- Hey, welcome back to Thomas Frank Explains,
the Internet's only source of Notion tutorials
and random farm animal clips,
at the end of the video.
Today, we're talking about
one of Notion's most powerful features,
the Template Block.
This was actually one of the two features
that got me into Notion in the first place,
and which has made it the absolute best possible app
for managing my YouTube channel,
and my business in general.
So all this Notion nerdery we've been doing,
it all kinda comes from that template block's existence.
And we use it for a ton in my business now.
We use it to create new team dashboard pages,
'cause you can generate entire new pages
from the template block.
We use it to generate copies of checklists
on our video projects,
and we use the database template feature,
to create new video projects
in our video project tracker.
Same goes for podcasts, blog posts, all kinds of stuff.
So in this video,
I'm gonna teach you the basics of the template block
and also get a little bit into how to use it
for some more advanced and really interesting purposes.
Let's get into it.
(upbeat music)
- Alright so we've got a Template Basics page here.
I'm gonna show you exactly how this block works,
and also get into some of the database
template features as well.
So what can you do with a template block?
Well, you can click it,
and basically generate a copy
of almost anything you want.
For example, if I want to add a new to-do item,
I can easily do that,
by clicking this checkbox right here
or this template blocks.
And I can do it as many times as I want.
So that's a super duper simple implementation
to a template block.
What if we wanna do something a bit more interesting?
What about generating an entire checklist,
of useful items such as a grocery list?
So if I click this, then I'm going to get
Publish V because I was changing this
to make the thumbnail of the video,
a little bit more interesting.
But this would be a grocery list,
with things like eggs
and light-up llama sweaters and butter,
you know, the typical stuff that you get
when you go to the grocery store.
I could do this as many times as I want.
And if you look inside here,
by going to this configure template option,
we can see that there is just blocks in here,
like you would normally see on a notion page.
You can do a lot more than just putting
blocks in here though.
For instance, if we sort of come down here
and look at this database one,
I can click this,
and I'll be making a copy of this database down here.
So you could actually create databases,
that are full of templates themselves if you wanted to,
from the template button.
It is incredibly useful,
and combined with the database feature,
it makes Notion one of the most powerful
productivity apps out there.
Like I said, this is the reason why I use Notion.
This is the reason why I got into it.
So let's talk about after I delete this here,
let's talk about how to create one really quickly.
So like any other block,
you just use that slash command here,
and you can search for template,
and you've got Template button right here.
This is the typical template button.
From there, just give it a name.
So we're gonna call this Publishing Checklist,
and maybe we're creating a checklist of items
that we're gonna go through,
when we're publishing a YouTube video.
For me, this is a very multi-step tedious process,
and sometimes I can forget things
like ordering the captions that I order from Rev
or, you know, adding the thumbnail,
or adding tags or end cards.
There's all kinds of stuff here.
So let's say we've got this checklist built out here.
We can just grab this,
and put it in our template block area.
And that is basically all we need to do.
So now that we've got this created,
we can go ahead and close it.
And if we click Publishing Checklist,
we're gonna generate a copy of whatever is in there.
And you can put pretty much whatever you want in here
with the exception of multi-column layouts,
you can't really do that.
But you could create a page full of multi-column layouts,
and then you could actually create a template of that.
So for example, if we go over to our team pages,
which are all the way down here,
our Team Workspaces page,
we've got a whole big, complicated team workspace
that I've built for each person in my company,
this one is mine.
And if we look at this Add New Team Member Workspace,
template block here I can configure,
and I can see that there's actually a page in here.
This one's called Buckaroo 'cause I don't know,
people's names are Buckaroo,
and you don't know what their actual name is.
And this is full of all kinds of stuff.
There's a linked Team Tasks Database view here.
There's a toggle with other kinds of links
to other databases,
a lot of features from ultimate tasks.
We've got some Kanban stuff here.
