Hi Daniel García Magariños 

Unknown said:

Is there any way of creating a new template from scratch with a new version of Studio?

The only way to do this is to create new projects and save them as a template as you work; or only create them from projects that have been created in the new version of Studio using the new default template.

Unknown said:

After an upgrade, all our existing projects will have been created with the previous version of Studio using templates from the previous version. I am not sure if a template created out of and old project will be really "new" or whether it will cause unwanted issues.

It could create unwanted issues.  For example:

- older versions of the filetypes

- missing features

- underlying logic used in the software that is looking for something only available in a new template

Unfortunately we don't provide any proper migration tools for these things when upgrading, which is unfortunate.  But using older templates is a little like upgrading your car but keeping some of the old engine parts ;-)

Hi  & ,

I found this thread (amongst others) while trying to find out whether there is a way now to batch-migrate Studio project templates to a new Studio version. We are in a similar situation as the original poster (Annik) in that we have many custom project templates and it would take ages to update them by recreating every single one from scratch.

Do to a previous recommendation, we used to simply open and save/close old project templates in a new Studio version, which we were told would update project templates accordingly including all changes/fixes made to settings pages with the Studio update. But from various recommendations I see in the SDL community, does this mean this procedure is apparently not recommended (anymore)?

I can see in other threads (like this one) that the Studio Migration Utility is being recommended for this case, instead.

Does this mean, the plug-in does not only copy the projects from the old Studio folder to the new one, but actually also adjusts the sdlproj file to the new Studio version when migrating in order to include all the changes that SDL have made in terms of settings pages etc.? As far as I understand that is exactly the issue with project templates, that there is no tool (yet) which can do that.

Does this also mean, the following would be the recommended procedure to migrate multiple project templates correctly?

1. [One time only] Create one project per template in the old Studio version
2. Open the new Studio version and use the Studio Migration Utility to migrate all projects
3. For each project, select "Create Project Template"
4. After all new project templates have been created, keep the migrated projects in some backup folder
5. When Studio is being updated to the next new version, copy the projects from the backup folder into the previous version's Studio 20XX folder and repeat steps 2 - 5

An issue with this procedure would be: What happens if you're only updating from one CU to the next or only to the next SR within the same major release? The Studio Migration Utility can only migrate between major versions. If you haven't changed any settings in your project templates since the last migration, you could simply update Studio to the new CU/SR and migrate the projects again from the previous Studio version to this Studio version's newest CU/SR. But it could be that you have made many changes, so that using the plug-in would not be a benefit because you would need to make all those changes again after migration. Would in that case the only way be to recreate the templates from scratch again?

We hope you can give some guidance :-)

Hi  & ,

I found this thread (amongst others) while trying to find out whether there is a way now to batch-migrate Studio project templates to a new Studio version. We are in a similar situation as the original poster (Annik) in that we have many custom project templates and it would take ages to update them by recreating every single one from scratch.

Do to a previous recommendation, we used to simply open and save/close old project templates in a new Studio version, which we were told would update project templates accordingly including all changes/fixes made to settings pages with the Studio update. But from various recommendations I see in the SDL community, does this mean this procedure is apparently not recommended (anymore)?

I can see in other threads (like this one) that the Studio Migration Utility is being recommended for this case, instead.

Does this mean, the plug-in does not only copy the projects from the old Studio folder to the new one, but actually also adjusts the sdlproj file to the new Studio version when migrating in order to include all the changes that SDL have made in terms of settings pages etc.? As far as I understand that is exactly the issue with project templates, that there is no tool (yet) which can do that.

Does this also mean, the following would be the recommended procedure to migrate multiple project templates correctly?

1. [One time only] Create one project per template in the old Studio version
2. Open the new Studio version and use the Studio Migration Utility to migrate all projects
3. For each project, select "Create Project Template"
4. After all new project templates have been created, keep the migrated projects in some backup folder
5. When Studio is being updated to the next new version, copy the projects from the backup folder into the previous version's Studio 20XX folder and repeat steps 2 - 5

An issue with this procedure would be: What happens if you're only updating from one CU to the next or only to the next SR within the same major release? The Studio Migration Utility can only migrate between major versions. If you haven't changed any settings in your project templates since the last migration, you could simply update Studio to the new CU/SR and migrate the projects again from the previous Studio version to this Studio version's newest CU/SR. But it could be that you have made many changes, so that using the plug-in would not be a benefit because you would need to make all those changes again after migration. Would in that case the only way be to recreate the templates from scratch again?

We hope you can give some guidance :-)

Sophia Wessin

The recommendation is to never migrate project templates.  You are just asking for trouble.

Until the development team create a tool to do this properly as part of an upgrade you should always recreate your templates.

An exception to this could be CUs... but there are occasions here where it might be sensible to recreate them as well.  Depends on what's inn the CU.

Thanks for your quick reply .

Do you mean, our suggested steps count as the non-recommended "migrating templates", although what we would actually do, is migrate the projects and then only create the new templates from the migrated projects? And does that then also mean that the Studio Migration Utility actually does not "properly" migrate the projects either, but just moves them to the different folder?

