Project templates
Create reusable project templates with preset properties, milestones, and issues.
Overview
A project template starts a project the way your team always starts that kind of project. It sets the properties — status, priority, lead, members, teams, initiative, labels — and, when you want it to, creates the milestones and issues that come with the work.
That second half is what makes project templates different from the other two targets. A template that seeds work does not just fill a form in: the server builds the whole graph — the project, its milestones, its issues, and their sub-issues — from the template's own definition, in one request.
Project templates are standard only. There is no form mode, because the structure a project template carries is already fixed rather than something to ask about.
Read Templates first for visibility, defaults, revisions, and diagnostics, which work the same for all three targets.
Press G then S to open workspace settings, then open Projects → Templates. Choose a team first when you want a team-specific template.
Create a project template
Where. Settings → Projects → Templates for the whole workspace, or
Settings → Your teams → <team> → Templates for one team.
New template.Name the template and, optionally, describe when to use it. The description is shown beside the name wherever the template is offered.
Visibility — the whole workspace, or one team.Fill in Project properties. Leave the project name blank to name it at
creation.
Add Seeded work: the milestones and issues every project from this
template should start with. Skip this if you only want the properties.
Project properties
| Field | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Project name | Pre-fills the name. Leave blank to name it at creation. |
| Summary | The project's short summary line. |
| Description | Becomes the project's main document. |
| Icon | Icon and colour for the project. |
| Status | Idea, Discovery, Proposal, Accepted, Ready, In Progress, Paused, Maintenance, Completed, or Canceled. |
| Priority | Urgent, High, Medium, Low, or No priority. |
| Lead | The person who leads the project. |
| Members | People added to the project. |
| Teams | The teams the project lives in. |
| Initiative | The initiative the project rolls up to. |
| Labels | Project labels. |
| Dependencies | Projects this one is blocked by, or blocks. |
Start and target dates are not template fields. A date fixed in a template is wrong for the second project created from it, and there are no relative offsets in template authoring. Set dates on the project after it exists.
Seeded work
Under Seeded work you build the structure that comes with every project from
this template.
- Milestones have a name and an optional description. They are created in the order you list them, and carry no dates for the same reason projects do not.
- Issues have a title, an optional description, status, priority, assignee, labels, and the milestone they belong to.
- Sub-issues hang off an issue. A sub-issue inherits its parent's milestone and cannot name a different one.
Nesting stops at two levels: an issue and its sub-issues. One template may seed at most 200 items in total, counting milestones, issues, and sub-issues together. The editor shows how many you have used and stops you at the cap rather than failing on save.
Reordering issues in the editor does not disturb anything already created from the template. Each seeded item carries a stable identifier of its own, which is also how a retried creation resumes instead of producing a second copy.
Use a project template
Open the project composer and use the Template control beside the team.
Choosing a template needs a team first, because what is eligible and what its
values resolve to both depend on the destination.
⌘K then New project from template… opens the composer with the picker
already open. A direct link copied from a template row does the same with one
template preselected.
Two ways a project gets created
Which path runs depends on the template, and the composer tells you which one you are on before you create anything.
The template seeds no milestones or issues. Its values are merged into the composer, everything stays editable, and you create the project exactly as you normally would. The composer says as much above the create button.
On the seeding path the template's values win, and anything you typed into the composer that the template also sets does not travel with it. That is not silent. Before you create, the composer lists every field affected, in one of two categories:
- The template's value is used instead — you edited a field the template also sets.
- Project templates do not carry this — start date, target date, and milestones you staged in the composer have nowhere to go in a project template.
Remove the template to keep your own values, or accept the list and create.
The preview
Before creating, the composer shows the work the template will produce, grouped
by milestone, with issues that belong to none under No milestone. Alongside it
you may see two lists:
- Fix before creating. The graph on screen is not the graph that would be written — an issue with nothing to name it, an item pointing at a parent the template no longer has, a tree over the item cap. Creation is blocked until the template is fixed.
- Worth knowing. Non-blocking. The most common is an issue naming a milestone the template no longer has: the issue is created, without a milestone.
Statuses and priorities the workspace no longer offers are reported and left unset rather than guessed at.
If creation fails partway
Creating a seeded graph is one request, but it is many writes. If it fails halfway, what already exists stays — the project, and whatever milestones and issues had been created by then. Retrying does not start again from the top: the same creation resumes at the first item it had not reached, so nothing is duplicated however many times you retry.
If you would rather not keep a partial result, delete the project it created before trying again.
What the destination changes
A template's references are re-checked against the team you are creating in, so the same template can resolve differently in two teams. A label that belongs to another team, a lead who is no longer in the workspace, an initiative you cannot see from here — each is left out of the project and named in the composer before you create.
That is the mechanism that lets one workspace project template serve teams with different label catalogs, rather than forcing a copy per team.
Manage templates
Open the … menu on a template row: edit, duplicate, copy a direct link, and
delete.
Editing mints a new revision, and Pulse keeps the whole definition rather than a diff — a project created three revisions ago still points at the revision that actually produced it. Changing only a template's visibility does not mint one.
Deleting stops the template being offered. Projects already created from it, and every milestone and issue it seeded, are untouched and still record where they came from.
If someone else saves the template while you are editing it, your save is refused rather than overwriting theirs. Reload, look at their version, and reapply your changes.
Limits
| Limit | Value |
|---|---|
| Items one template may seed | 200, counting milestones, issues, and sub-issues |
| Nesting of seeded issues | 2 levels — an issue and its sub-issues |
| Template name | 120 characters |
| Template description | 500 characters |
A template that would create hundreds of issues in one go is a bulk import wearing a template's clothes. The cap is there so one click cannot become an unbounded write.
FAQ
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