A selection template holds every decision a client makes, organised by area type. Set aside an hour for your first one. You will do the second in fifteen minutes.
Before you start
You need your area types and your selection types set up in Settings, because a selection template is built entirely out of them. If they are not in place, do Creating your Area Types and Areas and Creating your Selection Types first.
Have your current selections schedule in front of you, whether that is a spreadsheet, a PDF or the contract inclusions list.
Create the template
Go to Templates, then Selection Templates, and click New Selection Template. The only field is a name, so call it after what it covers rather than after a client or a date: Standard Four Bedroom, or Duplex Range, or Knockdown Rebuild.
Add your area types
The template opens with your selection groups on the left and an Area Type panel on the right. That panel lists your area types with an Add button beside each one, and a search box if the list is long. Click Add on Bathroom and you get a bathroom selection group. Keep going until every area type this template covers has a group.
The group has no name of its own, because it is identified by its area type, so it shows as Bathroom with a count of the decisions inside it. And once you have added an area type it disappears from the panel, which stops you creating two bathroom groups by accident.
Add the decisions
Expand a group and use Add a selection for each decision. The dialog asks for the selection type first, then the name, and it copies the type into the name field so you can accept it or adjust it. The type is the important part, because it is what connects the decision to your products later.
For a bathroom, a reasonably complete set looks like this:
Floor Tile, of type Tiling
Wall Tile, of type Tiling
Shower Base Tile, of type Tiling
Basin, of type Basins
Basin Tapware, of type Tapware
Shower Mixer, of type Tapware
Shower Rose, of type Tapware
Toilet Suite, of type Toilet Suites
Vanity, of type Cabinetry
Mirror or Shaving Cabinet, of type Mirrors and Cabinets
Shower Screen, of type Shower Screens
Towel Rail, of type Bathroom Accessories
Robe Hook, of type Bathroom Accessories
Name the decisions the way your client will read them, because these names go straight into the portal and onto the signoff report they eventually put their name to. "Basin Tapware" is clear. "BT-01" is not.
Picking the type decides what your client scrolls through
Every decision sharing a selection type shows your client the same list of products. That is worth thinking about as you assign the types, because it cuts both ways.
Sharing is right when the products are genuinely comparable, or when your client is coordinating them. All three tiling decisions above draw on one tile range, so a client picking the wall tile sees the same tiles they just considered for the floor, which is what you want while they are matching. The three tapware decisions work the same way, because tapware is chosen as a suite.
Sharing is wrong when the products are not alternatives. Put Towel Rail and Shower Screen on the same type and a client choosing a towel rail scrolls past every shower screen you offer. That is why the set above splits those two, and splits basins from toilet suites and vanities from mirrors.
The test is simple: if two products would never be considered as alternatives to each other, give them separate types.
Work through every area type
Repeat for each group. A realistic complete template for a standard home might be:
Bathroom, twelve or thirteen decisions
Kitchen, ten to fifteen
Bedroom, four or five: floor covering, robe fit-out, window furnishing, light fitting
Living, five or six
Laundry, six or seven
Exterior, eight to twelve depending on how much you let clients choose
That is somewhere between forty-five and sixty decisions in total, and you enter them once rather than on every job.
Put things in order
Drag your groups into the order you want, and drag the decisions inside each group. The order you set here is the order your client works through. Group things the way a person thinks: all the tiling together, then all the tapware, then the fittings. Do not scatter three tapware decisions between the tiles and the vanity.
Changes only impact future jobs
Editing this template changes every job you load it onto from now on. It does not change any job that already has it, because loading a template copies the structure rather than linking to it. So when you spot a missing towel rail, you fix the template for future jobs and add it by hand to any live job that needs it.
Check it against your item template
Before you use this on a real job, list every selection type you have used and make sure your item template has a group for each one. A selection whose type has no matching item group gives your client a product screen that will not load.
What to do next
Building an Item Template is the other half, and it is where your upgrade pricing lives. Then Combining templates to produce a working selections portal puts them together on a job.
Related articles
How templates work in HomePulse
Building an Item Template
Combining templates to produce a working selections portal
Building add-on template packs
Area Types and Selection Types: the two axes that control everything