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Saving a frame on a board as a Template

  • 24 September 2020
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T
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I have created a board with a frame that contains a number of artifacts.  I am able to save the frame as a template.

However when I create a new board using this template I see only some of the artifacts are instantiated in the new board.

When I look at the thumbnail for the template I had created it appears to have all the artifacts in the image of the thumbnail.

Finally, when I save the board as a template and use that to instantiate a new board then I see no such problems.

So why isn’t there symmetry in “Save as Template” feature when it comes to a frame and a board ?

 

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Best answer by Tarang 3 October 2020, 21:11

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Robert Johnson
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@Tarang - Yes, this is odd. A few questions to start:

  1. What types of objects do you have in the frame?
  2. Are any of them locked?

I just did a test using stickies, but locked half the stickies, thinking perhaps locked objects may cause this behaviour, but both methods you have described worked as expected for me (all objects were present in the preview of the template and once the template was added to the board).

I did not that, if I do a Shift + drag to select the entire frame, the locked stickies don’t appear in the list of selected objects, but do appear in the thumbnail and later in the saved & restored template - this seems buggy, but at least they are in the saved template:

 

Here’s the template restored:

The previously locked items are even still locked, which I believe may not have happened in the past...

I also learned something new in that you can click on the Select preview area and upload your own thumbnail. I guess I should read the Templates help article.

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I have number of frames, text objects nested into custom shapes. Aside any of the stickies the frames are locked. Unfortunately I can’t upload a short video similar to that you have to show what happens.

Nonetheless I have uploaded still images to show what happens.

 

 

Now here is what appears for my personal template that I had saved

Template

 

Here is what is instantiated when I select the Template. Notice the thumbnail for the template shows all the assets that are part of the selection I had made when creating the template.

Newly instantiated board using template

 

Notice it does state the 54 objects, so the problem may well start with when I select all objects yet not all are selected.  Notice that while many of the frames are hidden, the fact that many of visible frames and objects aren’t making it may point to a problem outside of lock and hide features.

 

Finally when I delete the newly instantiated board with all selections as shown above then the delete is incomplete as follows

 

Incomplete Delete when all objects in a frame were selected

 What is left behind are text boxes that were locked. Though some were deleted and not others.

T
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One more thing if I make a template of the board itself then I have none of the problems shown above. But for the fact that when I try to select all objects in a locked or unlocked frame, this fails to make the selection.  So here the behavior is similar to what the delete step show previously. This appears to be related to the fact that most of the shapes and text boxes or images are locked.  Even to just delete I’d have to go about unlocking all objects before I can delete which is painful in relation to template use.

 

T
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I have now have a workaround to the problem I reported here.

The workaround is probably related to nested frames (really nested layer of frames). 

  • If you lock the frames then you are guaranteed to the problem I reported here. That is creating a template by selecting the outer frame while the inner frames are locked.

The workaround is:

  1. Don’t lock the inner frames
  2. Select all objects by dragging selection box from outside the outer frame.
  3. With the selection on now create the template 

This workaround isn’t needed when you are creating a template of the entire board.  

This may well be by design though it doesn’t make sense when you have asymmetric behavior.

Finally I notice that now when items are locked you can’t perform “select all” i.e that of step 2.  That doesn’t make sense. Surely you should be able to select all and lock/unlock to move etc.

Robert Johnson
Userlevel 7
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@Tarang - A well laid out explanation! Yes, it appears that if you try to select a frame and then Save as template from the frame’s context menu, while it does show all objects inside of the frame in the Save as template modal window’s preview pane, if any objects inside of the frame are locked, they are not in fact saved in the newly created template.

To see this for myself, I did some tests of my own using less objects.

 

 

 

 

While this is not stopping you from doing your work and it is probably more of a “gap” than it is a bug, I would suggest forwarding this post as some general feedback to the Miro Support & Help Center.

Great find!

Rob

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I say its a bug as the behavior of saving a board as a template doesn’t require unlocking assets, where as saving a frame does. This asymmetric behavior should be resolved if the same mechanism for referencing objects and saving a template was being used.

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