Templates, labels and properties

Templates give new pages in Orbit Folio a shape, and labels and properties make pages easy to group and report on. This page is for writers who create pages, and for space and project administrators who define templates.

Built-in templates

The New page dialog lists the built-in templates:

meeting notes
decision (ADR)
requirements
how-to
runbook
postmortem
retrospective
release notes
sprint review

Some of them ask a question first, so the page starts filled with live data. Others set a label and properties.

Template	Asks first	Also sets
Decision (ADR)	Nothing	The label `decision` and the properties Status, Owner and Decided
Postmortem	A Pulse incident	The label `postmortem`
Release notes	A Forge repository and a successful deployment or pipeline	The label `release-notes`
Sprint review	A sprint of the space’s project	The label `sprint-review`

The Postmortem, Release notes and Sprint review templates are described in Link pages to work, code and operations. You can always start without the question and get an empty template.

Create a space template

A space template is your own template for one space. It appears in the New page dialog next to the built-in ones.

Open the page menu and choose Save as template…, or open Templates in the space tools.
In the template editor, write the page title pattern, the text and the labels. A preview shows the result and lists what the writer will be asked.
Save the template.

A template has a name, a description, a page title pattern, a text and labels. Its name is unique in the space, ignoring upper and lower case. A space can have up to 100 templates.

Action	Who
Create a template	Anyone who can write in the space
Edit or delete a template	Its author or a project administrator

Editing checks the template’s version, so two people cannot overwrite each other without noticing. An archived space is read-only. Creating, editing and deleting a template are written to the activity log.

Variables

Variables are written in double braces in the title or the text. Folio collects them, up to 20 per template, and asks for their values when someone creates a page.

You write	The writer sees
`{{Customer}}`	A field named Customer
`{{Severity: Low, Medium, High}}`	A drop-down list with the three options
`{{date}}`	Filled in automatically with today’s date
`{{author}}`	Filled in automatically with the writer
`{{space}}`	Filled in automatically with the space
`{{title}}`	Filled in automatically with the page title

In the text, an automatic date becomes a {date:...} value and the author becomes a mention. After the form, Folio opens the editor with a ready draft.

Labels

Labels group pages. They are metadata of the page, not part of its text.

A page can have up to 20 labels.
A label uses lowercase letters, digits, - and _.
When you add a label, Folio suggests the labels of the project, each with the number of pages you can see.
The search page can filter by label, alone or together with text.
Changing labels does not create a version. It is written to the activity log instead.

Properties

Properties are Key: value pairs at the top of a page. Put them in the first block of the page, in a fenced block whose language is properties:

```properties
Status: Accepted
Owner: Anna
Decided: {date:2026-11-05}
```

A block holds up to 30 properties.
Properties are part of the page text, so they are versioned with the page.
Folio indexes them when a page is created, published or restored.
In a public link, properties are shown as a table.

Reports over properties

A properties-report block draws a table of pages with their properties as columns. It has these parameters:

Parameter	Meaning
`label`	Only pages with this label
`scope`	`children`, `space` or `project`
`columns`	The properties to show as columns
`sort`	The property to sort by

A report shows at most 200 pages and only the ones the reader may see. A report over a space or a project needs a label. In a public link, a report is replaced by a sentence.

Decision log

Decisions in the space tools is a report over the label decision across the whole project, with a filter for the status. The Decision template sets that label and the properties Status, Owner and Decided, and writes Decided: {date:...}. Reports sort and filter by the text of a label and by day.

For status labels and dates inside text, see the Editor and Markdown reference.