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.
5. Refine in rounds (alternative to saving right away): choose "Generate & refine in rounds" on the confirmation step. The confirmed layout becomes round 1 and the one-price generation fee is charged once per template. You can then answer the system’s questions, ask AI to revise in your own words (up to 10 AI rounds), compare placeholder / sample-data / real-order previews — the real-order preview uses Demo 3PL orders for that retailer only — and roll back to any earlier round. Saving writes the usual draft plus any pending-variable requests.
6. Reading the editor: in the content box, every [[VARIABLE]] is highlighted in amber, so variables stand out from the fixed layout. Next to the live preview, the "Highlight sample values" switch (on by default) shades the values that came from sample data, so sample values and fixed text are easy to tell apart; turn it off to see the plain preview. You can also click any block in the preview — a heading, an address block, an items row, the totals — and the content box jumps to and selects the source lines that produced it; clicking an items row selects the [[LINES]] loop section.
7. Reading ZPL labels and the variable panel: for label (ZPL) templates the editor colors the code as you read it — commands (^XA, ^FO, ^FD…) appear in the theme color and bold, the text after ^FD (what actually prints) stays in normal body color, ^FX comments are gray and italic, and [[VARIABLES]] keep their amber chip, so a label reads clearly on light and dark themes alike. The variable panel on the right is grouped by level — Order level, Shipment level, Item level (line items) and Pallet · Carton level — and every variable carries a small level tag plus a one-line plain-language note saying what it prints and where the value comes from; a note that says "no data source yet" means that variable currently prints blank. Search also matches those notes.

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.