Templates can jumpstart your notebooks and provide a consistent look and feel across notebooks for you and your team.
Do you find yourself adding the same stuff to your notebook every time you start a new one? Do you want to get a jumpstart on your work and preload all that boiler plate. Templates are the super power you’re looking for!
What can templates do?
Templates can help you:
- Use a uniform header/footer across notebooks
- Prep your workspace with standard libraries and tools
- Fill in the skeleton of an analysis
- Share standard practices across your team
Do you include standard information on all your notebooks? Often this includes things like the date, the location of the data set, parameters for your model, or other meta-data specific to your task. Templates are a great place to lay all that out and use placeholders to remind yourself what to include when you start a new notebook. A standard format for your documents makes it much easier to review a batch of notebooks if you need to come back to them months or years later.
Templates are also an excellent way to prep your environment by having a new notebook automatically include all the libraries and tools you rely on. If you find yourself creating similar notebooks on a regular basis, you can use a template to lay out the rough skeleton of your analysis. Add a section where you import and clean your data. Then comes the section where you run your model. And finally, add some graphs to report results and errors. A small library of personal analysis templates can really help you hit the ground running when you start on a new document.
Do you work in a team? Share these templates with your teammates and standardize all your notebooks! Imagine opening a document from your colleague to find everything laid out in the same way you use everyday. Common formats and conventions can make sharing with your team painless and easy.
How do I make a template?
Making a template is _super_ easy. First, open a new notebook and add everything you need in your template. Once your notebook is just like you want it, you can save it as a template.
On Mac, click on File → Save as Template…
On iPad, tap the name of the notebook in the navigation bar and then tap Save as Template…
How do I use a template?
From the Callisto home screen, your templates will appear under the My Templates group in the left column. The center column will show a list of your templates that you’ve created and when selected, a preview will appear on the right. Use the Open button to create a new notebook from your template. Keep in mind that they My Templatesgroup won’t be an option until you’ve saved at least one template.
How do I delete a template?
As your workflow evolves, you may no longer need a template at all or it might be replaced by a newer version. In Callisto, removing a template is just as quick as creating one.
On Mac, open the home screen, find the template to remove, right click and choose Remove.
On iPad, open the home screen, find the template to remove, tap and hold on the template and choose Remove.
