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Create/Edit Institutional Vita Templates

Administrative users can create institutional vita templates that will be available for all users within an assigned unit to use as a source for their vitae. Institutional templates are created and managed by administrators at the institution and used in Review, Promotion Tenure (RPT) cases that use vitas/attachments from Faculty Activity Reporting (FAR, Faculty180) as well as Activity Input Forms. Templates can be drafted, and then published to make the template available for faculty users in a given unit. This article is about creating and managing an institutional vita template, saving drafts of a template, publishing, and editing templates.

 

Only Administrators with Full Administrative Rights who have been given access to the Vita Setup page based on their administrative unit assignments will be able to create and edit any institutional vita template at their assigned units, and any units beneath theirs in the unit hierarchy.

 

Check out these articles on how to Define Unit Administrative Rights and how to Set Vita Template Information and Settings for more information.

 

Create Vita Templates

1. Navigate to Institutional Vita Templates

Navigation: Administration > Setup > Institutional Vita Templates > Create New Template

  1. Click Setup under the Administration section of the navigation menu in FAR.
    Administration section with Setup selected
  2. Click Institutional Vita Templates under the Configuration section.
    Configuration section with Institutional Vita Templates selected

This opens the Institutional Vita Templates page where you can view a list of institutional templates used at your institution. The Template list displays both Active and Archived templates on a tabbed interface.  The page displays the template name, the source of the template, the unit in which the template can be used, the date the template was created, the number of sections in the template, and the template's status. Templates with the status of Published are available to use, while Draft templates are unpublished, and not available for faculty users until you publish them.   

 
 

2. Create a template

  1. Select a Unit from the dropdown at the top of the page to display a list of templates available to users of the given unit. The template you create will appear in the selected unit. 

         

  1. Click the Create New Template button.  This opens the Create an Institutional Template page. 

          

  1. Select a Source Template Unit from the dropdown to select the unit where your source template was created.
  2. Select the Source Template Name from the list.
  3. Select the Destination Unit from the dropdown to choose the unit where your new template will be created and available for the assigned unit user.
  4. Click Continue.
 
 

3. Indicate if this will be a Linked or Unlinked Template

i. Indicate if this will be a Linked or Unlinked Template

Type Description
Linked Template

- If the source template is edited, any changes will apply to all templates linked to the source template.

- Changes to the source template will carry down to any and all reference templates. Creating a new template will allow the administrator to change the unit and settings during the creation process.

- If there is a nested relationship, changes to any source template will affect all nested reference templates.

- While the changes made to a source template will be carried down to any reference templates, the reference templates are not locked; administrators can show/hide sections, update styling, modify section order, etc., without error. However, subsequent updates to the source template will override changes made to reference templates.

Unlinked Template

- A change to an unlinked template does not affect other templates.

- The unlinked template will be independent from the source. It will inherit the source template's unit and settings, but any changes to the source template after the unlinked template is created will not affect other templates.

ii. Click Continue.

Remember that changes to the source template will carry down to all templates based on it.

 
 
 

4. Set Template Settings

  1. Enter a Template Name.
  2. Enter a Template Description.

    Note that if the template is shared with others, the Vita Template Name and Vita Template Description will be visible.

     
  3. Set the Display Settings of the template to set formatting options that will be applied to every section of a vita generated from the template. The options you can set are:
    • Include template name on vitas that use this template.
    • Include template description on vitas that use this template.
    • If a section is empty, hide the section and its name.
    • If a group is empty, hide the group and its name.
    • Display the links to included attachments.
    • Show ALL activities, even if "Publicly Displayed" option is set to "No" (see the information box below).

      Activities can be set not to display to the public. You can choose to ignore the public display settings and display those activities anyway in a vita built using this template. 

       

      Check out this article on how to Set Institutional Vita Template Information and Settings for more information on how to adjust vita settings on this page.

       
 
 

5. Save as Draft or Create And Publish Template 

  • To save a template as a draft, click the Draft button. Draft templates will display in the Template builder, where they can be previewed or edited, and the template sections can be reordered, edited, copied, and set to hide or display.
  • Draft templates can be edited and saved with the Save Draft button.
  • When ready, click Publish Template to publish the template and make it available for users from the designated unit when creating vitas.
  • Draft templates will appear on the template list marked as a Draft.
  • Published templates will appear in the list marked as Published.

    Note that if the template is shared with others, the Vita Template Name and Vita Template Description will be visible.

     
 
 

Edit Templates

Once a vita template is created, users can preview the template, edit the template's General Information and Styling, and the template sections can be edited, reordered, copied, and set to hide or display. Follow the instructions below to edit templates.

