A report template is special kind of report definition that cannot be rendered directly by itself, but instead can be used to control certain aspects of the rendering of other reports. When designing a report, a template can be specified (optionally) in which case the report can inherit many kinds of attributes from the template, such as field colors and fonts. If at a later time these attributes are changed in the template, those changes will be seen in every report that is using that template.

Any given report can inherit from at most one template, but a given template can be used to control any number of reports. Thus templates enable report developers to making changes in a single place (the template) which will have a mass effect on many reports. This is a powerful tool that can assist the report development process in many ways, such as reducing initial development time, enforcing common standards across reports, and quickly implementing future changes to these standards.

There are three general types of report properties that can be governed by templates:

In addition to inheriting properties, reports can also inherit fields from a template. For instance, a template might contain fields in the page header that display date, time, domain, and a corporate logo. These fields will be automatically added to all reports using that template.

Templates can be edited in the Template Designer, which is very similar to the Report Designer program.

Elements in the report template represent classes or styles that can be applied to corresponding elements in a report definition based on a class-mapping relationship.

A field defined in the report template represents a field class identified by a unique class name. When the field class is applied to a field in a report definition, most of its properties are carried over to the field so that the field takes on the same formatting and layout.

The header, page header, page footer, footer, or a group section defined in the report template represents a section class identified by a unique class name. When the section class is applied to a section in a report definition, it is virtually copied over to the report definition complete with all the elements in it.