Save and reuse project templates

Starter plan

The first time you run a client onboarding, audit, or launch, you build the plan from scratch — it takes a few hours. The second time, without a template, you build it again from a slightly different set of assumptions and lose the polish you added at the end of round one. With a template, the second time you click twice and the finished pattern is there, ready to be scheduled against a new date. Teams that build templates for their recurring project shapes spend fifteen minutes on a “new client kickoff” that used to take an afternoon, and the plan is more consistent than it ever was when people rebuilt it from memory.

Save a project as a template

Open the project you want to reuse and open its actions menu (the ⋯ button in the project header).
Select Save as Template. Give the template a name, optionally pick a category, and decide whether to tick Make public (visible to all users). Left unticked, the template is visible only to you.
Select Save Template. The template captures the project’s tasks and subtasks, along with their priorities and relative schedule.

Saving a template requires a Manager or Owner role on the project, since it packages the project’s content into something the whole organization can instantiate.

How the schedule is captured

Dates are stored as offsets from the project start, not as fixed calendar dates. A task that began two weeks into the original project is recorded as “starts at week two”. When you later create a project from the template, you pick a start date and every task is re-dated relative to it, so a template saved in March produces a correctly dated project in November.

Start a project from a template

On the Projects page, select the Templates button to open your organization’s template gallery.
Pick a template to see its task list and details.
Under Create project from this template, enter the new project’s name and start date, and create it. The project arrives with the full task structure, scheduled from your chosen date.

Best practices

Polish the source project before saving the template. The template captures whatever is in the source. A few minutes spent removing one-off tasks, fixing typos in task titles, and tightening estimates pays back every future instantiation. Don’t ship a template you wouldn’t send to the next person who has to run this project.
Use categories so the gallery stays navigable. Once you have five or six templates, an unstructured list is noise. Categories like “Client onboarding”, “Internal audit”, “Product launch” let the next PM find the right template in two seconds.
Mark templates “public” deliberately, not by default. A public template invites every project in your org to start from it. Make a template public when you’ve proven the pattern works (instantiated it once or twice and refined); keep early drafts private until they’re stable.
Save a NEW template instead of trying to update an existing one. Templates are snapshots. The pattern that works: save “Client Onboarding v1” → use it on three projects → learn what to change → save the polished version as “Client Onboarding v2” → delete v1 from the gallery once v2 is established. Versions stay clear; the old patterns die clean.
Use the AI Kickstart on top of a template. Pick the closest template, instantiate the project, then ask the in-app AI assistant to “add a phase for X” or “tailor the timeline to a 12-week window.” The template gives you the scaffold; the AI tailors it to the specific project.

Troubleshooting / common pitfalls

The “Save as Template” option is greyed out. Saving requires Manager or Owner on the project. If you’re a Member, ask the project owner to save the template, or ask your org admin to grant template.create on this project.
My template has the wrong tasks compared to the source project. Templates are saved at the moment you save them. If you’ve added tasks to the source after creating the template, those new tasks aren’t reflected. Re-save as a new version.
The new project from the template has dates in the past. The template captures relative offsets from the source project’s start. If you pick a new start date earlier than today, the scheduled tasks land in the past. Pick a future start date or adjust task dates after instantiation.
Custom fields don’t carry over from the template. Field definitions travel (the template includes the field shape); field values on individual tasks do not. The new project’s tasks have the same custom-field columns but the values are blank, since the template is meant to be a fresh start.
I deleted the source project and lost my template too. Templates are independent of their source projects. Deleting the project does not delete the template. If both are missing, check the Recycle Bin; both restore separately.

How this combines with other features

Templates + AI Kickstart. AI Kickstart turns a sentence into a starter scaffold; a template gives you a polished scaffold a real team validated. The strongest pattern is to start from a template, then ask the AI to extend or trim it for the specific project at hand. See Generate a project plan with AI.
Templates + Import. A Microsoft Project .mpp file imports as a project; once imported and cleaned up, save it as a template if the pattern is reusable. This is the bridge from “MSP archive” to “live Onplana template” — see Import a Microsoft Project file.
Templates + Custom fields. Field definitions travel with the template, so a template with a “Cost Center” custom field produces projects already wired to track cost centers. Values are blank — the template is the schema, not the data. See Create custom fields.
Templates + Governance. On Enterprise orgs with governance, the proposal → approved project flow can instantiate from a template at approval time. The proposal carries the high-level shape; the template gives the approved project a populated plan. See From proposal to governed project.

Coming from another tool

Tool	Mapping
Asana templates	Direct concept; Onplana stores dates as offsets, same as Asana
Microsoft Project templates	Direct; .mpp templates can be imported then saved as Onplana templates
Jira project templates	Similar; Jira’s “scrum/kanban template” ≈ Onplana’s per-shape templates
Notion templates	Notion templates are duplicate-and-customize; Onplana’s are first-class with relative scheduling
ClickUp Templates	Direct; ClickUp’s “Spaces with templates” ≈ Onplana’s gallery

FAQs

Do assignees and statuses come along? The template’s value is structure: tasks, subtasks, priorities, and the relative schedule. A project created from a template starts as fresh work for you to staff, rather than inheriting another project’s in-flight state.

Can I update a template after saving it? A template is a snapshot, so it does not track later changes to the source project. To refresh one, save the improved project as a new template and delete the old version from the gallery.

Who can use a template? The gallery shows your own templates plus any marked public, alongside the built-in system templates. Public templates can be instantiated by anyone in the organization; private ones stay yours until you re-save them as public.

Are there built-in templates I don’t have to create? Yes. The template gallery shows your org’s saved templates plus a set of built-in patterns (software product launch, marketing campaign, event planning, OKR rollout, etc.) that ship with every Onplana organization.

Does instantiating a template count as one project against my plan’s project cap? Yes. Every project created from a template counts the same as any other project. Templates themselves don’t count against the cap.

Can I share a template between organizations? Not directly today. The cleanest workaround: instantiate a project from the template in one org, export it as .mpp or recreate it in the other org, and save it as a template there. Cross-org template sharing is on the roadmap.

What happens if I delete a template that other people are using? Deleting a template removes it from the gallery but doesn’t affect already-instantiated projects. People who saved the template URL will see “not found”; new instantiations stop being possible.

Create your first project — the template gallery is one of the three starting points
Generate a project plan with AI — pair with templates for tailored scaffolds
Import a Microsoft Project file — bring an MSP plan in and save as a template

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