Overlapping workgroup templates (2000)

[eschwab]

Imagine a small company divided into 2 departments. Everyone shares a network drive. As the documentation manager, I would like each department to have access to its own templates and the company-wide templates, but NOT to the other department's templates.

Does "workgroup templates" (tools>options>file locations) allow me to accomplish my goal? In theory, I imagine a parent folder (for templates available to all) and 2 child folders (for templates available to 1 department only). But workgroup templates do not appear to work this way. How can I ensure that all users, when they choose File>New, have available all the templates they need, but no others?

[jscher2000]

Can you use Folder and File permissions on the server? If you deny List access to Dept. 2 for the Dept. 1 folder, it should be invisible to those users. (At least, that's what I would expect... I haven't tried it out.)

Alternatively, you could point the Workgroup Templates path to different folders for each department. But you probably would have to duplicate the all-company folder if you did that.

[Phil Rabichow]

Hi Jefferson:
In your second solution, I think you could just have one company folder that had read rights only (for the departments) & put a shortcut to it in each of the template folders.

[eschwab]

Shortcuts! Great idea!

Worked perfectly. Many thanks to both who contributed answers. I don't have the network rights for permissions, so for me the shortcuts are the way to go.