Project management is a big part of Productive, and we've made it easier by introducing project templates.
These templates let you set default settings for projects, making it quick to start your work, whether they're for your team (internal) or clients.
This article covers creating, editing, and deleting project templates.
👉 Once your template is ready, see Using Project Templates to put it to use.
Creating a Project Template in the Template Center
1) Click your avatar in the upper right, then go to Customize > Template Center.
2) Open the + Template dropdown and choose Project.
You can also click + Template directly and then select Project.
📌 Tip: The Template Center is organized to help you view and quickly access various template types.
3) Choose whether to start from scratch, copy an existing project, or use an existing template to create your new template.
4) Choose whether the project template will be internal or client.
5) Give your template a name and a description to help it stand out for future use, designate the project manager, client, and select the desired task status workflow. Click "Create template" to save your settings.
6) Add the elements you want in projects created from this template:
Tabs: Enable tasks, docs, budgets, or time tracking modules
Tasks, task lists, and folders: Set up your project structure
Custom fields: Include any fields you need for tracking
Teams or team members: Assign default participants
Task templates: Create task templates inside the project template. When a new project is created from this template, those task templates are automatically copied into the project's task template library.
Project Automations (Beta): Create and add project automations to the template. They'll be copied to any project created from it.
📌 Tip: You can set up task dependencies within a project template to define the order in which tasks should be completed. This ensures that tasks are properly sequenced, preventing work from starting too early or getting blocked unnecessarily.
Dependencies are carried over when using a project template, keeping project workflows structured from the start.
7) After setting everything up, save your template by selecting Done in the upper-right corner and go back to the Template Center.
Creating a Project Template From a Project
1) Open the Project Sidebar
Navigate to the project you want to use as a template.
Click on the More actions tab (three dots) in the sidebar.
Select "Save as template".
2) Set Template Details
Provide a name for your template.
Select a distinct project color.
Add a description (optional but helpful if you have many templates).
Choose whether to save the entire project or manually select specific elements to include in the template.
Budgets, invoices, and time entries are not saved in the project template.
Assignee and Date Placeholders (Beta)
Instead of setting a fixed assignee, subscriber, or due date for tasks in your template tasks, you can use placeholders — named variables that get mapped to real people and dates each time a project is created from the template. Rather than updating each task individually every time, you define roles and reference dates once, then fill them in at project creation.
To add an assignee placeholder, open a task in the template and click the Assignee field. Select the Assignee placeholder, type a name for example, manager or designer, and confirm to save it.
To rename a placeholder or change its icon and color, click the pencil icon next to it.
To add a subscriber placeholder, click the Subscribers field and select Subscriber placeholders. Type a name and confirm to save it.
To add a date placeholder, click the Due date field and switch to Placeholder dates. Give it a name, for example, Project Start, then set how many days or weeks before or after that date the task is due, for example, 10 days after, and optionally enable Skip weekends.
You can reuse the same placeholder across multiple tasks, which is useful ...when several tasks are tied to the same person or reference date.
Managing a Template
Project templates can be edited or deleted in the Template Center.
Editing a Template:
When editing, a black bar will indicate that you are working on a template project, not an active project.
After you are done with editing the template, click "Done" in the upper-right corner to save the changes.
