If you’re creating the same type of Basecamp projects
over and over again,
you need to simplify your life
and create a Basecamp template.
I’m Kimberly from Basecamp’s Customer Success team
and in this video I’m gonna show you how to do it.
To make the template
you’ll click Make a new project from your Home screen
and then Create a project template near the bottom.
Now if there are already templates on your account,
this screen will look a little different
and you’ll select Use a template and then Edit templates.
Either way, you’ll end up on the Project Templates page
where you’ll select the New Template card
with the green plus button.
You’ll name your project template
and give it a description if you want to.
Then hit Next.
From here, you can set up your template
just like you would any Basecamp project.
You can change or rename the project tools
with the three dot menu at the top right.
Think about this template as the basis
for all the projects of this type.
If you want those projects to start with a specific message
on the message board,
go ahead and post it.
If you want your project to have a few files
already preloaded,
go ahead and add them in.
You can even create to-do lists
and assign tasks to people on your team
from within the template.
But don’t worry,
they won’t be alerted about these assignments
until you actually create the project from the template.
But if you wanna wait to assign those tasks
until after the project has been created,
that’s fine too.
When you have your template set up the way you want it
and you’re ready to create a new project from that template,
you’ll go to Make a new project from your Home screen,
Use a template,
and from the dropdown select the template you wanna use.
You’ll give your project a name
and you can add a description here as well.
Click Create this project
and Basecamp will spin up a new project
based on the template.
Anyone assigned to-dos or added to an event on the schedule
in the template,
will automatically be invited
to the project when it’s created.
They’ll also be notified of any assignments
in their Hey menu.
Easy right?
Now, there is one thing to know when it comes to templates
and that’s around dates.
Because you can start a project from a template at any time,
you can’t assign specific due dates to tasks
or put specific event dates on the calendar
when you’re creating your template.
If you use that template a year from now
or six months from now,
those dates might not make sense
or they might be in the past.
So instead, Basecamp uses relative dates inside the template
and then pre-populates those dates
based on when you start the project.
It’s actually easier than it sounds.
Let me show you.
Let’s edit the template by going to Make a new project
Use a template,
Edit templates.
When I add a due date to a task,
instead of the calendar popup you’d see
when you’re inside a project,
you’ll see a listing of days of the week,
along with the week number.
You can choose the due date
relative to when the project starts.
So if I have a task that’s always due
the first week of a project on Friday,
or the second week of a project on Wednesday,
you can set that here.
Now keep in mind that week one of your project
always begins on the Sunday,
the week you create the project.
So just know
if you have a relative due date of Monday week one
and you start that project on a Thursday,
that task is gonna already seem overdue.
When you start a new project from the template,
you can indicate a specific start date in this area.
If you leave it blank,
your start date will default
to the day you created the Basecamp project.
When Basecamp creates your project from the template,
any relative dates on to-dos or on the schedule
will become actual dates based on the project’s start date.
It’s like magic.
One tip before we wrap up.
If you have to-do lists
that you find yourself doing over and over again
that you don’t necessarily need a new project for,
you can create a to-do list template.
The steps are similar to creating a project template
that we just went over,
but you can find the step-by-step detailed instructions
in a video all about to-dos.
I’ll link to it in the YouTube description for this video.