And if somebody new joins my team,
we could easily just click this,
and it might take a little bit to load,
but boom, we've got ourselves a brand new copy of that page,
which is kind of awesome.
So if you're running a team and you wanna create
a customized team page for each team member,
that's based on a kind of
a big, complicated template to start with,
you could easily put it in a template block,
and you're good to go.
So we're gonna hit Control, left bracket to go back
to our little example, workspace here,
and I'll show you some other stuff that you can do.
So beyond just the template block,
you can also create templates within a database.
So for example,
let's say we're creating a video project tracker,
which again is my original reason for using Notion.
We might wanna have a lot of different stuff
within a video project.
At the very least,
maybe we want that publishing checklist,
along with some other checklist items,
that are gonna be used for every single video.
Well, I don't wanna have to click this,
and then drag it into the video every time.
And luckily I don't have to,
because databases have a template feature.
So if we either click this,
we can click New template,
we can click here and we can click Templates right here,
either way we can go ahead and create ourselves a template
and let's just call this, Video Project template.
And there we go, and maybe I want titles.
So I'm going to create a toggle here,
and I'm going to create an area for titles.
So I could like brainstorm video titles.
Maybe I wanna do the exact same thing for thumbnail ideas.
So let's just do a Thumbnail idea area.
And you could do whatever you want,
additional databases, all kinds of crazy stuff.
And why don't we go ahead and copy,
this whole checklist that we had in here.
So command C there,
email I'm on windows I'm talking in Mac terms,
edit our template right here,
and we can paste it wherever we want.
Let's tab over so we have left most stratification,
and we're gonna go ahead and call that good for now.
So here's the cool thing.
If you wanna create an instance of this template,
and that's the language we use templates,
and instances of that template,
a little bit of programming language.
I think we can go to this little blue menu arrow right here,
and just click on the template.
And now we have an instance of that template,
which we could name whatever we want.
So let's just call this, I dunno,
10 Tips for Grooming LLamas,
very important content we're putting out here
on Thomas Frank Explains.
I could go ahead and create my title ideas,
get my thumbnail ideas.
I can check things off all I want,
and you will notice that the template itself,
if we go back to Edit it,
has not been affected.
So we're basically just spawning a copy of this template,
which is now accessible from our database.
But another cool thing you can do,
is actually spawn that template and sense,
from a new row in the database.
So let's say you like me have a lot of ideas for videos.
Maybe you've got like, you know,
Best Chrome Extensions,
and Best Hair Extensions too you know why not?
Best Extensions on your Mortgage,
you know,
all kinds of extension-related content.
Now, once I've created this,
I can actually open any of these database rows,
and you're gonna see an option to either press enter,
to continue with an empty page,
or spawn from a template.
So if I click this, I'm gonna get the exact same result,
except this name has already been put in there for me.
And if I were to have added any properties
before responding the template,
those are not gonna get erased by the properties,
put into the template.
And that's actually probably a pretty good thing
to mention here.
When you're creating a template like this,
it is not just the content
that you put in the template itself that gets copied,
it is any sort of properties.
So let's go ahead and maybe give this a number.
Now, one thing I really wish Notion could do,
was auto-increment numbers
when you add new rows to a database,
you can't do that yet.
So what I tend to do is make my number 999.
So let's just call this number we're num,
and if I create a new instance of that template,
let's just say on Best Hair Extensions,
I'm gonna get number 999 which is pretty useful.
And the way that I typically use this
is by sorting my databases in descending order,
based on that number.
So all of my new template instances get put onto the top,
and then I can go and change their number later on.
But notice that if I come here and I set this
to let's just say 54,
and then I spawn from the template,
It's not gonna affect a property that I've already set.
So that's pretty useful to know.
Now the observant among you will notice,
that when we create a brand new video idea like this one,
and we come in here,
we're only gonna have these options
to spawn from a template when this is empty.
So if I've got some ideas here,
like, you know, jump on it really fast,
we don't have that idea anymore.
