Defining Custom Item Templates

granfarr
granfarr
Community Member
edited December 2019 in 1Password 7 for Windows

Pre-Digging

I did some searching on the forum already, and I found a few old posts regarding customization of items. These posts were relatively old and basically said "we are looking into it". Not much enlightenment to be had there...

I ultimately found the custom-fields support page to be quite helpful in several cases (the adding security questions example was quite nice), but it doesn't get me all the way there.

The Ask

This is the list of items that are available as a starting point (as viewed through the Windows app):

I would really like to create a few custom item templates that I will use for several items I have not entered yet. Is there any way to add custom items? Is this a limitation of the Windows app or of the 1Password platform as a whole (i.e. could I do this on the website)? If this is a planned future feature, how (beyond posting this question in the forum) do I lend my voice to support such a feature?

Competition Note

I have recently come to 1Password from mSecure. 1Password has 1-up'd (chuckle) mSecure on all fronts except this one. I do miss the custom types feature.

Thanks!


1Password Version: 7.3.712
Extension Version: N/A
OS Version: Windows 10
Sync Type: 1Password

Comments

  • ag_ana
    ag_ana
    1Password Alumni

    Hi @granfarr! Welcome to the forum!

    Custom templates are currently available as a beta feature in our 1Password Business accounts. It's not something that is available for other types of Memberships at the moment, but depending on how the beta test is going, we might expand this feature to other account types in the future :)

  • kenjacobs
    kenjacobs
    Community Member

    Glad to know custom templates are available, even though beta. Please, please, please make this available to all account types. I'm using SplashID and would immediately ditch it for 1Password if this feature were available.

  • For whatever it may be worth, @kenjacobs, I do have my own method for "custom templates" as things stand. I'm sure this has been mentioned elsewhere (I'm definitely not the only one that does this), but figured it's worth a mention just in case. I don't have a ton of "extras" I want in most of my items, but there are a few cases where I need a few extra fields frequently enough I felt this was worthwhile. I have a "Templates" vault that's hidden from All Vaults and contains some items with placeholder data that already have certain sets of custom fields added. For example, I have a Login with fields for security questions set as password type, a Credit Card item with a notes template for listing the sorts of benefits I like to keep track of so I can just remove the ones that card doesn't have, a Secure Note with a template for the warranty information I like to keep on hand for big purchases, and probably a few more I'm not thinking of off the top of my head. Whenever I want to create an item that needs this stuff, I duplicate my template item, move it to the proper vault, then edit it to replace the placeholder data with the actual data for that particular item.

    In many ways, a custom template would be more efficient, but I honestly wonder if I might not prefer this method at the end of the day. It's hard to say having not experienced the other option myself, but one thing I actually don't like about 1Password today is the sheer number of templates. I wouldn't suggest we remove them – there are likely others that use them and I get that – but there are tons I've never used once and having them there makes it that much harder to choose the item type I actually want when looking at the dropdown shown in the first post in this thread. My templates vault has me covered for most of the items I create other than by auto-saving so more often than not I'm using that vault with a short list of 5ish item types rather than the long list and I can't say whether I'd prefer eliminating the step of duplicating, moving and editing or using my method to trim down the available templates. Regardless, it's something I find serves me well for now and I suppose I'll cross the bridge of deciding whether to change my ways if and when I have the opportunity to do so. :wink:

    Anyway, might not work for you, but it's an option a teammate shared with me in the past I've found helpful and I've seen customers using it as well so maybe will do until something else is available. :chuffed:

  • kenjacobs
    kenjacobs
    Community Member

    Thanks for the reply. Turns out I found that DataVault have templates, and aside from some minor bugs and inconveniences, it looks to be a good alternative to SplashID. Indeed, some of its features mimic those in SplashID. So that’s what I’ll be doing. Again, thanks, and happy new year!

  • granfarr
    granfarr
    Community Member

    @bundtkate
    I appreciate the alternate take on templates, thanks for sharing. However, this approach strikes me more as a "specialization" of an existing template than a fully customized/new template - which is the original ask.

    In many ways, a custom template would be more efficient, but I honestly wonder if I might not prefer this method at the end of the day. It's hard to say having not experienced the other option myself,...

    One of the biggest benefits about having custom templates would be the automatic categorization for them - I assume this would be the case because categorization sorting already exists as a feature. Say I added an "Insurance Policy" category with my own fields, I would hope to see "Insurance Policies" on the left-hand navigation pane, like this:

    but one thing I actually don't like about 1Password today is the sheer number of templates.

    Give the user the ability to "hide" item types in the item selection list. This way, you see the items you use the most. By default, all items are visible, and all new custom items are visible. Then as you start to see that you only use half of the items, you can hide the other half. Then, an option to "show hidden" or "unhide" would be used.

    I second @kenjacobs - please do make this feature available on the member accounts.

  • Oh, you're totally right, @granfarr and, in fact, one thing I like about my method is skipping the extra categories, but that definitely isn't going to be what everyone wants. :lol: Kind of related (though perhaps only to things like insurance policies), I do have a method for those too. Insurance policies, my home inventory for if I ever have to make a claim, documentation for things like taxes and warranties, and other such paper things I want to have a digital copy of all get uploaded as Document items then I tag them with the proper custom category. I actually do that for Logins as well as I find it helps sort them out by type. I'm a bit awful at remembering what creative title scheme I might have used for a given thing, but I'm pretty good at remembering how I'd categorize said thing since those tags are displayed in my sidebar so I find it helps keep me as organized as I'm capable of being.

    Anyway, will definitely pass y'all's feedback along and thank you for taking the time to share it. :chuffed: As a final note on categories (for what it might be worth), any category for which you have no items is actually hidden in the sidebar already with the exception of certain core types like Logins. I still tend to keep the categories collapsed and rely on my trusty tags, but there are some tidbits already live that can help you use your own system, even if we do still have some work to do for sure. :+1:

  • granfarr
    granfarr
    Community Member

    Thanks @bundtkate!
    Here's hoping the feature rolls out to non-business accounts.

  • Greg
    Greg
    1Password Alumni

    Hi @granfarr,

    On behalf of Kate you are very welcome! Please stay tuned for more news and updates and let us know if you have other questions. We are always ready to help. :)

    Cheers,
    Greg

  • andfried
    andfried
    Community Member

    Hi,
    I'm also very interested in a category for real-world puchase items with warranty information.
    I'm wondering what the current best-practice recommendations are for these types of items. I'm currently using Software License category as a work-around.

  • Greg
    Greg
    1Password Alumni

    Hi @andfried,

    Thank you for chipping in! :+1: Indeed, we do not have a category for things like that.

    Right now you can add custom fields (including dates) to any items in 1Password (not only Software Licenses), but they will not be shown in Watchtower and you will have to check them manually.

    We will continue exploring ways to bring new categories to 1Password. If you have other questions, we are here to help. Thanks!

    ++
    Greg

  • andfried
    andfried
    Community Member

    Thanks @Greg
    -Andrew

  • Greg
    Greg
    1Password Alumni

    @andfried: :+1: :chuffed:

This discussion has been closed.