This article is for administrators of a group of services on a 'network' account.
In this guide, learn about:
A planning template is a Storypark plan pre-populated with regularly used content, so educators can start a new plan without facing a blank page. Templates save your teams time and help bring consistency to how plans are written across your network.
You might want to create network-specific templates so all your service plans are in a consistent way, or to embed best practices across your network.
The planning templates you create in your head office and activate in your network setup will be available for educators across all your services to start new plans from.
Create network planning templates in your head office
To create or edit network planning templates, head to your head office and open the Planning page:
1. Create a new plan or open a plan you'd like to adapt. Learn how to start a plan here.
2. Add headers and content to your plan. Learn how to build your plan here, and how to move things around in your plan here.
3. When your plan is ready, turn it into a template. Tap Save template and give the template a name. Learn more about creating planning templates.
4. View any templates you've created on your Templates page under Our templates. Tap any template name in the list to see a snapshot of it.
How the planning templates page is organised
Your network setup Planning templates page is where you choose which templates are active across all your services.
There are three main areas on this page:
Planning template library – Storypark's example templates. To use any of these, add them to your network's template library first.
Our templates – every template you've added to your network's library. From here you can activate or deactivate a template. When activated, the template is available to all your services.
The preview area on the right shows the template name, its status (Active or Inactive), a snapshot of the template, and a toggle to activate or deactivate it across your services.
Activate or deactivate your network templates
You can activate or deactivate templates at any time.
Activate a template
To make a network planning template active across all your services, select the template in the Our templates list and use the toggle to switch its status to Active:
Once active, the template can be seen and used by all your services.
Deactivate a template
To deactivate a template, select it in the Our templates list and use the toggle to switch its status to Inactive:
When a template is Inactive, it's hidden from your services but stays in your head office under Our templates, so you can reactivate it any time.
Duplicate a network planning template
You can duplicate any planning template in your network's library. This is handy when you want to create a variation of an existing template for a new term or focus area without changing the original.
To duplicate a network template:
Go to Multi-site Management and select Planning templates.
Select the template you want to duplicate from the Our templates list, then tap Edit to open it.
In the template editor, tap Duplicate.
A confirmation dialogue appears – confirm to create the duplicate.
The duplicated template appears in your template library. Activate it to make it available across all services, or leave it deactivated while you make changes.
When you duplicate a template in Multi-site Management, you stay in Multi-site Management after saving – you're not redirected to the Head Office. The duplicated template keeps the same permissions as the original.
Update or delete a network planning template
Update a template
From time to time you may want to update a template to reflect new thinking, curriculum changes or best practice.
Edit a template from your network setup Planning templates page by tapping Edit in the template preview:
Any edits go live straight away and are visible to educators in your services. If you'd rather avoid changes appearing mid-plan, edit at a quieter time – or create and activate a new template and deactivate the old one.
Delete a template
If you no longer need a network planning template, open the template and tap Delete.
Take care when deleting custom network templates – once they're deleted, they're gone. If you delete a Storypark example template, you can copy it back to your templates at any time.
What services connected to your network can see
Once a network template is active, it's available to all your services. Whenever an educator creates a new plan, they'll see any network templates you've activated in the list.
The difference between normal service templates and network templates:
Normal service templates can be created, edited or deleted by any educator in a service:
Network templates are view only – they can't be edited or deleted by individual services:
If a service wants its own version of a network template – for example, to personalise it by adding children or links – an educator can start a plan from the network template, make changes, then save it as a new template with a different name.
That new template belongs to the service, not the network, so any future changes you make to the network template won't affect it.
Other articles you may be interested in: