Three of the guiding principles I always keep in mind when trying to build usable systems in Sitecore are:
- Reduce the number of decisions a content author has to make
- Reduce the number of things that require editing in the first place
- Make it easy to do the “right” thing
One of the greatest tools for ensuring that these three things are achieved are Sitecore branch templates. Branch templates allow creation of item hierarchies in a singled click using dynamic placeholders. You can instantly create complex but predictable multi-tiered structures so that an author need not recreate these manually.
A content author creating yet another news article need not see a blank slate each time when it’s likely that this content type is highly structured and will have instances of the same components in the same layout, at least as a starting point. Below are some examples of branch templates for pages that specifies a core collection of default components to be included with each new instance of the page.
This is even more useful for creating multi-tiered structures such as office microsites or any other repeated content grouping that all have the same basic hierarchy. Why have content authors doing data entry for content objects that are predictable and repeatable? This is time-consuming, prone to error, and discourages consistency. Companies tend to treat content authors time as expendable, but it’s really not when you consider the cumulative total of all of these tasks and micro-interactions with the CMS.
Leveraging branch templates requires a holistic approach to content modeling that is best done when a platform is being constructed as it requires some forethought and consensus on standardization. That said, it’s not impossible to inspect existing structures and create supporting branch templates for use moving forward. Finding ways to accelerate repetitive tasks may just improve content author morale as much as their efficiency and free them up to do higher value work!
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