Ideas for Arc XP

Include an option in Composer to “Save As Template” from an existing story

Composer allows the ability to create new story templates and then use those templates when creating a new story with predetermined text content and metadata.

What about adding a “Save As Template” button when viewing stories so that a user can take an existing story, with its text and metadata, and save that in its current form to use on future stories as a template.

  • Guest
  • Mar 12 2020
  • Future consideration
Categories User Workflow, New Functionality
  • Attach files
  • Brian McAlister commented
    21 Mar 06:25pm

    Resurrecting this idea. This would streamline the template creation process -- author creates a new article, editor can then turn that article into a template for future use. This is a process that happens already, through multiple rounds of copy and paste. "Save as Template" would make that process much more efficient.

  • Jakob Ihfongård commented
    28 Aug, 2020 11:53am

    It would also solve the problem brought up here, where the template tool is not as robust as Composer itself: https://ideas.arcpublishing.com/ideas/SB-I-88

    It would be much more convenient to create templates from the normal Composer tool - then you don't even need a separate tool to create templates.

  • Guest commented
    13 Mar, 2020 04:16pm

    Hi Lawrence! The problem this would solve is if a user had a story with metadata fields and text that they realized they will need again in the future, they wouldn't have to re-create it from zero as a template, but could just save it as-is to the template list.

    The example that comes to mind is a story that was written as a one-off, but as the news events develop, the journalists realize that this will not be a single story but a series of stories that they will need a template for.

  • Admin
    Lawrence Tsai commented
    13 Mar, 2020 12:57pm

    Hi Rob! Thanks for the idea. I'm hoping to understand: what problem is the solution you proposed above solving for?