Job Templates Page

Job Templates

A Job Template is a pre-built workflow you save once and reuse on every job of that kind. Instead of adding the same five workstations, the same custom fields, and the same reference drawings every time you create a new job, you save the recipe — then apply it in one click.

Open the page from the main sidebar (Job Templates) or by navigating to /job-templates.

Job Templates page

Templates make the difference between “creating a job takes 5 minutes” and “creating a job takes 5 seconds”. If you have any kind of repeat work — a product line, a service category, a SKU you make over and over — a template is almost certainly worth setting up.

What this page is for
Anatomy of the page
Reading the table
Adding a template
Editing a template — the Template panel
Workstations tab
Custom fields tab
Drawings tab
Workflow tab — non-linear workflows
The default template
Duplicating a template
Applying a template to a job
Saving a job’s workflow as a template
Deleting a template
Tips and best practices

What this page is for

Use templates to:

Eliminate repetition when creating jobs — pick the template, the workstations are populated for you.
Standardize your workflows — every “Oak Coffee Table” job goes through the same Cutting → Assembly → Paint → QC → Packing sequence.
Capture per-product details once — a template can carry custom fields (Material, Color, Hardware spec…) that planners fill in per-job.
Attach reference drawings that every job built from the template should ship with — saves the planner from re-uploading PDFs each time.
Automate CSV imports — when importing jobs from a spreadsheet, the Template column tells the importer which workflow to apply. If you mark a template as default, jobs that don’t name one fall back to it.

If you only ever make one-off custom work, you may not need templates. For everyone else — even a shop with three product lines — a template per product saves real time every day.

Anatomy of the page

From left to right across the top:

Search box — full-text search across template name and description.
Show N entries selector — 5 / 10 / 25 / 50 / 100 per page.
Add Template button (top-right).

Below the toolbar sits the templates table, one row per template. The pencil icon opens the edit panel; a star icon controls the default template; a copy icon duplicates the template. Pagination sits underneath.

Reading the table

Column	What it shows
Name	The template name. A yellow star indicates the default template.
Description	The template’s optional description.
Workstations	How many workstations the template contains.
Created By	The user who first created it.
Created	Date the template was first saved.
Actions	Star (default toggle), Copy (duplicate), Pencil (edit).

Adding a template

Click Add Template in the top-right. A side panel slides in with an empty form.

At minimum, give the template a Name and add at least one workstation. Everything else is optional. Click Save at the top — the template appears in the table.

You can also create templates by saving an existing job’s workflow — see Saving a job’s workflow as a template. That’s often the easiest entry point: build the first job by hand, save its workflow, then reuse.

Editing a template — the Template panel

Click the pencil icon on any row to open the panel in edit mode. The panel uses tabs:

General — name and description.
Workstations — the sequence of workstations the template contains. See Workstations tab.
Workflow — a graph builder for non-linear workflows (disabled unless you’ve switched the workflow type to non-linear on General). See Workflow tab.

Custom fields and drawings live inside the Workstations tab alongside the workstation list, since they tend to be edited together.

The header has two buttons:

Save — applies your changes. (Existing jobs already created from this template are not retroactively updated — only new jobs get the new layout.)
Delete — removes the template. See Deleting a template.

Edits don’t propagate to existing jobs. A template is a recipe, not a link. Once a job has been created from a template, it owns its own copy of the workflow. Editing the template only changes what future jobs get.

Workstations tab

The core of any template — the sequence of steps a job built from this template will go through.

For each workstation row you can configure:

Description — what happens at this step, for this product. Visible on the Kiosk for whoever picks up the work.
Estimated Time — per-piece labor budget. Used by the per-job Time Tracking summary to compare estimated vs actual.
Planned Qty formula — usually the job’s own quantity, but you can also set it to a constant or a fraction (e.g., qty × 2 for steps that produce twice as many pieces).
Per-station toggles — Allow Qty, Allow Notes, Allow Images, Allow Time Tracking, Draft (release on demand), Block (manual block), Share Planned Qty within department.
Activate next task — for linear workflows, the rule that triggers the next workstation: Any quantity recorded or On completion.

Drag the grip handle to reorder workstations within the list — left-to-right order is the order steps activate in linear workflows.

Templates inherit each workstation’s defaults from the Workstations master list when added, but you can override anything per-template. So a “Standard Paint Booth” workstation might Allow Time Tracking globally, but a template that’s specifically for touch-up jobs could turn it off here.

Custom fields tab

A template can declare custom metafields — extra structured fields planners fill in per-job. Examples: Material, Color, Finish, Hardware spec, Customer-supplied SKU.

For each field you set:

Name — what the planner sees on the Job panel.
API slug — a stable identifier used for API and CSV imports. Lowercase letters / numbers / underscores only.
Type — Text, Textarea, Number, or Dropdown.
Dropdown options (for Dropdown only) — a list of allowed values.
Display on label — when on, the field’s value is printed on the job’s barcode label.

When you apply this template to a new job, the fields appear under Custom Fields on the Job panel’s General tab. Planners fill them in, and the values are saved per-job. Anything flagged Display on label shows up automatically on the printed label and on the Kiosk’s job-detail view.

Drawings tab

A template can carry reference drawings that every job built from it ships with.

