A really cool feature of our Custom Templates is the ability to create your own Custom Stationery. When a user creates a new Board from your Template they will see a Custom Stationery Tab on the right of their screen. Here you can add your own stationery and messages.

This article explores in-depth how to build your Custom Stationery. It is worth reading the overview of how our Custom Templates work first.

Once you have converted your Board into a Source Template (see the Overview Article) you will see the Template Tab. In there you will find the Custom Stationery section. Either click or drag out the Group to the Board and you will notice a yellow constructor tag with the words 'Stationery' touching the bounding box of the Group. This tells Ideaflip that anything inside this group should be displayed in the Custom Stationery Tab.

This yellow tag is movable and can be attached to any Group added or drawn on the Board. If the tag is not touching a Group or is deleted then the resulting Template will not have a Custom Stationery Tab.

You can create a Stationery Stack by moving groups close to one another in a vertical line with each Group having its own yellow constructor 'Stationery' tag.

Ensure that only one tag per group is used and the Groups themselves don't touch or overlap.

These Groups will appear as sections in the preview and in the finished Template. You can therefore replicate the look of the default Stationery Tab in Ideaflip. The Groups will be displayed from top to bottom.

The Title of the Group will become the Section Heading in the Stationery Tab. This will be displayed at a fixed size.

Double click the Group to open the edit panel. Any words added in the Notes tab will appear under the section Title and any URLs placed in the Link box will become Hyperlinks at the end of that text. You could use this to link to further instructions, link to your video conference software or your website.

Anything placed inside Group with a yellow constructor tag will be displayed inside the Custom Stationery Tab on your Template.

Sticky Notes

Choose the shape, colour and contents of your Sticky Notes. Users of the Template will be able to drag out or click these Notes exactly as you set them here.

If you want to restrict the notes rotation when used, open the notes Inspector by double-clicking the Note and selecting the Items tab there you can change the default behaviour of the notes rotation and other settings.

Groups

Choose the shape, colour and title of your Group. You can fill your Group with content and this will be ready to use at a click.

Dots and Badges

Use the in-built Ideaflip dots, spots, buttons and badges. Resize them if you wish. Ideaflip will automatically resize based on the size of the badge relative to the size of the Group. Play around and see how this works.

Arrows

Add the default arrows or customise your own set of arrow shapes

Upload Images

Add your own graphics to the Board. Upload as you would normally and resize the image to fit inside your Stationery Group.

If you want to upload your logo just for show (so that it cannot be dragged to the Board) make sure you double click the image to bring up its edit panel and click the lock icon. (You can do this with any item.)

Emojis

Add Emojis by first adding a Title text box, get rid of the yellow 'Title' constructor tag, then double click to open the edit panel and choose your systems Emoji picker and add your emoji. Resize it and add it to the Stationery Group and voila! you have the full suite of Emojis to play with. (The availability and look of the emojis will depend on your operating systems library.)

Have you built a complex combination of Notes, arrows and Badges for a particular process? A quick and easy way to use this over and over again is to create a Custom Template and put this component in the Custom Stationery. Then with a simple click, it's available on the Board time and time again.

In order to see how your Template will look, you will need to create a Preview. In the Template Tab click Preview, this will take you to a New Tab/Window where you can name your preview then click the Preview button. This will display a Read-Only version of your new Template. Keep this Tab/Window open and hit refresh whenever you make changes to set what your Template will look like.

Once you are happy, you can Publish the Template (See our main article - Overview of how our Custom Templates work