A template saves you rebuilding a form you have already designed. You can save the whole eCRF, or a single section, and apply either to another study.
🔑 Prerequisite: eCRF Builder (Edit) on the study you save from and on the study you apply to.
Save the eCRF as a template
This is available at any time, including once the study is Live and the Builder is locked. When the Builder is locked it shows two buttons: Print empty eCRF and eCRF to template.
🛠️ Step by step guide
Open the study's eCRF Builder.
Click Save as a template at the top right, for the whole eCRF. To save a single visit instead, use the Save as a template button in that section's own header.
Give the template a title and a description.
Click Save.
💡 Tip: a good description is what stops you guessing later. Templates are shared across your instance, so the person who reuses yours in a year may not be you.
Apply a template
🛠️ Step by step guide
Open the eCRF Builder of the study you want to build.
Click + at the top right. The Choose template window opens.
Pick the tab for what you are importing: eCRF, Sections or Subsections.
Find the template you want. You can search by name, or use filter by tags. Each row shows its description, its owner and the date it was created.
Click Select on that row, then Insert.
💡 Tip: the owner and creation date are how you tell two similarly named templates apart. Tags are worth using once your library grows.
Question templates work differently
A single question comes in through the question menu, not the +.
🛠️ Step by step guide
Open the form you want to add to.
Click Add question, then Add from template under Other.
Select the questions you want. You can pick several at once.
What a template keeps, and the one thing it does not
A template keeps everything about your form: the structure, the question types, titles, descriptions, variables, options, calculations, data validations and conditional logic.
⚠️ Warning: a template does not carry the role-based settings. Role-Based Edit, Role-Based Visibility and the roles excluded from a section or sub-section are all dropped when you save a template, and are not recreated when you apply it. This is deliberate, because templates are reused across entities and the roles that exist in one are not the roles that exist in another. But nothing on screen tells you it has happened. After applying a template, set your restrictions again before the study goes Live.
💡 Tip: if your form relies on restrictions to keep blinded or sensitive data away from a role, add "re-apply the role restrictions" to your validation checklist. It is the one part of the form that will silently arrive unprotected.
Manage your template library
Templates are shared across your instance and managed centrally. See Forms Templates Management for the library, the import and export of template files, and template tags.