 

1. Navigate to Institutional Vita Templates

Navigation: Administration > Setup > Institutional Vita Templates > Create New Template

  1. Click Setup under the Administration section of the navigation menu in FAR.
    Administration section with Setup selected
  2. Click Institutional Vita Templates under the Configuration section.
    Configuration section with Institutional Vita Templates selected
  3. Click the Edit button adjacent to the desired template to edit.
 

2. Set Template Information and Settings

Edit General Information

  1. Click Edit Template at the top of the page and select to Edit General Information. This button opens a drawer to edit the Template Name, Template Description, and Display Settings.
  2. Toggle Display Settings
Display Setting Description
Show Template Name Determines whether the template name will be seen on a generated vita.
Show Template Description Determines whether the template description will be seen on a generated vita.
Show Empty Sections

Determines whether sections on the profile or activity form without data will be shown on a generated vita.

Note that turning this on could create empty space on a vita generated from the template.

 
Show Empty Groups Determines whether empty groups will be shown on a generated vita. The section groups can be seen by clicking the edit pencil on a shown section on the vita template and then clicking Section Grouping. If the toggle is turned on, then any empty groups will be seen on a generated CV. Section groupings is used to organize data within a given section. If a faculty member does not have data in a section grouping, then there will be empty space in that area of a generated vita.
Show Links to Attachments Determines if links to attachments in sections on the profile or activity form should be displayed on the vita. This can be adjusted by clicking the edit pencil on a shown section if you wish to turn this off for the template but wish to turn it on for the one section.
Show Activities Set to “No” in “Publicly Displayed” This should only be on if the client has opted for Publicly Displayed activity classification for faculty web profiles. The rationale for this toggle is that there could be activities that a faculty member may not want to show on their publicly facing faculty web profile but may want to show on a vita.
 
 

Edit Template Styling

Click Edit Template Styling at the top of the page.

This button opens a drawer to edit the Citation Style and formatting (Alignment, Font Family, Font Size, Font Color, Spacing, Borders, and Paragraph Style) for the Titles, Headings, and Paragraphs. All changes will be added to the template and will define the styles of all vitas made using the template.

 

Check out this article for our full list of supported citation styles.

 
 
 

Reorder, Hide, or Duplicate sections

  1. Click Reorder All Sections to reorder sections.Standard Vita Template section with Reorder All Sections selected

    This button opens a drawer where users can:

    • Click the up or down arrows to move the order of shown and hidden sections by one space. 
    • Drag and drop the sections to desired section order.
    • Select a number using the dropdown to indicate where the section will appear.
    • Click Hide All Sections or Show All Sections to display or not display all sections of the vita if necessary.
    • This can also be done for individual sections by clicking the Hide Section or Show Section button adjacent to the desired section.
     

3. Edit Sections

To edit a section navigate to Vitas & Biosketches > My Templates > Edit Template and then click Edit adjacent to the desired section name. The drawer for that section will display some editable options. Below are some editable options that may display:

 

Settings (Edit Table Columns)

To edit the table column configuration when using the tabular format, take the following steps:

  1. Click Settings.
  2. Select Tabular from the Display Style dropdown.
    Display Style dropdown with Tabular selected
  3. Click the Edit Table Columns button that will appear beneath the Display Style dropdown.
  4. Click to Shown/Hidden adjacent to each column name and Drag and Drop the column names to decide what columns appear on the vita table and it what order. Watch the GIF below for guidance on this process.
  5. Click Apply Changes at the bottom of the configuration panel to save your changes.
 
 

Section Grouping

Sections can be grouped by activity classifications or designated database fields such as city, degree, discipline, and more. 

 

Section Grouping does not appear for all sections.

 
  1. Click Section Grouping.
  2. Select the type to Group by from the dropdown menu.
    • Grants have the added ability to group activities by status.
    • Scholarly Contributions and Creative Productions can also be grouped by subtype and status.
 
 

Styling

  1. Click Styling.
  2. Click the dropdown menu for the desired header to choose the styling and formatting.
 
 
 
 

4. Preview the template

Click Preview at the top of the page to view how the base template will look when a vita is created for export.

 
 

5. View Editing History

  1. Click View Editing History at the top of the page to view a log of changes made to the vita.
    Standard Vita Template section with View Editing History adjacent to it
  2. Select the Start and End Date to display the editing history during a particular date range.
    • Reports can be downloaded as a .CSV file. This will list the date and time of changes, the user who made the changes, and the number of changes made.
 
 
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