Page templates are a great help when repeatedly creating content of similar format, such as meeting notes, product requirements, or technical documentation.

Templates are used when creating a page. They cannot be applied to an existing page. After you added apage using a template, the template is no longer linked to that page.All subsequent editing on the page are independent of the template. LINCHPIN comes with a range of useful templates, some of which with enhanced functionality.

LINCHPIN knows global templates and space templates. These are identical as such but space templates are only available in a specific space while global templates are available in every space in the system.  Space templates can be administered by space administrators. Global templates are administered by system administrators.

Creating templates works in two different ways depending whether you want to create a space template or a global template.

Space templates can be created via the Space Tools menu. Go to the space and choose Space tools > Content Tools from the bottom of the sidebar. Click Templates > Create new template.  Global templates are added via the system administration area. Choose the cog icon to get to the admin menu, then choose General Configuration under Confluence Administration. At the left hand panel, click on Global Templates and Blueprints and choose Add New Global Template. Note that you need the appropriate rights to administer templates.

Templates are created and edited in the template editor. This is very similar to creating a page.

Add a name for your template, and enter text into the body of the template, and use the editor just like you would when editing a page. You can apply formatting, add macros, and layouts. In addition, however, you can add variables to your template to collect data when someone adds a page based on the template. Variables can act as form fields. There are different variable types, such as Text, Multi-line Text, or List. For example, if you put a variable of type Text into your template, a text entry box for this field will be displayed when someone creates a page based on the template. Users can then enter data into the field which will be inserted into the new page at the position where the variable is.

Labels: You can add labels to you template, theses will then be applied to each page that is created based on the template.

Images and Attachments: It is not possible to directly attach images or other files to a template. This must be done by attaching the file to another page and by inserting it into the body of the template.  For example, attach an image to a page and when editing the template, choose Insert > Image to embed the image into the template.

Atlassian has added blueprints to Confluence. As LINCHPIN is based upon Confluence, this knows blueprints, too.

A blueprint is a set of page templates with added functionality to help you create, manage and organise content. Have a look at Atlassians introduction to blueprints.