Upload — attach PDFs or images.
Add link — for drawings hosted elsewhere (Google Drive, Dropbox, an in-shop file server), paste a URL with an optional caption.
Description — caption each drawing so the floor knows what they’re looking at.

When the template is applied, the drawings are copied to the new job. From there, the job has its own copies — editing the template’s drawings doesn’t change them on existing jobs.

What’s the difference between a template drawing and a per-job drawing? A template drawing is the standard spec for that product (the design, the CAD output, the QC checklist). A per-job drawing is something specific to this customer’s order (a custom decal, a special-instruction note, a photo from the customer). Most shops keep both.

Workflow tab — non-linear workflows

By default, templates are linear — workstations activate in the order you arranged them, each one triggering the next once its activation rule is met.

For more complex products — multi-branch flows, parallel steps that rejoin, conditional routes — switch the Workflow Type on the General tab to Non-Linear. The Workflow tab then becomes available.

The Workflow tab is a visual graph builder where you can:

Add Task nodes (one per workstation step from the Workstations tab).
Draw connections between them to define the flow.
Choose each connection’s trigger: Any qty recorded or On completion.
Remove connections or tasks.

Use non-linear when:

Two steps can happen in parallel and rejoin downstream (e.g., Body and Hardware both feed into Assembly).
A QC step branches into Pass → Packing or Fail → Rework.
A single product has a complex flow that doesn’t fit a straight line.

For everything else, linear is much simpler and works perfectly.

The default template

You can flag one template as default by clicking its star icon on the table. The star fills in yellow to confirm.

The default template applies automatically when a job is created without an explicit template — for example:

A CSV import row that leaves the Template column blank.
An API job-create call that doesn’t name a template.
An e-commerce integration creating jobs from incoming orders.

For shops where 80% of jobs are “the usual stuff”, marking that workflow as default eliminates the planner step entirely — orders flow in and get the right workflow with no human intervention.

To clear the default, click the same star on the currently-default template; it un-fills. (Or pick a different template’s star — the old default is cleared automatically.)

Duplicating a template

Click the copy icon next to a template to duplicate it. A new template appears with the same workstations, custom fields, drawings, and workflow — under a new name like ” (Copy)”.

Useful for:

Versioning a workflow without losing the old one — duplicate, edit, test, swap the default once you’re happy.
Forking a template for a variant — “Oak Coffee Table — Black Edition” starts as a copy of “Oak Coffee Table” with three custom fields changed.

The duplicate is an independent template; editing one does not affect the other.

Applying a template to a job

Templates are applied, not linked — when you apply, the template’s content is copied into the job. From the Job panel:

Set the Quantity on the General tab (required so planned quantities can be computed).
Switch to the Workstations tab.
Click Apply Template, search the template list, pick one.
The workstations, custom fields, and drawings are inserted into the job.

The job must have no workstations yet for Apply Template to work. If you’ve already added workstations by hand, remove them first or duplicate the template and start from a fresh job.

Once applied, the workflow is editable per-job — change the description, override an estimate, remove a step — without affecting the template.

Saving a job’s workflow as a template

If you’ve built a great workflow by hand on one specific job, you can promote it to a reusable template:

Open the job in the Job panel.
Switch to the Workstations tab.
Click Save as Template.
Give the new template a name and optional description.
Save.

The job’s current workstations (and their per-station settings) are copied into a new template. The job itself is untouched. Drawings and custom fields are not copied — those have to be configured on the template directly.

This is often the easiest way to build your first template: design the workflow by trial-and-error on a real job, then promote.

Deleting a template

Open the template in the panel → click the red Delete button → confirm.

What happens:

The template row is removed.
Jobs already created from this template are not affected — they own their own copies of the workflow.
The template’s drawings and custom field definitions are removed (the per-job copies on jobs already created remain).
If the deleted template was the default, the system has no default until you mark another one.

There is no undo. If you might want it back, duplicate it first as a backup and rename the original (deprecated).

Tips and best practices

One template per product line is usually enough. “Oak Coffee Table”, “Pine Bench”, “Custom Frame” — three templates beats one giant template with conditional logic.
Name templates the way your team thinks about them — by product, not by workflow. “Oak Coffee Table” is more useful than “Linear 5-step Wood Finish”.
Set a sensible default. If 80% of inbound orders are the same kind of product, mark that template as default — incoming Shopify orders / API calls / CSV imports will get the right workflow with no human step.
Set Estimated Time on every workstation in the template. It costs almost nothing and unlocks the per-job tracked-vs-estimated comparison.
Put product specs on the template, customer specs on the job. Standard drawings (the CAD spec, the QC checklist) belong on the template; one-off customer instructions belong on the job.
Use custom fields with Display on label. The label is the floor’s source of truth — putting Material and Color on the label means the team doesn’t have to dig through the job panel to know what to grab.
Promote first, polish later. Build the first job by hand, save it as a template, then iterate. Designing a template from scratch in the abstract is harder than editing one based on a real job.
Don’t be afraid to duplicate. If you want to test a tweak without breaking the current flow, duplicate and edit the copy. Swap the default once the new version is proven.
Drawings copy on apply. Updating a template drawing changes future jobs only, not jobs already created — so when a spec changes, plan to re-apply or hand-update affected in-flight jobs.
Combine with the Naming feature if your shop calls these something else — “Recipes”, “Spec sheets”, “Workflows” — you can rename the sidebar label to match.