Creating and editing templates

There is a very rough and ready method available to create linear plans in EasyDMP.

Getting access to create linear templates

A superuser must grant you the role Template Designer. After that, you get access to the template admin from the link Admin up top.

How to create templates

Start by clicking ‘Add’ next to Templates. On the next page, add at least a title and a description. The abbreviation is used only inside the template admin in order to make some links shorter and easier to read at a glance so you could skip that.

Then create the sections you need, and order them with the position-field.

Next, and most time-consuming step: Add the questions! They also have a position-field.

You might want to write the questions down on Post-Its (one per question) and move them around ‘til they have the order you want before you add them in the admin, since reordering is a bit clunky.

For a linear section, all questions are on_trunk, so no need to change that. An optional question need not be answered. The optional_canned_text will be shown in the generated text if the question isn’t given an answer. An optional question cannot start a branch, since in order to know which branch to take, the question must be answered.

Testing a template

Create a new plan (path: /plan/) and answer the questtions from beginning to end.

Since a plan depends on the structure of a template, if you change a template, the plan may very well break and error out.

For instance, the following template changes may break plans:

• changing the type of a question, if that question is answered in the plan.
• changing the choice of a CannedAnswer, if that choice is used as an answer to a question in a plan.

If flow or position is changed, some questions may become unreachable, and clicking Prev/Next might not lead where expected.

A superadmin have access to the raw dump of the plans and can delete some answers directly (be careful, though!), but a template designer should currently delete their test-plans when changing an existing question or whenever the test-plan errors out.

Better handling of such errors is on the todo-list, ideas welcome.

Give specific people access to the template

Once the template is created you can click on OBJECT PERMISSIONS in the top right corner. You’ll need the email address the other person uses in EasyDMP. Paste that into the “User identification” field and click Manage user.

Allow a plan maker to test the template

Select Can use template in the left box and click on the little arrow to the right, then click “Save”, below.

Add another designer to the template

Select everything in the left box before clicking the little arrow to the right, and then “Save”, below.

Give everyone access to the template

The moment you set a date in the published-field on the Template itself, the template is publically accessible. Do not do this before the template is completely finished!

Do not alter the template after ``published`` is set! If you need to make a new version of a template that is in use, select it in the list of templates in the admin (box on the left), select “Create new version” and click the button that says “Go”. This will create a new version. Versions after the first one will have their version number visible everywhere.