A blank canvas is freeing, but sometimes you would rather start with structure already in place. Templates give you a ready-made document as a starting point, filled with believable example content, so you can begin from something shaped roughly like what you need and adapt it, instead of building every diagram from nothing.
Starting from a Template
When you create a new document, the New Document wizard asks what you are making: pick a mode (Diagram, Draw, Facilitate, Illustrate or Plan), name the document, choose where it lives, and press Create. The empty tab then opens on that mode's start, Start Diagramming, Start Facilitating, Start Illustrating or Start Planning: its Recommended templates first, then every template of that mode in groups beside them, with a search. Click a template and the tab fills with it; from there it is an ordinary document, to move, edit, add to and delete from as on any canvas.
Every new tab, and every tab you empty, offers the same start. Close it with its × to begin from a blank canvas; while the tab is still empty, Show Templates in the strip under the palette brings it back. Picked the wrong mode? The mode switch at the top of the start's list changes it, Plan included, while the tab is empty. In Draw the start is Start Drawing, with the pen already in hand, and since Draw has a dock rather than the palette, Show Templates sits in a pill at the top of the canvas.
Something Else, at the foot of a start's list, opens Quick Start: the whole catalogue, every mode at once. It opens on the Popular shelf. Below it, Explore More Categories opens any other category as a shelf of its own, and Search templates... finds a template across the whole catalogue. Click a template to fill the tab with it, or Cancel to keep it blank.
What's in the Catalogue
The templates are grouped by the job you are doing, in thirteen categories listed in alphabetical order, and the picker skips a category that has nothing in it. A template lives in one category, and a few also appear in another where you would naturally look for them (an Invoice is under both Finance and Spreadsheets), so they are listed under each:
| Category | Templates | Also shown here |
|---|---|---|
| Brainstorm | Mind map, Tree mind map, Bubble map, Sketchnote, Idea Garden, Affinity map, Crazy 8s, Doodle Warm-Up | |
| Design | Mobile wireframe, Laptop wireframe, Web page wireframe, Paper Prototype, Storyboard, User journey, Journey Doodle, User persona, Empathy map, User story map, Floor plan | Sitemap, Crazy 8s, Affinity map |
| Finance | Budget Planner, Timesheet, Invoice, Expense Report, Loan Calculator and Sales Pipeline | Funnel, Sankey diagram, Business Model Canvas |
| Flowcharts | Flowchart, Swimlane flowchart, Decision tree, Approval workflow, Data flow diagram | |
| Workshops | Meeting agenda, Workshop Board, Brainstorm Board, Lean Coffee and Town Hall Q&A, Retrospective, Start, Stop, Continue, Mad, Sad, Glad, 4Ls retrospective, Sailboat retrospective, Team Retro, Pre-Mortem, Feedback Board | Crazy 8s, Doodle Warm-Up, Event storming, Incident postmortem |
| Org Charts | Org chart, Pyramid, OKR tree, Sitemap, Opportunity solution tree | RACI matrix |
| Planning | Project Planner, Kanban Board, Task Tracker, Bug Tracker, Weekly Planner, Content Calendar, Product Launch, Hiring Pipeline and OKRs | Team Retro, Feedback Board, Gantt chart, User story map, Prioritization matrix |
| Presentations | Slide deck, Launch Keynote, Quarterly Review, Team Welcome, Workshop Kickoff, Article, How It Works, Data Story, Year in Review, Versus, Social Carousel, Event Poster, Logo design, Résumé, Recipe Card, Group card, Comic Strip | |
| Quizzes & Games | Pub Quiz, Icebreaker Questions, Two Truths and a Lie, Would You Rather, Find Someone Who Bingo | Doodle Warm-Up |
| Spreadsheets | Contact List, Inventory, Guest List, Grade Book and Habit Tracker | Task Tracker and the six Finance sheets |
| Strategy | SWOT, Business Model Canvas, Prioritization matrix, Risk matrix, Fishbone, Venn diagram, Flywheel, Funnel, Sankey diagram, Comparison table, Stakeholder map, Rich Picture | OKRs, OKR tree, Roadmap, Pre-Mortem |
| Technical | System architecture, Cloud architecture, Database schema, Sequence diagram, Class diagram, State machine, Event storming, Incident postmortem | Data flow diagram |
| Timelines | Timeline, Horizontal milestone timeline, Vertical milestone timeline, Gantt chart, Roadmap, Objectives planner, RACI matrix |
Search templates... finds a template by its name, its description, its category, or the everyday words people use for it: try "sprint", "1:1", "retro", "invoice", "mortgage", "crm", "erd" or "persona". Every word you type has to match.
