Site and List Templates

Episodes in the Microsoft 365 Templates Series

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At its core, a template serves as a blueprint, allowing repeatability, consistency, and encapsulating institutional knowledge. For more detailed information and an overview of templates in general, please visit our prior Ask Sympraxis session.

Maturity Model approach

As we love to often reference, templates can also be viewed in relation to the Maturity Model. Starting at level 100, templates are completely absent, and everything is configured manually on the fly. The Microsoft provided templates occupy the 200 level. Templates can go all the way to the 500 level, where an automated custom approach to template management is applied.

Out of the box templates

The team touched on the uniquely named homepages that are created when using out of the box templates. Dive deeper into this discussion by watching the session to learn more about this crucial aspect for those engaged in automation.

Site templates for information architecture

The term “site designs” was historically used, but now site templates are considered components used to instantiate specific portions of information architecture. Users can apply multiple templates to a single site, ensuring consistent configurations of lists, libraries, and content types.

PowerShell for site templates

PowerShell offers a unique advantage by allowing the creation of JSON scripts from existing webs or lists, streamlining the template creation process.

List/Library templates

List/library templates are useful for one-off solutions. However, challenges arise when seeking enterprise-level solutions, as these templates lack the use of enterprise content types and hinder cross-list searching.

Enterprise-Level Automation

For enterprise-level automation, we highly suggest the use of a third-party solution such as Orchestry and Sharegate. These tools significantly simplify the automation process, offering robust features for organizations seeking efficiency without the need to develop custom solutions from scratch. That said, building from scratch is also a potential option although we wouldn’t immediately suggest going that route due to the incredible capabilities of the existing solutions.

As organizations navigate the landscape of Microsoft 365 and SharePoint, harnessing the potential of site and list templates emerges as a key strategy for achieving consistency, efficiency, and a seamless user experience. Whether utilizing out-of-the-box options or third-party solutions, there are a spectrum of tools to empower users in their template-driven endeavors.

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