Tana Templates

Tana Templates - built by creators, for creators

With Tana Templates, every user will have the power to share Tana-to-Tana content like ideas, setups and workflows directly with each other, from their own platform.

For content and education creators, this is a game changer. We want to democratize the creator economy and allow all our users to easily include a link to Tana Template content through any e-commerce listing, Gumroad, paid Substack... the sky is the limit. No centralized app-store required.

How does it work?

Have something to share. Let's say you have created a cool way to record your recipes, a great OKRs system or there's a Public Domain book you've put into Tana and cleaned up for annotations, which you want to make available to others.

Authors share templates from their Published Workspace. Like a basket 🧺, you create a node where you put all the content for the template in one place. Then, you generate a Tana Template URL from that node and this can be shared with anybody who has access to Tana.

Recipients add templates to their Home. When you open a Tana Template URL, you get a pop-up preview of the template, and a button that allows you to "Add to Home" the contents of the template. If you have multiple workspaces, you'll have the choice of which workspace you want to install the template at.

Note that Templates are copies of the original. Once you "Add to Home", you're creating a local copy that has no connection to the original.

Example

In our sample here, we've created a new workspace called Templates. We've put in our first templates, published the workspace, and shared each template.

How to publish a workspace:

If you haven't published a workspace before, you can do it by clicking the Publish workspace menu-spot under Options:

or using the Publish workspace (read only)-command while standing in the title field of the workspace. It's called read only since you'll be the only one able to edit it.

Here's how Seb's Sourdough Bakery template looks, ready to be shared:

Then we'll use the "Share Tana Template" command (Cmd/Ctrl+K > Share Tana Template). You get a pop-up preview of what your Tana Template will look like on the recipient's side before you generate a link.

IMPORTANT: Notice at the bottom that the preview will flag References from external workspaces i.e. any content that lives outside of the template. Only the author sees this. Like a basket 🧺, you'll want to share only the stuff that is contained within the basket. Any node that is a reference to something outside the one node you're sharing will show up as an "External Reference", which you'll want to clean up i.e. remove or migrate to the node. This would be the equivalent of putting your knitting in the basket, and the yarn outside the basket 🧶 - moving the basket could cause quite a tangle! You'll want to move the yarn into the basket, or cut the thread between the knitting and the yarn.

When another user clicks on that URL, they see the popup you saw in the preview, with the option to choose which workspace they want to copy the Tana Template to, should they have multiples of them.

🖨️ Et voilà: once they click "Add to Home", the Tana Template content is copied over, and the recipient now has an exact replica of all the content under the node that was just shared!

Note that there is no relationship between the original and its copies. Changes to the copies will not affect the original, and vice versa.

Quick tip for creators

To avoid unwanted external references in your templates, build the templates from scratch in the workspace under one node which you intend on sharing. Currently, Tana Templates is not set up to work flawlessly with moving nodes and references between workspaces.

Quick tip for users installing templates

We understand: You may be tempted to install ALL the templates you find so you can explore what's out there. If you do this, try not to move things out piecemeal. Some templates are more complex and will have supertags, fields and nodes with interconnected relationships. If you decide you want to use the template, follow the author's installation instructions. If you decide you don't want to use a template after all, you can hard-delete (Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-Backspace) the main node and all the supertags, fields and searches will be removed with it.

Introducing... Tana Templates: Get The Best Tana Workflows Directly In Your Tana Workspace