Flowcase is here to bring your CVs to life! With the dynamic Flowcase templates, you can save up to 50% of the time spent on CVs and case studies. Your brand, logo, and design will also be used by a wider audience and impact your business, both domestically and abroad.
Templates allow users to choose how the CV or case study will look, sound, and feel.
Our Template Team loves creating template solutions to your unique designs, however, you may want to master the process yourself - or maybe you'd just like a peek into the template world?
In this article, we will answer the questions:
- What is a template?
- How does a template differ from a design?
- How is a template made?
- What are the different kinds of templates that can be made
- How do you create a template?
- How do you request a template or a change to an existing templates
Let's get started!
What is a template?
In Flowcase, a template is the format used to export CVs and case studies. Using templates (rather than uploading ready-made CVs and Case Studies) allows our users to download their unique content into different exports that meet their visual and structural needs, specific to bids and proposals. With templates, we can upload static elements (things that don't change per user - like a company’s logo and information) to documents which otherwise include various content that changes across a company’s employee base (like the experiences or profile picture of the CV owner).
Templates work symbiotically with CVs and Reference Projects in Flowcase as it allows a company to control the appearance of their CV and case study exports at the same time that it allows users to control and maintain their individual content.
How does a template differ from a design?
A design is simply what you see on the CV or case study itself, before it is imported as a template to Flowcase. A template refers to the document created after translating the design to a format that is readable by the Flowcase system.
How is a template made?
A template is created by translating the design of a CV or case study into a document that can be uploaded to Flowcase. Many of our users choose to use designers externally/internally to create these designs, however the template is typically made by our Template Team. The template is then used to fetch user data by changing ordinary text to codes that correlate to the content of a user's CV or Case Study in Flowcase.
The process of translating a design to a template is what we mean when we refer to ‘making a template’. We are taking a design that looks like a normal CV or case study and changing the ordinary text (i.e. "Flowcase") into codes that fetch user data (i.e. <<customer>>). The result is a template that looks like this:
Before
After
The end-result will look as close to the original design as possible.
What are the different kinds of templates that can be made?
For both CVs and case studies, you can create templates compatible with Microsoft Word, PDF or PowerPoint. However, there is a key difference in how templates for CVs and Case Studies are made.
Please note that the templates you choose have specific limits. Word documents are versatile for both short and long texts, as they allow text to flow dynamically from one page to another. PowerPoint, on the other hand, lacks this dynamic flow because it works with slides instead of pages. PowerPoint is handy for precise text positioning but if the text is too long it will continue outside the page
- When creating a template for a CV that will be exported as a Word or PDF file, we use Microsoft Word to create this template.
- When creating a template for a case study in a Word or PDF file, we use our in-house Template Generator.
- The Template Generator can also be used to create PowerPoint templates for CVs and case studies.
How do you create a template?
Typically, the Template Team receives requests and creates templates for our customers. However, it is possible to create them yourself as well! Many of our users start by choosing an in-house or external designer to create the CV or case study design. They will then refer to the Template Documentation guide to learn how to convert the design into a document, or a template, that can fetch user data when uploaded to their Flowcase account.
If you're wondering how templates are made or feeling up to creating your own, you can find our Template Documentation guide in either the CV or Reference templates tabs under 'Templates for Export' in Settings. This document outlines which tags to use for each field available in 'My CV', enabling completely customizable templates for different use cases.
Tip! While it is possible to create your own templates, we recommend attending one of our Template Workshops, as it typically requires some training and some trial and error - practice makes perfect.
How do you request a template or a change to an existing template?
Because there is so much shared value in how we receive template requests, we have created a separate article that details how both you and Flowcase can save time when requesting a new template, or changes to an existing template.
You can find the article here.
For all questions and concerns regarding templates, please reach out to templates@flowcase.com so we can meet your template needs as soon as possible.
Our Template Team is readily available and happy to help with anything and everything template-related (seriously, we love templates)!