Five blanks lead the Popular shelf, one for each way of working, and sit apart from the categories since starting from nothing is not a kind of diagram: Blank Diagram (an empty canvas), Blank Whiteboard (a board in Draw mode for free drawing without distractions), Blank Session (an empty tab in Facilitate mode, to run a retro, town hall or workshop with timers, votes and polls to hand), Blank Illustration (an empty page in Illustrate mode, for an infographic, an article, a slide or a logo) and Blank Plan (an empty tab in Plan mode that opens on Start Planning, to pick the board (or Sheet) that fits the work). A sixth blank, Blank Spreadsheet, makes a tab holding one empty Sheet, ready to type into, and four more start Illustrate on one empty page of a kind you already know: Blank Slide Deck, Blank Article, Blank Infographic and Blank Logo. Search for them, find them first in their groups on Start Illustrating, or pick them from Blank Slate on the livediagram home page. After the blanks, Popular shows a few of the templates most people start from; choose a mode and Popular changes to that mode's favourites, its blank first.
Finding Templates for a Mode
Every template opens in one mode: Diagram, Draw, Facilitate, Illustrate or Plan. The small icon before a template's name says which. To see only one mode's templates, choose it in the dropdown to the left of the search box (hover it, or click it, to see the choices, each with how many templates it holds). Popular, the categories, their counts and your search results all narrow to that mode, and if the template you had selected is not of that mode, the selection moves to the mode's blank. Everything shows every template again. The filter starts on Everything each time the wizard opens, unless you came from a link that starts it on a mode.
- Draw templates are drawn by hand, ready to draw over: Sketchnote, Rich Picture, Comic Strip, Doodle Warm-Up, Paper Prototype, Journey Doodle, Pre-Mortem and Idea Garden.
- Facilitate templates are sessions to run with your team: Blank Session, Retrospective, Start, Stop, Continue, Mad, Sad, Glad, 4Ls retrospective, Sailboat retrospective, Town Hall Q&A, Lean Coffee, Crazy 8s, the quizzes and games (Pub Quiz, Icebreaker Questions, Two Truths and a Lie, Would You Rather and Find Someone Who Bingo), the spaces to walk round together in Avatar mode (Virtual Office, Coworking Space, Team Pod and All-Hands Hall; see Virtual Office), Meeting agenda, Workshop Board, Brainstorm Board, and the boards that come with a dot vote, Affinity map, Prioritization matrix and Risk matrix. See Facilitate Mode.
- Illustrate templates open on pages of their own: Article, Slide deck, Logo design, Group card, Event Poster, Year in Review, Résumé, Recipe Card, Data Story, How It Works, Versus and Social Carousel, and four more decks built from the slide layouts, each opening and closing on an animated background: Launch Keynote, Quarterly Review, Team Welcome and Workshop Kickoff.
- Plan templates set up a way of working across several tabs, with example cards to show how it runs: Kanban Board, Project Planner, Bug Tracker, Team Retro, Weekly Planner, Content Calendar, Hiring Pipeline, OKRs, Product Launch and Feedback Board; or a spreadsheet ready to use: Budget Planner, Timesheet, Contact List, Task Tracker, Invoice, Expense Report, Loan Calculator, Sales Pipeline, Inventory, Guest List, Grade Book and Habit Tracker.
- Every other template is a Diagram template.
Each one arrives as real elements rather than a picture: a Gantt chart's bars are shapes you drag, a wireframe's frames are device frames you can rearrange. Nothing in a template is locked or special.
Changing the Theme
A new document starts on the Default theme, so the wizard only asks for a template and where to save it (Quick Start keeps the tab's current theme). Once you are on the canvas, click the Theme & canvas button in the bottom-right corner to open the Tab Style dialog and try a different theme, including any of your custom themes: it recolours the whole template at once.
Making It Your Own
A template is just a head start, not a constraint. Everything in it is fully editable: rename and recolour the elements, restyle the whole thing with a different theme, or strip out the parts you do not need. Because the document works the same as any other, you can also add tabs, invite others, and share it once you have shaped it into what you want.
Templates pair naturally with themes: pick a layout that fits your content, then try a few themes from the Tab Style dialog to find the look you want. Double-click a theme to apply it and close the dialog in one go.
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