Working with Feng Office Templates

Templates are one of the most powerful tools of Feng Office. Setting the right templates within Feng Office will help greatly to:

1. Reduce risks of errors (mainly by avoiding omissions)
2. Improve Productivity

Keep reading to learn more about templates.

Feng Office templates are a very powerful tool for kickstarting a new project/service.

Instead of having to create all the tasks from scratch, you can very easily create all the tasks with very few inputs, and then create complete processes or workflows in a matter of seconds.

A Feng Office template is a collection of tasks that represents a process or a workflow. Most organizations and companies have a few processes that they have to execute on a regular basis, following a pre-defined set of steps. Using templates you will be able to standardize processes, making sure that everyone on your organization follows all the steps that have been proven to ensure a good outcome, so that no steps are overlooked.

This is true for all kinds of processes, but the three most common ones that we see are:

• Providing a service
• Executing Projects
• Internal organization processes (i.e.: adding a new client, paying taxes, salaries, etc.)

Templates often define a few set of basic steps, but can also define very specific details of a process. It is up to your team to explore and define the level of detail that your templates will need (although Feng Office consultants would gladly help you define it).

The trick to a successful introduction (implementation) of Feng Office templates at your organization is to start with only a few (and the most essential) processes.

To give you an example, our most used and refined template at Feng Office is our New Client template.

Every time a new client signs up, we have to do several things (and we want to be sure that they get done). We want to:

• Thank and congratulate the client for the purchase.
• Make sure that they are successfully receiving all the service and product items they have purchased
• If there is any feedback they want to share, learn from that feedback – and contact them periodically to know how are they doing -
• Ensure that our Administration Department has correctly taken care of its registration and billing

Templates are a way to make sure none of these things go unnoticed, and they also are real time savers provided you just have to fill in some parameters (variables) when applying them.

The elements that compose a template are:

1. Name
2. Description
3. Objects
4. Parameters (or variables)

This is the name of the template, which will be the process or workflow.

It will be displayed for an easy selection when looking for it to use it.

A brief description of the template, to make it simple to remember what is it for.

Here you may select the different tasks and milestones that compose the template.

Important note: They must be created before creating the template, as you have to select them.

Parameters allow you changing some properties of a task (or several ones) whenever you create a template.

The are several different parameters, which you may use – or not – for different purposes, and will let you define the following data of a task:

1. Name
2. Assignee
3. Description (could be shown as Text)
4. Due Date
5. Start Date

Templates allow creating different types of parameters that will later replace the previously mentioned fields in a task:

The User Parameter is used to select a user later on when we apply the template.

The Date parameter is used to set up different dates later on when we apply the template.

The String Parameter is used to add a text parameter to the template later on when we apply it.

In order to create a template, you should first create the tasks and milestones that you would like your template to have.

As a tutorial, we will show you how to create a template that will help you whenever you have to add a new client into your records. Of course you may use it for different purposes, in fact, you should!!

Another thing to note, is to take it slowly the first time you create a template as it has a lot of things involved, but after doing the first one, the rest of them will be really easy to create, and the time you will save, does worth it!

Important Note: Please bear in mind you can always contact your Feng Office Account Executive if you are a subscribed user, and schedule a consultancy session, so that he or she can help you out with it.

So, first of all, we suggest doing the following:

1. Create a Folder or Workspace named Templates
2. Within this new folder or workspace, create a new Folder or Workspace with the new Template name. For instance: New Client Recording, which will be the example we will be using.
3. After you accessed New Client Recording, create all the tasks that will belong to the template. You do not have to worry about the assignee, start date or due date as this will be dealt with the templates.

Once these have been created, you should:

1) Go to the Administration Panel

2) Select the Templates Icon

3) Choose to add a new Template

When creating a new template, the next screen should be shown:

Now you have to click on Add a parameter to this template to add them as following:

Lets add a new User parameter called “Administrative User”

Lets now add a new one called “Joining Date”

Finally, lets create a new String parameter we will call “Client Name”, it should look as following:

Now you must select the objects (tasks and milestones) that will compose this template.

Click on Add an object to this template, and select all of the tasks:

Once the objects have been added, click on the Edit object property button and start adding the new parameters, selecting which field of the task you will be changing:

Assigned to:

Lets see what happens when we try to select the Assigned to field:

We will be able to select a Fixed or Parametric User, as shown below. Note that you should select parametric, so that you can later on select the right user

Start Date or Due Date:

Lets see what happens when we try to select the Start Date or Due Date fields:

We will be able to select a Fixed or Parametric date, as shown below. Note that you should select parametric, so that you can later on select the amount of days after or before the date you will be selecting

Text parameter:

Lets see what happens when we try to use a Text (or String) parameter, either for the Description of the task or its Name.

We will be able to select a specific text to add into the task. This must be done carefully as shown below

In the previous step, we learned how to add parameters.

They should be looking as following for the first task for instance:

Now, lets see the whole screen when we add parameters in all the other tasks as well:

Once we are done, we must click on Add template at the top or bottom of the screen, and we will see it in the template list:

Once the template has been added, you are ready to use it any time you want with a couple of clicks!! This is the magical thing about templates!

For instance, lets add a new Client called Acme, and access it.

If we want to record it as such, in order to do so we will create the tasks through the previously created template:

Then, we will be asked for the parameters we created for that specific template, so we must fill in this information.

After adding this information, those parameters (or variables if you prefer to call them this way) will be replaced accordingly for the ones we previously set up in the template creation.

Last but not least, we click on Create tasks.. and voila!!

A lot of time has been saved!!!

Coming soon…

Lets see some examples of templates applied on real-life companies.

We are going to see examples for:

1. Advertising agencies - Radio piece work order
2. Law firms - Preparing and Executing a business selling contract
3. Construction firms and Architecture studios - New construction project
4. Service delivery - New client process
5. Schools and Universities - New course development
6. Public agencies - Processing a building permit request

There are many, many more processes being defined with Feng Office templates. If you would like to share yours we would love to learn about it. Leave a comment here, or a post at the Forum. If you are a Professional Edition Client we could publish the case study, if you want.