When Template folders was rolled out, I was very underwhelmed. It has created much more work for me and confusion for others. The feature is half-baked in my opinion.
- It takes up a lot of real estate because each folder is full width. It would be better to have them laid out in a thumbnail grid style so more can be displayed across the page width.
- When you search for templates, it’s good that it displays results across folders. However, because there is no option to display the folder name in the grid of results, you don’t know which ones are in a folder, not in a folder, or in different folders. This makes it impossible to discover which ones need to be assigned to a folder or are not all assigned to the same folder. For the former, yes, we can look at the listing with no search keyword, but then we have to filter through all the templates not assigned to a folder, page by page.
- Templates not assigned to a folder yet should be in an automatic folder called “Unassigned” which perhaps has a special icon because it’s a built-in folder. This would clean up the template listing.
- There should be a template listing view toggle to display them in folders or not in folders. Some people have a hard time finding things when organized in folders or need to manage their templates in bulk which is best done outside of folders. You can’t do this with searching if there are various template names.
- Users outside of Admins do not have the ability to assign their templates to folders. This should be a permission we can add to permission sets. Without this, as an Admin, I am left with the responsibility of organizing them myself. This is not a task I want to add to my job, and it’s hard to keep up with an ever-growing library of 700+ templates.
- Folders are still not on mobile. I thought this was the next promised feature for folders long ago. The default sorting on the mobile app is by template modified date which has little value to the people that do inspections. If they know they are looking for a housekeeping template, it would be much quicker to tap a housekeeping folder, then pick the one they need vs. typing keywords.
- Inspections are still not sorted in folders. Having folders on the template is only half-baked. It would be logical that you would also want your inspections automatically sorted by the folders the associated templates are assigned to. This should be a view toggle - table style without folders (current view) or folders first, then table when you open the folder.