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The PMS Templates page — reached from the Admin & configuration sidebar group — is the workspace’s library of reusable multi-tab factory Excel templates. Each template is an .xlsx workbook your team has agreed is the right house-style layout for the multi-tab production-spec workbook the workspace issues to the factory. When a merchandiser opens the Style MO create wizard for an order’s style, the wizard’s template picker reads from this library, the chosen template’s mapped sheets are filled with the style’s data and the customer’s brand-tab attachments, and the result is the the factory works to. A workspace can hold as many templates as it needs — one per factory, one per customer house style, one for short runs versus full runs — and the team picks the right one at the point the MO is created.

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What it is

A single page under Admin & configuration → PMS Templates with two regions:
  • An Upload Template card for adding a new template.
  • A Saved Templates list — one row per template — with the actions you take on it from here.
A template holds three things: the workbook itself, a name (and an optional description), and a per-sheet mapping that tells the platform which sheet in the workbook to fill against which kind of factory data.

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Why it exists

Factory production-spec workbooks are a strong house-style document. Different customers, different factories, and different product lines each want the workbook laid out differently — which sheet is on top, which columns appear, which logo sits in the corner, which language the labels are in. The team that built the workspace knows those preferences; the platform should not. PMS Templates lets your team curate the workbook layouts the workspace actually uses, once, in one place. Each style MO then picks a template instead of building one from scratch. The workbook stays the team’s; the platform fills it.

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When it is used

  • At workspace start-up, to upload the first round of factory templates so the team has something to pick from when they start raising MOs.
  • When a new factory or customer joins and the team agrees on a new house-style workbook for them.
  • When an existing template needs a refresh — a new column, a reordered sheet, a refreshed logo — at which point a new template is uploaded (or an existing one is cloned and revised) and the team starts picking the new one going forward.
  • When the team retires a template and wants to remove it from the picker.
You reach the page from the sidebar under Admin & configuration → PMS Templates.

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Dependencies

  • The .xlsx workbook itself, prepared offline by the team. The page is the upload point, not an editor — the workbook is built in Excel and uploaded here.
There are no upstream master records PMS Templates depends on; the library is the upstream master itself.

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What depends on it

  • The Style MO create wizard reads from this library when a merchandiser creates a new for an order’s style. Picking a template is step one of the wizard. See Production for where MOs sit in the broader production flow.
  • The PMS document the wizard generates — the workbook the factory actually opens — is filled against the chosen template’s per-sheet mapping. The document keeps the template it was generated from on file for reference.
The PMS document the factory works to is the immediate downstream artifact. Removing a template that is still referenced by a draft PMS document is blocked (see Business rules).

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The five target slots

A template’s workbook can contain any number of sheets, but each sheet the platform fills must be mapped to one of five target slots. Each slot corresponds to a kind of content the platform knows how to route into the workbook:
  • Grading — the per-order-style POM × size grid, rendered from the finalised built on the workspace’s .
  • Sample review — the customer’s sample review comments, attached on the MO create wizard from a brand-tab library item.
  • Packing — the customer’s packing instructions, attached on the MO create wizard from a brand-tab library item.
  • Production notes — the customer’s production notes, attached on the MO create wizard from a brand-tab library item.
  • Style detail — the customer’s style detail drawings, attached on the MO create wizard from a brand-tab library item.
The five slots are fixed by the platform; your team decides which sheet in your workbook fills which slot. A workbook may include sheets the platform does not fill (cover sheets, the platform-rendered Order-quantities, BOM, and Spec tabs, legal appendices, blank pages), and those sheets ride through to the factory workbook untouched.

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Uploading a template

To add a template:
  1. In the Upload Template card, give the template a Template Name. Use a name the team will recognise on the picker — for example, the factory or house-style the workbook is for.
  2. Pick the .xlsx workbook from your computer.
  3. The platform runs a quick validation pass on the workbook and shows the result on the card — whether the workbook is in a shape the platform can fill, plus any warnings worth knowing about before you commit.
  4. Choose “Upload” to commit the template to the library.
A freshly-uploaded template is in the library but is not yet mapped — the platform does not know which sheet should hold which kind of data until you open the sheet-name mapping editor and tell it (see below). A template without a mapping can still be picked by the wizard, but the platform will not fill any sheet until at least one mapping row exists.

