Bev,
This is one of the more complex aspects of FH7, but is logical once you get your head around the interrelation between different elements.
In RM, source templates are individual entities, and can be imported and exported as template definition files (one file per template) for sharing between databases.
In FH, there are three different elements involved, the
Templated Source itself, the
Source Template, and the
Source Template Definition. The first two are stored as records within your project, but Source Template Definitions are held at system level so are available to all projects. These Template Definitions are held in a series of
Collections. Two such collections, Essentials and Advanced, are provided with FH7, and any new Definitions you create yourself would form a new Collection, which you can name as you please (conventionally, Custom).
Source Templates and Source Template Definitions are kept synchronised with each other under the
Tools > Source Template Definitions... menu, so any changes made to one can be copied to the other.
So to answer your question, we need a Source Template Definition for your new Source Template in order to use that template in other projects. Unfortunately, CP appear to have assumed that users would always create the Definition first, and then Templates from that Definition, as FH has no way of creating a Definition from a Template. IMO, this is a significant gap, as users coming from RM are naturally going to do what they are familiar with first, and create a new Template.
Fortunately, there is a fix, but you need to download and run the
Create Source Template Definitions plugin from the Plugin Store. This will create a Custom Source Template Definition file, which is then accessible to other projects.
To answer your other question, the Generic Type field is a property of the source, not the template. So the template does not have a generic type, but this field is present in sources created from it, so can be populated from the dropdown menu. I don't think there is a way to populate it automatically, but I don't use templated sources myself so may have missed something.
