Notebook Templates

Data collection and management in Fieldmark is done using notebooks, but it is common to re-use the same notebook structure in multiple data collection exercises. This facilitates common data structures so that data can be compared between and across many data collection events. To enable this practice, Fieldmark supports notebook templates which can be used to create many notebooks.

Template Structure

A template is structured exactly like a notebook, the only difference is a field in the metadata that flags it as a template.

Creating a Template

In the dashboard web application you can create a new template if you have permission to do so within your team. The template can be created from scratch or from a previously downloaded JSON file.

Once the template has been created, you can edit the template as you would a notebook in the designer application.

Creating Notebooks from a Template

In the dashboard web application you can create a new notebook from a template.

The notebook will record that it has been created from this template in its metadata so it will be possible to trace the origin of the notebook.

The created notebook is a snapshot copy of the template at time of creation. Any subsequent changes to the template will not be reflected in the notebooks created from it.

It is possible to make changes to the notebook that was created from the template using the notebook editor.

Note we are working on implementing restrictions on changes to fields within notebooks derived from templates. A template would be able to assert that a field cannot be changed or can be hidden but not removed, for example.