Platform Template Library: Versions, Publishing, Retire & Emergency Disable

How platform staff maintain the built-in UCC label and packing list templates: clone or create drafts, publish versions, push copies to tenants, retire old versions and use the emergency disable only when you must.

The platform template library holds the built-in templates every tenant starts with. Templates are organized by family and version: one family (say, a retailer’s 4×6 pallet UCC) can have several version rows. Drafts are freely editable; once a version is published its content is frozen, and any change goes through a new version. Tenants receive the latest published version of each family automatically when they are created, and their copies are never overwritten by platform actions.

Step 1: Create a template — cloning is the main path#

1. Clone (recommended): on any published template, open Actions → "Clone as new template". You get a fresh draft under a new name (the name gets a -copy suffix; rename it following the naming convention). Adjust the layout, then publish it as its own family.
2. Blank new: "New template" starts an empty draft. Saving checks every [[VARIABLE]] against the platform variable registry — an unknown variable is rejected with a "did you mean …?" hint, because a misspelled variable prints blank.
3. Images in a document template — a retailer logo or banner, for example — must use an address from the platform image asset library. Saving checks image references just like variables: an unregistered image address, or any image link from another website, is rejected with a plain-language hint. Ask the platform team to register the image first, then paste the registered address. An image pasted as embedded data still saves, but it bloats every tenant copy — when you see that warning, switch it to a registered address.
4. AI generate: upload a sample (photo, scan, PDF or ZPL file). After the analysis you decide, element by element, what each extracted piece becomes — a variable, the closest variable, fixed text, or a request for a new variable. Text that looks like real order data cannot be frozen as-is: mask it first. The result is always a draft.

Step 2: Publish, then push — two separate actions#

• "Publish as official version" (on a draft) freezes the content and makes it the version new tenants receive automatically. Nothing is sent to existing tenants yet.
• "Push to tenants" (on a published version) sends copies only to existing tenants that do not have a template with this name yet. Tenants that already have it are skipped — never overwritten — and the result line tells you pushed / skipped / failed counts. Before pushing or retiring, open "Tenants using it" to see exactly who holds a copy.
• To change a published version, use "New version": it copies the version into a new draft (the version number goes up by one). Edit and publish that; the old version stays untouched for anyone still on it.

Step 3: Retire for normal end-of-life; emergency disable only for real trouble#

• Retire: the version stops being distributed — new tenants no longer receive it and pushes skip it. Copies tenants already have keep printing unchanged, and their list shows a small "Retired by platform" badge as a heads-up. Retiring is the normal way to end a template’s life.
• Emergency disable: only for serious defects — for example a compliance text or barcode rule that is wrong and must stop printing everywhere now. Tenant copies are disabled immediately and tenants see the reason you type, in a red alert on the template. A reason is required, and every disable and restore is on the record. Use "Restore from emergency disable" to bring back exactly the copies that action disabled.
• The "Variable wishlist" collects the elements you marked as "needs a new variable" during AI confirmations — it is the input list for the next registry additions, so keep the expected meanings written in plain words.

Features used in this article: Platform Template Library (families & versions), Clone as new template, New version, Publish as official version, Push to tenants, Tenants using it, Retire, Emergency disable & restore, AI generate with per-element confirmation, Variable wishlist.