Learn about record templates and how they are used in data models to speed up data capture and organization
Keeping track of all the metadata we are storing can quickly become difficult to manage as our library expands in scale and size. Record Templates are an extremely powerful way to customize the data entry fields and table views in a data model.
Assigning Properties to your Record Template
To make use of Record Templates, you can either create a new model or edit an existing model. Directly below the conditions table, you will see the record template configuration screens.
In right panel, the list of all dictionary terms in your library can be found. The left panel represents the collection dictionary terms that you want to include in your Record Templates. You can choose to include any number of terms by dragging the tiles from the right panel to the left panel.
When you are satisfied with your template, save your model.
Customize column views of your model tables
By default, all tables will show general properties that, for the most part, are not that useful. We can manually select or deselect specific columns to show up in the table, but its quite tedious. This is where Record Templates help tremendously. Navigating back to the model table view, you will immediately see the outcome of your templates.
Concretely, any properties that you've used in your templates will show up in the table. You can freely add or remove properties to the Record Template to customize how you want to display the data.
Order matters! In the Record Template, order goes top-to-bottom, and translates to your table column ordering from left-to-right
Streamlining data entry
We can also make use of Record Templates to speed up our data entry. In most cases, the properties included in Record Templates are the most important and frequently used data fields (i.e. Disease etc.). To reduce the amount of clicking around when you want to enter a bunch of data quickly, we can use an import tool that mirrors your Record Template.
In the create button dropdown at the top of the table, you will see an option Create Multiple (from Template)
Clicking on it will open up the bulk import tool, but with the columns pre-assigned to your Record Template dictionary properties.
Using Record Templates is a powerful way to customize data presentation and helps streamline data entry.