Project templates are a fast and easy way to plan and schedule work in Float. You can create a new template from scratch or use an existing project to build one.
Creating a new project template
Project templates can be created by the Account Owner, Billing guests, Admins, and Project Managers.
To create a new project template, head to the Projects page and select Manage templates > New template.
Enter any relevant project info, add your team, set duration, create your tasks, phases, and milestones, and hit Create template.
Setting each of the template’s elements works the same way as setting up a project. You will see the same project info each time you use the template, so it's up to you how specific you want to get with the details.
Project's duration
When creating a template, you can set the duration of the project. When you create a project based on this template and select a start date, the end date will automatically be calculated based on your set duration.
Project phases
You can add phases and all of their details into a project template. In the Phases section, you can add a phase name, set color, budget (if the project’s budget is set as hours or fee by phase), the Start after offset (when a phase will start after X number of days), and the Duration of each phase.
When you create a project based on this template, the phase start and end date will be calculated automatically based on your set offset and duration.
📝Note: By default, phases color is the same as the project color, but it can be adjusted whenever needed.
Once you add a phase to a project template, you can click to open it in the side panel and add the information you wish to save in that template. This is where you can add the phase's team, tasks, milestones, and other details specific to this phase.
📝Note: If your project template's status is set as Confirmed, you can still choose to set one or more phases as Tentative.
Tasks
By default, all projects and project templates have the task list locked with Only Project Managers can add to this list. You can change this setting in the Tasks section.
Milestones
You can add milestones for the project template. For each milestone, you can set the Start after (offset) and the Duration.
When you create a project based on this template, the milestone start and end date will be calculated automatically based on the offset and duration you’ve set.
Creating a template from an existing project
To create a new template from one of your existing projects, click on its name to open the side panel. Click on the project options menu (vertical eclipses in the top right corner) and select Create template from project. You can amend any of the project's and phases' details before saving it with Create template.
📝Note: Allocations are not saved in project templates. If you wish to create a new project with the same allocations, you can duplicate it instead.
Using project template
If your team works on the same tasks repeatedly, or you want to use one of your existing projects as a jumping-off point for new work, using a project template will help automate the creation process and give you back more of your time.
Once you’ve created a template, you can use it whenever you add a new project.
📝Note: Checking the Always start from a confirmed project box in the project creation window prevents your templates from being displayed when adding a new project.
After selecting a template, you can enter the project's start date to automatically calculate and populate all project dates, including phases and milestones, based on the durations and offsets configured in the template.
📝Note: You can still manually change the duration of each project date if needed.
Managing project templates
To view, edit, or delete existing project templates, open the Projects page and click Manage templates at the top right corner of the page.
This is where you can decide whether to show templates when creating new projects; add new ones, modify existing ones, or remove them as needed.
Project templates are automatically sorted alphabetically, both on the Manage templates page and when applying a template to a new project.
💡Here's a tip: After you open a project template in edit mode, you can use it right away.
Editing templates works the same way as editing projects. Once you open the template in the side panel, you can edit its details as needed.
Additional info
Anyone with access to create a new project can also create a new project template or use one of the existing ones.
Project Managers who don’t have permission to edit budgets cannot use templates with a budget set.
When creating a project from the allocation menu, you can choose to apply a template.
We do not currently support templating allocations. To create a new project based on existing allocations, you can use the duplicate feature.
Managing templates or creating projects from templates using the public API is not currently supported.
Creating and editing project templates has no impact on reporting.
If you delete the project template, the existing projects created from this template are unaffected.
Each team can have up to 50 project templates.
Each project template can have a maximum of 200 phases, 200 milestones, 400 tasks, and 200 team members. If you ever reach those limits, please contact us.