Under Community Review

Function to batch-update/create project templates for new Studio version

(I couldn't find this idea anywhere, so I hope this is not a duplicate of an already existing idea)

It is always a lot of manual work for our project managers when we are updating from one Studio version to the next having to manually recreate Studio project templates: Due to the fact that we have a complex environment, and need to test a newly released Studio version in our test environment before it goes live in our productive environment, and also for reference/archive purposes of the old templates, we need to recreate all our project templates before testing a new Studio version, to be able to do comparative analyses etc. Currently, this is possible via

1. Create a project in the new Studio version using a project template created in the old Studio version and at the end of project creation, select "Create a new project template based on this project", or

2. If you have a project created with the project template in the old Studio version, open that project in the new Studio version and select “Create Project Template” on the Home Ribbon

Both options above require several manual steps. We could also create a copy of the .sdltpl file from the old Studio version, and rename that copy or place it into a separate folder for the new version, however, since the GUID does not change when you copy a template file, when comparing projects created with templates from the different Studio versions, it would show the wrong project template name in "Project Details" for at least one of the projects (depending whether any of the project templates are loaded into Studio under File > Setup > Project Templates, and if both are in the list, which template is above the other).

It would therefore be much easier to have a batch function in Studio to recreate project templates, so that new project template files are created from the old template files, so that the GUIDs differ. I understand that it is also possible to manually change the GUID in the .sdltpl file in an Editor, but I doubt this is a "clean" and recommended procedure (or is it?).

Sophia Wessin

  • ...not mentioning the well-known issue with Studio 2017 upgrade where SDL itself strongly recommends RECREATING ALL project templates from scratch and NOT simply using e.g. Studio 2015 templates directly in Studio 2017... (otherwise one gets the annoying "object reference is not set blablabla" error message)

  • Hi Burim,

    as I said above, we have a complex environment, so we need to test a new Studio version before it is rolled out productively. We do comparative analyses in the old and the new Studio version. When SDL adds new features/a bugfix for a file type or other settings in the project templates, or any feature/bugfix that has an impact on the behaviour of Studio, we need to test this and might have to change a setting, and that means we need two versions of the same project template, one for the old Studio version, and one for the new with the adjusted setting. Since copying the template doesn't change the GUID and would result in the wrong project template being displayed for example in the Project Details info in Studio, it would be beneficial to have the option to batch-recreate project templates, so that they have different GUIDs.

    I hope this makes it clear. If you have another suggestion, that we maybe haven't thought of, please tell us.

    Thanks & best regards,

    Sophia

  • Hi Sophia,

    I did not understand, why you have to recreate the templates and do not use the old templates files?

    Best regards

    Burim