One of the most effective ways to ensure a professional, consistent, and maintainable TARGIT solution is to establish a template strategy before designers begin creating dashboards and reports.

Many organizations focus on designing individual documents first and only later discover that changing colors, fonts, logos, menu structures, or layouts across hundreds of documents becomes a major maintenance task. TARGIT provides several template mechanisms specifically designed to avoid this problem. By investing time in these templates upfront, you can dramatically reduce future maintenance effort while ensuring a consistent user experience throughout the solution.

Why Templates Matter

A well-designed template strategy helps you:

• Maintain a consistent corporate look and feel.
• Reduce development time for new dashboards and reports.
• Make future design changes significantly easier.
• Promote reuse of common components and navigation structures.
• Improve governance and design quality across multiple designers.

Instead of treating templates as a single feature, think of them as a collection of reusable building blocks that together form the foundation of your TARGIT solution.

1. Components

Components are one of the most powerful template technologies available in TARGIT.

A Component allows one or more dashboard objects to be saved as a centrally managed document and reused across multiple dashboards and reports. Any changes made to the Component are automatically reflected wherever the Component is used.

Typical Component candidates include:

• Dashboard headers
• Corporate branding areas
• Filter panels
• Standard navigation areas
• Frequently reused charts or visual layouts

Best Practice

Create a dedicated Components folder and build a library of reusable design elements before dashboard development starts.

Examples:

• "Standard Dashboard Header"
• "Executive KPI Strip"
• "Product Filter Panel"
• "Report Footer"

Using Components ensures consistency and eliminates duplicate design work. When branding or functionality changes, you only update the Component once.

See Components Overview

2. Document Templates

Document Templates provide the starting point for creating new dashboards and reports.

A template typically contains:

• Headers
• Footers
• Logos
• Background elements
• Standard layout regions
• Placeholder objects

When a new document is created from a template, the designer inherits the predefined structure and layout. Furthermore, if all elements in the Document Template are created as Components, any changes in the Components will reflect in documents created from the template.

Best Practice

Create separate document templates for different usage scenarios, for example:

• Executive Dashboard
• Operational Dashboard
• Financial Report
• Management Report
• Mobile Dashboard

Use Components to create elements in the Document Template to leverage from the benefits of centrally managed and centrally updated Components.

Keep templates focused on layout and structure rather than specific business data.

See Document Templates

3. Crosstab Themes

Crosstab Themes act as reusable formatting templates for crosstabs.

Themes control appearance such as:

• Header formatting
• Cell formatting
• Alternating row colors
• Selected rows
• Font definitions

A crosstab remembers the theme that has been applied to it. If you later modify the theme, all crosstabs using that theme are automatically updated.

Best Practice

Define a small number of corporate crosstab themes such as:

• Default Corporate Theme
• Executive Theme
• Print-Friendly Theme

Set a standard theme as the default so every new crosstab automatically follows organizational design standards. 

See Crosstab Styling, Formatting and Themes

4. Saved Menu Files

Navigation is often one of the most overlooked design elements.

A menu that will be used across multiple documents should be saved as a menu file and reused wherever needed. Changes made to the saved menu automatically propagate to every document using that menu.

Examples include:

• Main navigation menus
• Department-specific menus
• Business Area menus
• Role-based menus

Best Practice

Create a central menu library and avoid building document-specific copies of menus whenever possible.

Typical examples:

• Corporate Main Menu
• Sales Navigation Menu
• Finance Navigation Menu
• Administration Menu

This approach keeps navigation consistent throughout the solution and significantly reduces maintenance effort. 

See Working with saved menus

5. Text Box Templates and Menu Item Templates

Text boxes and menu items can also be template-driven. Templates created for Text Boxes can be used for Menu Items, and vice-versa.

Menu Item Templates allow styling to be defined centrally so that all menu items share the same appearance. If branding changes later, updating the template automatically updates all menu items that use it.

Best Practice

Define a small set of approved styles:

Text Box Templates

• Dashboard Title
• Section Heading
• Explanatory Text
• Disclaimer Text

Menu Item Templates

• Primary Navigation
• Secondary Navigation
• Selected Menu Item
• Action Button

This ensures visual consistency throughout the entire solution.

See Templates for Text boxes, Menus and Documents

See Menu Item Templates

6. Named Colors

Named Colors provide centralized color management.

Instead of manually selecting RGB values throughout your solution, designers can reference predefined color names such as:

• Primary Blue
• Accent Green
• Warning Red
• Dashboard Background
• Header Background

If a Named Color is modified, all documents using that color are automatically updated. This makes future brand updates extremely easy to implement.

Best Practice

Create a corporate color palette before any dashboard development begins.

Examples:

Use Named Colors consistently instead of manually selecting colors.

See Named Colors

7. Placeholders

Placeholders allow template designers to reserve specific areas of a dashboard or report for future content.

A Placeholder can later be replaced with:

• Charts
• Crosstabs
• KPIs
• Gauges
• Other visualization objects

This enables designers to create highly structured templates while ensuring consistent positioning and sizing of content.

Best Practice

Use Placeholders in document templates to define:

• Main KPI areas
• Chart sections
• Detail sections
• Commentary sections

This approach helps ensure that dashboards built by multiple designers still follow the same layout principles.

See Templates with Placeholders

Recommended Implementation Order

Before creating production dashboards and reports, establish the following assets:

1. Define corporate Named Colors.
2. Create Text Box Templates.
3. Create Menu Item Templates.
4. Create standard Crosstab Themes.
5. Develop reusable Components.
6. Build and save reusable Menus.
7. Build Document Templates using all of the above assets and Placeholders.
8. Train designers to use the approved templates rather than creating new styles from scratch.

Conclusion

The most successful TARGIT implementations treat templates as a strategic foundation rather than a convenience feature. By combining Components, Document Templates, Crosstab Themes, Saved Menus, Text Box and Menu Item Templates, Named Colors, and Placeholders, you create a solution that is easier to build, easier to maintain, and consistently aligned with your organization's design standards. Future changes such as new branding, updated navigation, or revised formatting can then be implemented centrally and automatically reflected throughout the entire solution.