Template administration overview
This chapter was written from the product's source code and has not yet been checked by a person on a running Cogneris. If what you see on screen differs, the screen is right — please tell your Cogneris contact so the chapter can be corrected.
Template is the Cogneris document-generation product. You upload a Word document (.docx) that contains placeholders, say where the value of each placeholder comes from, publish a version, and Cogneris renders it to PDF — for a Workflow process, or in the Playground to try it.
| How to get here | The Template product in the platform menu, or the Template application on its own (its window title is Cogneris Templates). It opens on Dashboard. |
| Who can use it | Templates and Playground, and every action in them: the tenant-management profiles — customer administrator (customer-admin), customer technical administrator (customer-tech), and the Cogneris operators (cogneris-admin, cogneris-tech). Deleting a template additionally needs the tenant administrator role (tenant.admin). Dashboard: any signed-in member of the tenant. Checked by the service; hiding a menu entry is not the control. |
| Content status | From source; not observed (template-fe 9947fd2, template-be f00eedb, 2026-11-04) |
Menu and routes
The menu has three entries. The breadcrumb starts at Template (which links to Dashboard); a template page reads Template › Templates › the template's name.
| Menu entry | Address | Screen | Chapter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dashboard | /dashboard (also /) | Counters and quick actions | Dashboard below |
| Templates | /templates | The list of templates; create and delete | Templates |
| — (open a template card) | /templates/ + template id | Versions, upload, publish, detected keys, Redaction policy | Templates |
| — (no menu entry or link) | /templates/ + template id + /bindings | Field sources: where each placeholder's value comes from | Field sources |
| Playground | /playground | Render a published template to PDF in the browser | Render playground |
An address that matches no screen shows Page not found with a Go home button.
When Template is shown inside the platform, it hides its own side menu, top bar and breadcrumb, and the platform shows the same entries and trail instead.
From a .docx to a rendered document
- Prepare the .docx. Write the document in Word and put a placeholder wherever a value goes — two opening braces, a key, two closing braces (see Placeholder syntax). The Word add-in inserts placeholders from the list of fields your processes can supply.
- Create the template and upload the .docx — Templates. Each upload is a new version; Cogneris lists the keys it found.
- Say where each value comes from — Field sources. Each placeholder is bound to a document field, a form answer, a process value or the cross-check result, with a rule for when the value is missing.
- Publish a version — Templates. Only the published version is rendered; drafts are never served.
- Render — try it in the Render playground, then render from a Workflow phase (below). Rendering from your own application is not available in production for now (see below).
Dashboard
The landing screen. It loads once when you open it.
Counters
| Counter | What it counts |
|---|---|
| Active templates | Templates of your tenant that are not deleted, published or not. |
| Published | Templates that have a published version. |
| Archived | Templates that were deleted — the service keeps them archived (see Delete templates). |
| Renders (7d) | PDFs rendered for your tenant in the last 7 days, from every caller (Playground, Workflow, API). Shown as +N, or 0. |
A counter shows — while it has no value.
Quick actions
| Tile | Where it goes |
|---|---|
| New template — Upload a .docx with … placeholders. We detect the keys and let you render PDFs. | Templates. Use + New template there. |
| All templates — Browse, search, archive, or open any template to manage versions and keys. | Templates. |
| Render playground — Try a render in the browser: fill the keys and generate a PDF. | Playground — see Render playground. |
| Publish a version — Only published versions are reachable from the M2M render endpoint. Promote a draft from any template. | Templates, showing only the templates with no published version (Show all returns to the full list). |
Common problems
| Message | Cause | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| We couldn't load your dashboard stats. with Try again | The service did not answer the counters request. | Select Try again. |
How a published template is used
Only the published version of a template is ever rendered. A template is addressed by its code — the slug Cogneris made from the name when the template was created (shown under the name on every card), which never changes. Each render counts toward the tenant's monthly render quota (5,000 renders a month unless your contract sets another value); a render served from the cache does not.
Workflow — the Generate document phase
The Generate document phase names the template by its Template code. At run time it sends the whole case — documents and their extracted fields, form answers, process data, the cross-check result — and the template's own field sources decide which value each placeholder takes:
- When every placeholder that matters can be filled, the service renders the PDF and returns it to the run.
- When a placeholder whose rule is Send for review cannot be filled, the service renders nothing and answers needs review, with the list of missing keys and why each is missing. The phase's Print even with gaps option makes the service render anyway, printing the fallbacks.
The details of what makes a value missing are in Field sources — at render time.
Your application — the render API
Cogneris services render through a signed machine route, POST /templates/ + code + /render. That route is used by Cogneris services and is not available to customer applications in production for now. Customer rendering goes through the Generate document phase of Workflow and the Render playground; neither needs an API key.
Related
- Templates — create, upload, versions, publish, delete.
- Field sources — where each placeholder's value comes from.
- Render playground — try a render.
- Word add-in — prepare the .docx in Word.
- Generate document — the Workflow phase that renders a template.
- Vision administration overview — the document templates (classifiers) whose extracted fields feed document sources.
Last reviewed 2026-11-04 · Version 1.1.0 · Owner: product-documentation