Sorting inherited template fields

Question

I have a page template inheriting from base templates.

But when I go to edit those from Experience Accelerator, Page metadata, Other dialog, they are in a strange order. It seems like its grabbing the first item from each template, then the second item from each template and so on... but not in the displayed template order above.

I tried applying sort order but that only applies to the content editor tree - it has no impact on this dialog at all.

I want each block of fields below to remain as a block together, so it makes more sense when editing.

Using Sitecore 9.1 and SXA 1.8.

Answer 1

This dialogue is not the most flexible of sorts. But what happens is, it shows an aggregate of your templates and their fields, with little way of controlling the order they appear in.

One thing you can do however, is organise the fields under different section names. You currently use Content for all of them, meaning all the fields will end up in the same grouping.

By organising the fields differently, e.g. use List, Pair, and Links, as section names - this dialogue will organise the fields more to your liking I believe.

And yes, you can use the __Sort order on the section items to control the order of how these sections appear in the dialogue as well.

Additional Reference: Field Ordering When Inheriting Sitecore Templates

Edited to add

I actually think you can sort all of the fields even if you remain in the same section name. But you would need to manipulate the __SortOrder of the fields directly. So on the fields under one template, you set their sort order to 10, 20, 30 and so on. In the next template, to 100, 200, 300 etc. And so on. Generally Sitecore would respect the overall sort order - this is why it's "interleaving" the fields to begin with.

That said, I think it's easier to just group by different section names. That's one of the only reason sections exist, after all.