlaid with a form for describing and categorising the template. If you are a team leader, the first options in this form include a choice to add the template to "Your templates" (personal templates available only to you) or to your workspace (you'll see your workspace name listed):

If you have created workspace templates, or any exist for your workspace, you and every other user of the workspace will now see them listed in a category in the section-chooser. The category will be named with your workspace name:

Brand consistency.
Speed of creation.
Enabling more creators.

Shorthand has multiple section types: Title, Text Over Media, Reveal, etc. When adding a section to a story, a panel shows templates for each of these section types. The default Title template shows a hot air balloon behind some bold text. The default Reveal template includes three frames of images of a mountain scene. Shorthand also provides a range of differently styled versions of these section types in template categories listed on the left of the panel. The templates in these categories are a great way to see the flexibility of each section type and can be added to any of your stories and modified, though their default images and text are unlikely to closely match your brand.

Custom workspace templates however are tailored to your brand and content. For example, if your workspace publishes stories about biotechnology in a conversational tone in French and prefers short sections of text with short line length and images with rounded corners, your workspace templates can completely reflect those preferences and any other styling that suits your brand and message. As your workspace members create stories from these templates, they'll be choosing from a set of building blocks that already look and sound like your brand, while still allowing for easy further editing.

Working from pre-approved, on-brand, well-styled building blocks can dramatically speed story creation and layout and while still supporting creativity.

Multiple templates per section type
A workspace is not limited to a single template per section type. This allows for variety in style and wider application of each type. Eg: You may wish to have multiple alternate 'Title' section templates purely for variety in style, while multiple 'Text' section templates could be created to represent different types of content, such as one for intro sections, one for footers, and a different one for use with inline charts.

Within the template chooser, custom workspace templates show in the same order as the default Shorthand section templates, starting with Title, then Text Over Media, Reveal, Text, etc. When there are multiple templates for one of these section types, the template chooser shows how many versions there are. Clicking this number then shows all of the versions for that section type.

A key advantage of custom workspace templates is the confidence they give to users that otherwise might not feel confident enough in their design skills to create professional-looking on-brand stories. A set of pre-designed custom section templates provides that confidence: leading to more people in your team being able to create: faster, easier, and still on-brand.

When a template is created, it can be given a title, description, and category. Titles and descriptions are shown below each template, while categories are used to create a sorting scheme that works for your workspace. In the image below showing workspace templates for a performance venue, categories are based on performance type: Music, Dance, and Theatre, making it easy for creators to put together a story with components that suit the category:

Team leaders can modify how their workspace templates are described by using the edit buttons on each template to change its name, description, and/or category - or to delete a template from the set.

The content of a template cannot be directly modified. Instead, if you wish to make changes to a template, add it to a story, edit it there, and save this new version as a workspace template before deleting the original from the set.

As with personal section templates, workspace templates are a snapshot of when they were created, rather than a 'live' style that can be modified to update multiple stories. This safeguards against unforeseen changes to multiple stories in your workspace.

Individual templates can be removed from the set by team leaders only. To do so, click the red trash bin icon in the top right of any of the template thumbnails, or use the checkbox to select multiple templates to delete. Deleting a template from this panel does not remove sections from any story that used the template.

Workspace templates are available in some plans only. If you would like to know more about adding the feature to your workspace or having Shorthand create custom templates for you, please contact us.