Three levels for one template
Every template has a fixed name, such as “audit-report”. Under this name there can be several versions: one for the platform, one per tenant and one per person. The platform supplies a standard, a customer adapts it to its own corporate design, and an individual person can keep a version of their own if needed.
When a document is produced, the application only names the template. Reporting then picks the most specific version that is published: first the person’s own, then the tenant’s, then the platform’s. Versions belonging to other tenants are never visible – someone else’s template behaves as if it did not exist.
Which levels exist at all is decided per project. A system can, for example, allow only tenant and platform templates and exclude personal ones. Platform templates are written by the platform administrators, tenant and personal templates by people with the role intended for this.
Multilingual from the start
Every version can have several language variants, such as German, German for Switzerland and English. Reporting looks for the variant that matches the requested language: first exactly, then without the region, then the default language of the version. If the request names no language, the signed-in person’s language applies.
Reporting formats numbers and dates in the language and time zone of the document. A date does not slip to the previous day just because the server sits in a different time zone.
Changes only through revisions
A template is never changed in place. Every language variant has a draft you work in freely and a chain of revisions. Submitting a draft creates a new revision: a fixed state made up of the template text, the expected fields and embedded files such as a logo, a font or a stylesheet. What gets rendered is always a published revision, never a draft.
- At most one revision per language variant is published.
- Submitting, rolling back and retiring require a reason by default.
- An earlier state can be put back into force as a new revision; the history stays complete.
- Every step is recorded with person, time and cryptographic fingerprint in a chain that can be recalculated at any time.
What you gain
Templates are created in the running system. Whoever has the right role maintains them there – without a new release and without you keeping a separate software version for every tenant. Templates you ship with your application enter the same way and therefore have the same history as any other.
For every document you can say which template state it was produced from. This gives you a solid basis for controlled documents in quality and audit processes.