📚 Part of the series Application Building Phase II: The Slate-hosted Application

Your database includes one application base by default: /apply/.

Depending on the way your application rounds are structured, you may want to create more application bases and associate them with those rounds.

This offers more customization between applications, but it comes at the cost of having to keep those bases separately maintained.

You might only need one application base

It may be tempting to jump to cloning application bases for customization’s sake, but keep in mind: Slate applications on the same base can use conditional logic to provide different experiences to different applicants.

If your application rounds have only minor differences—for example, the transfer student application has a few additional questions and doesn’t require an essay—you do not need more than one application base file.

Instead, you can use application logic and conditional logic to dynamically show application pages and questions. Alternatively, you could create multiple rounds.

When might you want more than one application base?

Some scenarios that might justify having more than one application base:

• Your rounds need their own standard application customization.

• You have a combined Slate instance with multiple admissions offices such as Graduate and Undergraduate working as administrators. Multiple application bases in this scenario prevents one team from impacting the settings of another team’s application.

• You need to show specific instructions on default application pages (reference, test score, academic history) to applicants in different application rounds. Creating a base file for each round would allow you to set custom instructions for each type of applicant rather than combining both sets of instruction on a single page

• You want graduate applicants to see a certain test type undergraduate applicants to see another.

Cloning the application base

🔔 Important! Before cloning your Application Base, all of the application rounds on that base must have a round key.

To clone your application base file:

1. Go to Database → Files.

2. Select /apply/base.xml.

3. Select Download.

4. Save the file.

5. Go to Database → Files.

6. Select Upload File.

7. Configure the following settings:

   • Upload Type: Upload File

   • Path: Enter the new path for this file. You must include the appropriate round key in the path. For example, /apply/GR/base.xml.

   • File: Choose the base.xml file you saved to your computer during step 3.

If necessary, follow the same steps to clone the Application Base for other rounds. Simply include the round key in the path (for example, /apply/UG/base.xml). Once you create a new Application Base file for a round, those standard application pages will be available for editing in the Application Editor:

Any changes made to standard pages on one application directory will not affect standard application pages across other applications. For example, if the instructions on the Personal Background page for each application needs to be edited, those instructions would need to be updated in each directory separately.