Regarding the "depends on what's in the CU": We have a case where some users need to migrate from Studio 2019 SR2 CU5 to CU7. CU6 contained many fixes, at least one about fixing a Task Sequence bug which would be related to the project template, I assume. So, would that be a case of it being "sensible to recreate" the templates also from CU5 to CU7?

Sophia Wessin

Sophia Wessin said:

Does this also mean, the following would be the recommended procedure to migrate multiple project templates correctly?

1. [One time only] Create one project per template in the old Studio version
2. Open the new Studio version and use the Studio Migration Utility to migrate all projects
3. For each project, select "Create Project Template"
4. After all new project templates have been created, keep the migrated projects in some backup folder
5. When Studio is being updated to the next new version, copy the projects from the backup folder into the previous version's Studio 20XX folder and repeat steps 2 - 5

This is going to create templates with old settings.  There is no shortcut here.  The idea behind Studio projects is that the Project Settings travel with the Projects.  This is important because otherwise you would not be able to successfully complete old projects if the Project Settings changed when you moved them over with the Migration Utility.  You don't really need to move them at all, all you need to know is where they are and if you have your own location rather than the default then irrespective of the Studio version they can all stay in the same place anyway.

The sensible thing is to complete all old projects in the old tools and then start new ones in the new tool.

Sophia Wessin said:

And does that then also mean that the Studio Migration Utility actually does not "properly" migrate the projects either, but just moves them to the different folder?

Of course... based on the above this process just copies or moves projects from one location to another.  Quite frankly it's faster to do this yourself in Windows Explorer.  The migration utility was built to try and make this easier for less technical users who didn't know what to copy and were worried.  But this is all it does... copy.

This article explains what it does:

multifarious.filkin.com/.../

I had hoped other developers would contribute to this and extend it's capabilities... but unfortunately this never happened and the three developers who did contribute were actually all SDL developers anyway.

The conclusion of this is that there isn't a foolproof way to migrate project templates.

Paul

Piggybackin' onto this... So I have to manually re-create all project templates? Creating a project with the old ones and saving that as project template at the end of the new project wizard will not do the job. Is that correct? (Sorry, but this is my first major version upgrade.)

Can I export settings (file types, regex, validation settings etc.) and re-import them into the new project template?

Thanks in advance!

Daniel

Unknown said:

So I have to manually re-create all project templates?

That would be my advice.

Unknown said:

Creating a project with the old ones and saving that as project template at the end of the new project wizard will not do the job.

I'm pretty sure that this is what you are exposing yourself to:

1. create a project in 2021 with templates from 2019
   
   
2. you now have a project that is potentially based on the following:
   - older versions of the filetypes
   - missing features
   - underlying logic used in the software that is looking for something only available in a new template
   
   
3. when you create a new template from the settings in that project you will be continuing to replicate the old settings

For some projects you may be just fine and might not even realise the difference until you come across a bug that was resolved in the new version, or a setting that you think should be available to you but it's not.

Unknown said:

Can I export settings (file types, regex, validation settings etc.) and re-import them into the new project template?

This all depends, but on the whole I would say this is all possible.  If you do come across a problem with this approach then please report them.  Missing filetypes from one version to other would be a case where this probably won't work for example.

This is my experience with this, and we do quite often see problems that are caused as a result of users doing just this.  So my recommendation would be to always recreate the templates.  I would also import settings as you suggest, but I would not attempt to reuse templates from older versions in the new ones.

Hi

Is this still true today or has anything changed in the meantime, now that we are on Studio 2021?
Many LSPs have a lot of project templates and recreating them all manually every time a new version of Studio comes out is a big and tedious task.

Is there really no way to automate this process?

What about opening the existing template in the new version of Studio and (1) adding missing and new filetypes (link on top) and (2) resetting the settings. This would reset the personalized filetype settings to default values but at least use the new version of the filetypes.
What else apart from the filetype settings could be incompatible in the new project template?

Any idea on how to ease this migration task in the future is welcome.

Walter

Walter Blaser

Walter Blaser said:

Is there really no way to automate this process?

To do this properly and avoid problems then no.  It's something that should be addressed by development to upgrade project templates as part of a routine in Studio.

Walter Blaser said:

What about opening the existing template in the new version of Studio and (1) adding missing and new filetypes (link on top) and (2) resetting the settings. This would reset the personalized filetype settings to default values but at least use the new version of the filetypes.

Sure... you can do this.

Walter Blaser said:

What else apart from the filetype settings could be incompatible in the new project template?

Just take a look in the Project Settings and then think about every bug that gets fixed, or enhancement, that could result in something different in here.  It may be that your suggestion would be just fine and I'm pretty sure many users do this.  But sometimes something they do caches up with them and a recreation of the template is the only resolution.

So until we have a proper process for upgrading project templates automatically and correctly I will always recommend recreation.

Thanks Paul.

So we still hope someone will adress this issue and come up with an automated solution.