So a trick that I use,
because I'm constantly creating these rows,
adding a bunch of ideas in the body,
and then wanting to spawn a template instance
from that later on,
is I will go ahead and select everything we have here,
and note it could be really anything.
So I'll just you know, add some random text here.
If we select all the blocks and cut with command X,
we're gonna get these options once again.
So I'll do that.
The information is safely on my clipboard,
and if you're not using a clipboard manager
with clipboard history, you absolutely should.
But you can click this now.
We're gonna get all of our stuff here,
and then if I wanted to maybe make another toggle,
like, you know, Video script,
I can go ahead and repaste my blocks in there.
That is exactly how I do it for video projects.
In fact, I can go give you an example,
if we go over to our content area,
and we look at the Thomas Frank YouTube area here,
so let's take a look at the video
that I just put live today,
which was on Deliberate Practice.
So we have all this cool stuff that gets spawned here,
and if I go into the Script area,
you're gonna see a whole script.
So I may have written some of these ideas
in a blank document and then just cut them,
put them on my clipboard,
came into the script area after
generating the template instance,
and then pasted it right in here,
and gone about my business.
So that works really, really well.
Alright Control bracket, bracket
to get back to where we were.
We've got to go a lot of places,
and I wanna show you one really cool additional thing
you can do, which is putting links to pages,
within your template.
And I wanna show you a very useful way
that you can use this capability.
So let's say we have something like a company Wiki here,
with something like a Master Filming Checklist,
within its archives.
Now, why would you wanna keep a Master Filming Checklist
in a Wiki instead of in your templates?
Well, if it gets updated often,
you're gonna wanna have it in your central repository
of company information or personal information.
That's gonna be your Wiki.
So right here, we've got a Master Filming Checklist,
with all kinds of cool stuff.
Now what we can do,
is actually copy the link to this page,
by either going here and click and copy link
or hitting control L,
we've got that in our clipboard.
And now we can actually go back to our database template,
for new video projects,
hit the Edit button and we can create,
I'm gonna open this as a page.
We can create another template button like so,
that will actually either link to,
or create a copy of that page,
there's two ways to do it.
So let's go ahead and call this Generate Filming Checklist.
Aha, and get on out of there Mr.To do,
because instead of that we wanna have slash link to page,
as the option here.
We can paste that link to our page,
and if we give Notion a couple of seconds to load,
we're gonna get that option, Master Filming Checklist,
and let's click Close here.
Now, before I click this,
I'm gonna create one more template button,
and in this case, we are gonna call it,
Link to Filmiing Checklist.
And instead of using that slash command
to create a link block,
instead we'll use our double bracket syntax.
We'll still paste the link to the page,
and wait a couple of seconds for it to find it,
click there and close that.
So these two template buttons now do two different things.
If I click Link to Filming Checklist,
we now have a link literally to our Filming Checklist.
If I click this,
you're gonna see that we are now back
to Template Basics, Master Filming Checklist, as we were,
if we just literally clicked on our Wiki link.
So that's just a link.
Going back to our template,
If I click this one,
we actually get a copy of that checklist.
Check out these breadcrumbs Video Project Template,
Master Filming Checklist.
This is very, very useful because,
now if we go back here,
you have your Master Filming Checklist
in a centralized repository in a Wiki.
If you need to make updates to it,
maybe you got a new light in your studio or a new camera,
you can make changes within the Wiki,
and then whenever you create new video,
let's just call this one New Video,
you don't have to go into your template,
and update the Filming Checklist there,
because instead of it being generated from the template,
you just have a button here.
And because I created these ones off the template,
they are here, but now if I create this,
we have yet another copy,
and look at the breadcrumbs
New Video, Master Filming Checklist.
It's very, very useful.
Now, one thing that I do with my own Wiki here,
and I can actually show you that
if we go over to our Knowledge Base.
Let's go over to our Video Workflow Tutorial,
and let's look at our Filming Checklist here.
