Work with application templates

Use the Application Template Library to create and manage templates for composite applications. From the Application Template Library, you can create a new template and, thereby, become its owner.

You can also import a template definition and customize it. Before you can perform this procedure, have permission to create and work with application templates and application template categories. Tip: Before you create new application templates, consider the types of applications that you want to assemble or build in your enterprise and the users who will work with them.

To work with application templates, follow these general steps:

1. From the product banner, click Applications > Templates and click Template Library to view the Application Template Library.

2. From the Template Library, click New.

3. Type a name for the template.

4. Select an existing category or create a new category to help you manage the applications that users will assemble from the template. Categories are useful for filtering the views of both the template library and the applications catalog.

5. Describe the template. Type meaningful text to characterize the template to meet the needs of all users. Tip: Use the Description field to identify the category of the template. When users create new application instances from the template, they will see the category in the template description, which is displayed next to the list of available templates. Having the category identified in the template description will allow users to distinguish templates having the same name when they need to select a template to create an application instance.

6. Select an existing template as your starting point. Initially, templates are displayed that are available for immediate use, such as the Portal Blank Template. Each application template that you create will become available for selection as a starting point to create another template.

7. Click OK to display the Template Library, which now includes the new application template.

8. Filter the view of the template library to show all application templates or templates belonging to a particular category.

9. For each template in the library, you can see its name, owner, category, modification date, and lock status. The name of the template owner includes the person link, which displays business card information, online presence, a menu of actions for contacting the template owner.

10. To customize an application template by importing a template definition from your file system, click Import.

    When you export and import template definitions, you specify the name of the file that stores the template definition.

    This file name is not the template name that appears in the Application Template Library.

11. From a template listed in the Application Template Library, click the name of a template to display the menu of choices for managing application templates:

    • Edit Template Properties

    • Edit Template Layout

    • Edit Template Parameters

    • Manage Roles

    • Export Template

    • Delete Template

    • Assign Template Permissions

    The menu choices that you see will depend on the level of access that you have for editing application templates.

After you select an action from the menu of the application template, refer to the Help topics for more information about the task.

1. Use the Application Template Library

   The Application Template Library displays all templates that are available to you, sorted alphabetically by template name. Use the Application Template Library to create new application templates, import application templates, and manage application templates.

2. Edit template properties

   Each application template property -- name, category, description, theme, and owner -- describes a basic element of the composite application template. Use the Properties portlet to edit template properties.

3. Defining application parameters

   Parameters define default values that are used to configure the components in each application created from a template. Parameters defined in the template correspond to the property values of application components. Using the Parameters portlet, you specify the parameters of the application components by assigning default property values for each component.

4. Deploy a template to another server

   Deploy an application template to another sever by exporting and importing the template definition file from the source server to the target server. Use the Application Template Library on the source server to export the template definition file. Use the Application Template Library on the target server to import the template definition file.

Parent topic:

Assembling composite applications

Related concepts

Template access

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