copy geodatabase into new project with a Project Template?

[eAppel]

I am trying to create a Project Template for my organization. We have a standard "ScratchWorkspace" that has point, line and polygon featureclasses set up with complex domains and subtype. We want this "ScratchWorkspace" to be COPIED into new projects, so that every project we start has its own ScratchWorkspace and featureclasses. We do not want this to be referencing a single GDB because the GDB would get extremely full. We need a copy of thag gdb in every project though. Same goes for an "archive" GDB. Every project needs its own GDB. How would i go about doing this? I am competent with Python and Arcpy, but would prefer to now have to go that route as others in the organization are not as familiar. 

also important to note i would like to reference folders that have styles in them as we update the stypes often. 

is there a way to do this?

thanks!

[B_mitch95]

It seems that ever since the 3.x versions have been release the new default for creating project templates is to continue to hold the original connection to folder/gdb's. Thus, newly created projects will share data to the original location.

The setting to change this in the 3.x versions is the "Share outside of Organization" which is not intuitive, but does make copies of all your gdb's such that each new project has a local copy of the template. The check box setting does not imply that it will be shared outside your org but prepares the template to be. This is where is will make the disconnection to any computer or network drives.

However, if there is a hosted feature service layer within your project, the layer will be disconnected and transformed to a feature class in a local file gdb. This is irritating as it has defeated the purpose of creating a template to deal with a project where you would have something in the nature of incoming raw data --> intermediate/temporary layers (copy of live layers, to verify QC/QA for an individual project) --> append to live/hosted feature service layers, where all projects would live for sharing/analysis/tracking/etc.

Hopefully, there will be fixes to the template creation, where there is better control of connections to layers and gdb's