Templates - Overview

Quick Entry Templates facilitate the insertion of regular appointments that you have. The first step is to create the template. You can either long tap any existing appointment in the Event Selection List (displayed with brief tap in any view) and select the command Save as Template, or you can tap on the Template button in the Event Selection List and tap the green [+] button to create a new template.

To use the template, in the Event Selection List, tap the Template button, and select the template you want to insert. If you displayed the Event Selection List with a brief tap on a time slot in the Day/Day+ views, then the time of the template is set to that of the time slot you tapped. Otherwise, if you tapped an untimed slot, or tapped in any view other than the Day/Day+ views, the original time of the template will be preserved. You can always force the time of the template to be that of the template by using the Action Tag [FixedTime] which you can set in the Edit Dialog by clicking on the New Tag button. There is also a useful tag, ScheduleIn: which can be used to insert a template at a fixed point in the future (for example, always 2 hours from whenever it was inserted - useful for things like parking meter reminders, etc.).

Whenever you select a template in the current session, it is remembered so that the next time you invoke the Template Dialog, the list is automatically scrolled so that the item is visible (and if possible, also at the top of the Template list).

To modify a template, tap on the Template button in the Event Selection List, long-press the template and select Edit Template from the popup command list, or select Delete Template to remove the template, or Delete All Templates to remove all of them. Note that Delete All Templates removes all templates, including templates that may not be displayed in the current list of templates (for example, if the list of templates is brought up over the Tasks View, then regular appointment templates are not displayed, or perhaps sub-group templates are being hidden, but regardless, all templates will be deleted by this command.

There are two other popup commands: Show All Templates which always displays all templates, and Hide Subgroup Templates which hides all templates that are part of a group (except for the master template in the group). At this time, P/A does not support the ability in P/D to insert a template from a group and automatically have all other templates in the same group automatically inserted with their start times set in reference to the template that was actually selected and inserted.

When a template is inserted, the date is always set to the day that the Event Selection List is displaying. If the item is a repeat event, the repeat specification is automatically adjusted to make sense for the day on which the template was inserted.

You can insert comments into the description field (or use this feature to start off with a completely blank description field) by enclosing the comment in double angle brackets (i.e. two open and two close angle brackets -- not the «guillemote» characters). For example, you might have two birthday templates - one for general use and one just for family members which display the same description field when inserted, but which are easily distinguishable in the template list:

<<Family>>Birthday:

<<General>>Birthday:

Both templates when inserted would only display "Birthday:" in the description field.

Automatic Date/Time Stamp

Sometimes you may need to record an event and want to automatically have the item date/time stamped with the current date and time. First, create a new event and set up any boilerplate text or attributes (for example, you may want to record four different types of events, so you can preset the text, preset the category the item is in, possibly assign an icon, etc.). Then put either one or both of these tags in the description field and/or the note field and/or any of the four custom fields (the tags are exploded in all fields):

<<date>>           generates the current date in the short date format (as mm/dd/yy or dd/mm/yy etc. depending on the preference setting that controls the date format).

<<time>>           generates the current time (as HH:MMa or HH:MM - depending on the preference setting that controls the time format).

For example, suppose you are taking a trip and want to record every time you stopped for gas, you could create an event with this description: Stopped for gas on <<date>> at <<time>> and when this template is inserted, you would see the description as Stopped for gas on 5/24/2012 at 9:20am.

Action Tags

Inserting Multiple Templates

You can mark a template as a master template by using the Action Tag MasterTemplate, and placing additional "subordinate" templates in the same Group as the Master Template (Group is an attribute in the Edit Dialog). Then, when you insert the Master Template, Pimlical will scan all your current templates to locate any templates in the same group as the Master Template. If ANY group (since items can be in multiple groups) in the Master Template also appears in the list of Groups assigned to another template, that template is also automatically inserted. Note that events, Floating events and Tasks can all appear in the same group.

The key feature here is that subordinate templates are inserted in such a way that the date offsets remain the same. Example: if the master template was set with a date of June 1st, and the subordinate template had a date of June 15th, and the master template was inserted on July 2nd, then the subordinate template would be inserted on July 16th. If the master template and subordinate template were both Timed events, then the subordinate templates are also inserted with the same time offset. Example: if the master template had a time of 2pm and the subordinate had a time of 4pm, and the master template was inserted in the 3pm timeslot, then the subordinate template would be inserted at 5pm. If the subordinate template is an untimed event, it will remain untimed when inserted.  

When setting the date of the item from the template, Pimlical will also automatically adjust the Due date (if a floating event or tasks) and also the Repeat End Date (if there is an explicit Repeat End Date). Again the dates are adjusted in proportion to the date used for inserting the original master event. If the event is a weekly or monthly event, the repeat setting is intelligently adjusted to reflect the date on which it was actually inserted.

This feature has many uses - an obvious one is to automatically insert followup reminders after an event takes place. For example, you might want to record a sale using a template AND automatically insert a reminder event one month later to remind you to follow up on the sale. Another use might be to insert an early reminder for an event when the standard Pimlical Advance mechanism does not do what you want. For example, suppose you want your advance reminder to be a TASK and not a floating event. You could set up the advance reminder as a task as a subordinate template. You could also have an event insert one early reminder that is untimed say a month in advance, but then four days prior to the event, insert another reminder in a dramatic color, bold font and with an alarm set.

Master Templates are tagged with a special icon: , while Subordinate Templates are tagged with: .
You can suppress the display of these icons by setting the preference HideTemplateIcon to True (default value is false to display the icons). You can tap these icons to get information on the Group used to associate the icons and also get the total count of subordinate templates using that group. Note that these icons will also be displayed on any events which have been inserted from these templates.

Backing up and Importing/Exporting Templates