How to organize company templates in SharePoint Online

As I work with my clients, assisting them with the build-out of the Intranet portal, a persistent question/request I get is what is the best way to organize company templates in SharePoint Online. So in this article, I decided to list a few options available.

I wrote a similar post back in 2020 where I shared a total of 5 ways to store templates. However, that post was more of a way to store department templates and those used by a limited group of users. In contrast, in this article, I am listing options for company-wide, global templates to be used by the whole organization.

Option 1: Read-only Document Library

The first option is pretty standard and most frequently used by many organizations. The idea is to create a read-only document library and have it prominently displayed/accessed via your SharePoint Intranet. You can also get creative and use metadata to organize the library as well.

Pros

• Easy to implement

Cons

• Users have to manually download, complete, and save the template in a separate, designated area

Option 2: New drop-down on a library

Another option is to utilize Add Template option available on the modern document library. This option allows users to navigate to a designated library, click the New button and complete the template “on the fly.” This will automatically save the filled-out document in a library as well. I described this option in great detail here (Option 5 in that article).

Pros

• No need for the user to save a template locally, rename and re-upload it to SharePoint

Cons

• It always opens the template in the browser mode, not the native application, which might limit some capabilities
• It might not be “evident” to the users to click on the New button

Option 3: Organization Assets Library

The other option available to organize company templates in SharePoint Online is to use PowerShell. This option essentially designates a certain document library in SharePoint as the formal library of templates and makes it available to use from the Office applications as well SharePoint itself when you browse for images/photos.

You can find the detailed instructions on how to set this up here.

Pros

• Templates are easily accessible from the Office applications

Cons

• Requires PowerShell + SharePoint Administrators to set up