So one thing that we do here,
is I create a little callout block that says
global changes to this checklist should be made,
on the master Filming Checklist.
And this is a hard-coded link,
to this specific page.
So that way, when people create an instance
of this checklist within a video project,
they can easily navigate back to the master version,
in case a global change needs to be made,
they don't have to go find the Wiki,
and find that specific page.
So let me show you how to do this,
because there's actually a bit of a trick to it.
So here we are at our Master Filming Checklist
within our Wiki of sorts,
and what we're gonna do is copy the link to the page.
And at the top here,
we'll just hit enter and we'll create a callout block,
and we'll do the exact same thing.
Global changes should be made
on the Master Filming Checklist.
So what we can do here is,
highlight this text,
and hit control K,
to paste a link.
Now here's the problem.
If I just click this,
then every time we create that instance of this checklist,
this link is going to link to the new instance,
which is not what we want.
So paste that link but then simply put a question mark
at the end of it.
That will give you the option to Link to URL,
which will hard code the URL to this specific page,
into your page.
So if we do it that way,
now, if I click it, obviously nothing's gonna happen,
because we're already on the page.
But if I go over to our template,
and we've got that Generate Filming Checklist block here,
I can click that,
and we'll see here, look at the breadcrumbs
Video Project Templates, Master Filming Checklist.
This is the instance of the checklist,
but now we have this hard coded link that if I click,
we go to a real version.
So those are the basics of templates and Notion,
and maybe a little bit advanced stuff as well.
The last thing that I do wanna note here,
is that there is another use of the word templates,
when we're talking about Notion,
that's shared templates such as Ultimate Tasks,
that is actually a bit of a different thing.
You're not really putting something in a template block,
rather you're allowing it to be duplicated as a template.
And to do that, you just simply go
to the Share option for any page,
and then you choose share to web,
and you look at your link options,
and you make sure that Allowed duplicate as template,
is checked as well.
So this is for basically anybody on the internet,
being able to duplicate your page,
into their separate workspace.
It's a different version of the word template,
when we're talking about Notion.
And speaking of this type of templates,
I've got plenty of free templates for Notion
you can duplicate into your own workspace,
such as Ultimate Tasks,
which is my full-fledged tax management system.
And if we click this little link right here,
view all my templates,
you can actually go to the URL,
which is just thomasjfrank.com/templates,
and you will find Ultimate Tasks,
the Among Us Game Tracker.
We've got the Ultimate Note-Taking Template for Notion,
the Video Project Tracker,
all kinds of cool stuff with more coming in the future,
so you can check those out.
But if you have questions about Notions template block,
or how to use the database template feature,
put them in the comments down below,
and I will try to answer them as much as I can,
or use them as ideas for future content.
Alright well, I hope you learned something from this video
and you may have noticed,
the backdrop actually changed in this video,
and there's a good reason for that which is,
I just moved to a new house.
And this basement will soon be the studio,
but right now it is very echoey,
and I'll work at fixing that.
Also, I got a new kitty cat.
Her name is Pepper and she's very curious (laughs)
Anyway I'm really looking forward
to turning that basement studio into something
really special over time.
Until then, we've got this tiny little office
to film in which means I'm filming
in front of these monitors,
once again, just like the old days.
Anyway, if you enjoyed this video,
make sure you are subscribed to this channel.
You can do that right there.
And you can also go over to thomajfrank.com/templates
to get all my free Notion templates,
and get on my Notion tips, email list,
where you'll get notified about all kinds of stuff
I'm doing from Notion courses I'm working on,
to new templates, to new content like this.
You're not gonna wanna miss what's on that email list.
So hop on it.
Beyond that I have a couple more videos,
right here and here on the screen
if you wanna learn even more about Notion,
increase your amount of knowledge,
and if you increase it enough,
you eventually get to take over the world.
I believe that's how it works.
So keep watching videos,
and I will see you in the next one.
(upbeat music)