Template Editor Training 2020

1

A big thank-you to @Elizabeth for the excellent Template Editor training this week.

2020-01-08 - Template Editor - Part 1 “The Basics”
2020-01-09 - Template Editor - Part 2 “Customizing Templates”

Part 1 expanded, clarified, and corrected my basic understanding of templates. I am finally starting to understand how the TaxCycle templates, snippets, and basis functions really work. Best practices, tips, traps, and additional resources were covered very well.

Part 2 was a game changer. I am finally starting to understand those curly brackets. The simple examples, exercises, and downloadable templates opened my eyes to what is possible. The reference to the Mustache template system setting out the taxonomy of those curly brackets was also helpful. Most helpful of all was the step by step building of skills using simple examples and then variants as we added conditions and varied the examples. In the end we looked at the possibility of adding custom fields to edited or custom templates. I am eager to apply and test my new skills.

Job well done!

2

Please find below two resources to contextualize the Mustache template system used in TaxCycle Template Editor. This is not meant to teach how to edit TaxCycle templates. Rather it is meant to clarify and illustrate some of the taxonomy used by the TaxCycle Template Editor for those with some programming background.

For example, for anyone creating custom reports in ProFile and Simply Accounting it was helpful to know that Crystal Reports was the report creator.

Similarly, for anyone using QuickBooks Desktop it was helpful to know that QBDT is based on SQL server join on relational database table. To understand the table structure made it possible to understand which custom reports can be created.

Similarly, by understanding that TaxCycle uses Mustache to edit the letter and email templates, we can begin to create a mental framework of taxonomy or syntax that is required to produce a specific template or type of templates and with which elements.

Of course TaxCycle specific resources are located on the TaxCycle site.

This is simply meant as a somewhat nerdy reference.

http://mustache.github.io/mustache.5.html

3

Thank you @dominique_dabolczi I tried to rethink these two webinars this year. It means a great deal that it helped.

For anyone reading this thread, these webinars are available on demand from this page: https://www.taxcycle.com/Training/On-Demand-Training