Jan

14

How To – Template Sharing Part One

Filed Under Bento Basics, Bento Tips 

Bento Template sharing is a wonderful way of learning and teaching the many possible uses of Bento. But it is not always easy to create a “clean” Template for sharing, especially when Address Book and iCal Libraries are involved. So I’ll share some tips today.
I haven’t played with Templates including Related Data from iPhoto. That will be an interesting addition for a future post.

Recently I received a Template for evaluation that included a Smart Collection from Address Book. The author chose to include Address Book as a Related Library. To do that you just have to click a check box in the “export Template” dialog. The result was that I got all of his 39 Address Book Collections in the bargain! That also means that 39 new groups were created in Mac Address Book!
As described in my article Unexpected Template Behavior Bento can’t make the distinction if you just have a Related Data field of one Address Book Collection in your Template. It includes all Forms and Collections!

Since I know now for a fact that the Bento team won’t fix this bug for the time being, here are some tips and workarounds:
Whenever you can, don’t include Address Book or iCal Libraries in your Template, so you don’t run into this problem at all. In other words, don’t check anything in the “include these related libraries” box (template export dialog). Your Related Data Fields will still be there, the user of the Template just has to create the iCal/Address Book Collections himself. Simply include a Form called “Template Notes” or similar, where you explain what the user has to do to make the Template complete, for example the exact criteria for a Smart Collection. While you’re at it, include a description and other usage notes on that Form, like we do here at our download pages at BentoUsers. Many users will appreciate that, especially the novices who rely on downloading Templates.

There are some exceptions. If your (Related Data-) Address Book Collection uses custom Fields and/or a special custom Form, you should include Address Book as a Related Library. To make it easy for the user who downloads such a template, here are some tips to “clean” it up before exporting it:

When you’re done with your Template, make a backup of your Bento data. If you have several unrelated Address Book Collections (like many people), also make an archive of your contact file in Mac Address Book.
Now you can start cleaning: delete all Mac Address Book groups that are not part of your Bento Template (it’s easier to do this in Mac Address Book because you can delete the whole batch at once). Next delete all Forms from Bento Address Book that are not relevant to your Template, from the main Library and the Collection(s). Note that every Library and Collection has to have at least one Form. So just leave any one Form in the main Library. You could even name it “delete me.”

Now your Template is ready for export! All the user (importer) has to do is delete one Form from his main Address Book library (the “delete me” Form). Finally, you can restore your Mac Address Book and your Bento data from the archive/backup you made earlier.

Another case I ran into myself a few times is the desire to export the Template of a single iCal Collection. An example is the Cross Country Template of my daughter’s running races. Since Bento doesn’t allow you to export a single Collection, you have to do more cleaning up first. It’s slightly simpler because Bento’s iCal Collections don’t affect the Mac iCal application. So all you have to do is backing up your Bento data and then delete all other Collections and irrelevant Forms. Again you have to leave one Form in the main iCal Library.

There you are! Next month we’ll talk a little bit about importing “dirty” templates.

Comments

Leave a Reply