A pillar of creating beautiful reports and dashboards is consistency. Displayr has a robust templating system to aid you in achieving this. Any visualization can be saved as a template, which can then be applied throughout your document and across other documents in your company. This is useful when:
- You have lots of pages with the same layout and chart type, and want them to all be formatted the same.
- You need to make changes to the Chart tab settings across many of the same visualizations.
Requirements
- A visualization available in the Visualization Selector gallery. This includes visualizations created using R and not using R code, specialty tables, and the R Visualization template. For details on how to use this method on advanced and custom analysis outputs, see How to Save and Apply a Customized Analysis Output as a Template.
- The item being saved as a template must not be in an error state.
- All object inspector settings are saved in the template, excluding any data-related inputs (including filters, weights, and Rules).
- You can select multiple outputs on the same page to apply a single template simultaneously. To instead save multiple items as a template, see How to Create and Apply a Page Template.
Worked Example
We have a table of Cola preference and want to create a Modern Gauge visualization with customized settings from this, which we can then use as a template:
Method: Create and Save a Template
1. Click the button in the object inspector of your table and select the type of visualization you want to make. Here, we will select Number > Modern Gauge.
2. Format the chart to match the requirements for your template, e.g., colors, fonts, and other formatting features. For this example, we will:
- Adjust Chart > Shape > Hole size to 0.6.
- Change Chart > Fill Color to green.
3. Right-click your visualization and select Save as Template.
4. Set the name of the template and press Save.
This template will now be available for all documents within your Company.
Method: Apply a Template to an Existing Visualization or Table
1. Select a visualization or table on your Page.
2. Right-click and select Apply Template.
3. Select the template you would like to apply using the sortable and searchable form:
4. Click Apply.
5. Your visualization or table will now be replaced with the templated visualization.
Method: Insert a Template in your Document to Create a New Visualization
1. Click the Template icon from the toolbar.
2. Select the template you would like to add from the list.
3. Click Insert.
4. Click or draw the outline on your page where you would like the visualization to appear.
5. Select the appropriate data source under Data > Data Source > Data.
Method: Rename or Delete a Template from your Company
1. Click the User Initials icon at the top right corner and then select Displayr Cloud Drive.
2. All visualization templates are saved with a .QTemplate extension.
3. On the extreme right, hover over the relevant template file and click the symbol to view the available buttons.
4. Click Rename or Delete and then follow the prompts.
Note, if you place your template files within folders in your Cloud Drive, when you bring up the importing template dialog, you will additionally need to select the relevant folder.
Technical details
Previously, only legacy Visualizations with Tests could be saved and applied as a template via the object inspector:
All these chart templates have now automatically been migrated over to the new template system. Every template is saved in the Displayr Cloud Drive.
For modifying only the color and font settings across R-based Visualizations in a document, without changing any other settings, see How to Create an R Visualization Template for more detail.
Next
How to Create and Apply a Page Template
How to Save and Apply a Customized Analysis Output as a Template
How to Save and Apply a Variable Set Template
How to Export Editable PowerPoint Charts
How to Update an Existing PowerPoint Document
How to Retrospectively Link PowerPoint Tables and Charts to Displayr Outputs
How to Use a PowerPoint Chart Style Template in a Displayr Export