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Curate the template catalogue

The template gallery is where new virtual apps start. The four templates that ship with OpenBuilt (Permit Tracker, Stakeholder Consultation, Employee Onboarding, Incident Reporter) are a baseline; in a real deployment you will add your own and retire the ones that do not fit.

Goal​

By the end you will have promoted a finished virtual app into the template gallery, picked its category and description, and confirmed it shows up under Templates for everyone with builder access.

Prerequisites​

  • You are an OpenBuilt admin (in the admin group, or in a group nominated under Manage who can build (RBAC)).
  • A virtual app that is finished enough to be a template — schemas stable, pages saved, a small set of well-chosen sample records.
  • A clear category to slot it under (GOVERNMENT SERVICES, CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT, INTERNAL OPERATIONS, FIELD WORK, or a custom category).

Steps​

  1. Open Templates in the OpenBuilt left navigation. The gallery shows the current set, with category badges and Use this template buttons.

    Template gallery

  2. To add a new template, open the source virtual app and click Actions → Promote to template (or open Virtual apps, tick the row, and pick Promote to template from the bulk-action menu).

    Promote-to-template action

  3. The dialog asks for the template's Name (defaults to the app's name), Slug, Category, Description (one-liner shown on the card) and a longer Body (markdown, shown on hover and on the template-detail page).

    Promote dialog

  4. Click Promote. OpenBuilt freezes the current manifest, copies it under a new application-template record, and the new card lands in the gallery at the top of its category.

    New card in the gallery

  5. To retire a template, click the card to open its detail page, then Actions → Retire. The template stops appearing in the gallery, existing apps that were cloned from it stay untouched.

    Retire template

Verification​

The promotion worked when: the new card shows up under the right category on the Templates gallery, builders can click Use this template and land in Create an application from a template, and the resulting clone matches the source app.

Common issues​

SymptomFix
Promote to template is missing from the Actions menuYou are not in a builder/admin group — see Manage who can build (RBAC).
Category dropdown does not list yoursCustom categories are stored on application-template records — add the category to the first record manually via OpenRegister, future promotions pick it up.
Template appears in the gallery but Use this template errorsThe frozen manifest references a register that does not exist on the target instance — re-promote with the Include registers tick.

Reference​