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Mapping sheets to target slots

Each saved template has a Sheet Name Mapping editor — opened from the template’s row in the list. The editor is where you tell the platform which sheet in your workbook fills which target slot. Each row in the editor is a pair:
  • The source sheet name — the title of the sheet inside the workbook (for Grading) or inside a brand-tab library Excel (for the other four slots), typed exactly as it appears, including any leading or trailing spaces. The platform matches by exact title.
  • The target slot — one of Grading, Sample review, Packing, Production notes, or Style detail, chosen from a dropdown.
Sheet-name matching is exact, whitespace included. 包裝資料 and 包裝資料 (with a trailing space) are two different names to the platform. A brand-tab Excel whose source sheet name differs from the mapping by so much as a trailing space will not attach, and the target tab on the generated workbook will render header only.
Add as many rows as the workbook has sheets you want filled. A sheet not listed in the mapping is left alone — useful for cover pages, platform-rendered tabs (Order quantities, BOM, Spec), or appendices you do not want the platform to touch. “Save” commits the mapping to the template. A mapping can be edited at any time. Editing a template’s mapping does not rewrite any PMS document already generated from that template — each document keeps the mapping that was on the template at the moment it was generated.

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Cloning a template

The Clone action on a template’s row makes a copy of the template under a new name you type. The clone keeps the original workbook and the original mapping; the team can then tweak either independently of the source. Cloning is how the team forks a template — typically when a new customer wants the same house-style with a different logo or one column added. The clone is tagged on the list so the team can see at a glance which templates were forked from which.

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Marking a template active or inactive

A template carries an Active / Inactive flag. An inactive template stays in the library — it does not vanish, and any PMS document already generated from it still references it — but it is not offered to the wizard’s picker when a new MO is being created. Inactivating a template is how the team retires it from new use without losing the history of what was generated from it.

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Marking one template default

One template can be tagged Default. The default is what the wizard’s template picker pre-selects when a merchandiser opens the MO create wizard — the team can still pick a different template for the specific MO, but the default is the “if no one says otherwise” choice for the workspace.

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Deleting a template

The Delete action removes a template from the library entirely. It is destructive — the workbook itself is removed from the workspace — and it cannot be applied to a template that is still in use:
  • A template that is referenced by any PMS document still in Draft cannot be deleted. The delete is refused and the team is prompted to either inactivate the template instead or open the draft documents and finish or remove them first.
  • A template that has only been used by issued PMS documents — that is, documents that have moved past Draft — can be deleted; the issued documents keep the template they were generated from on file, but no new MO can pick the template after it is gone.
In practice, the team’s reflex is to inactivate rather than delete: an inactive template can no longer be picked by the wizard, but the audit trail of what the workspace used to use stays intact. Delete is for templates that were uploaded by mistake or never adopted.

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Who can manage templates

Template management is role-gated:
  • Administrators and Merchandisers can upload, clone, edit, and inactivate templates.
  • Delete is restricted to administrators only.
Other roles see the page but cannot change what it holds. The page is intentionally narrow — most of the workspace only ever consumes templates through the MO create wizard’s picker, and the curation of the library is one of the admin / merchandiser team’s responsibilities.

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Business rules

  1. A template is an .xlsx workbook, a name, and a per-sheet mapping. The workbook is built in Excel offline; the platform is not an editor for the workbook itself.
  2. Each mapped sheet has a target slot. A slot is one of Grading, Sample review, Packing, Production notes, or Style detail. Sheets not listed in the mapping are left alone.
  3. Sheet-name matching is exact, whitespace included. A leading or trailing space on a source sheet name is enough to prevent the attachment. Rename the sheet to match the mapping character for character.
  4. One template may be tagged Default. The default is what the MO create wizard pre-selects.
  5. An inactive template stays in the library but is not offered to new MOs. Documents already generated from it still reference it.
  6. A template referenced by any Draft PMS document cannot be deleted. Inactivate it instead, or finish or remove the draft documents first.
  7. Administrators and Merchandisers manage templates; Delete is Administrator-only. Other roles can see the page but not change it.
  8. Editing a template does not rewrite any PMS document already generated from it. Each PMS document keeps the template (and the mapping at the moment of generation) it was filled from.

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Best practices

  • Name templates so the picker is self-explanatory. A merchandiser opening the MO wizard sees the template name — make sure the name tells them which factory or house-style the template is for.
  • Map every sheet you want filled, and only those. A sheet not in the mapping is left blank; a sheet mapped to the wrong slot is filled with the wrong data. The mapping editor is the small piece of plumbing that makes the workbook flow.
  • Watch for whitespace on source sheet names. The single most common cause of a target tab rendering header only is a leading or trailing space on the source sheet name inside a brand-tab Excel. Copy the exact name from the mapping when you build or rename the sheet.
  • Use Clone to evolve a template. Cloning preserves the team’s audit trail of what changed and when, far better than overwriting a workbook in place.
  • Prefer Inactivate over Delete when retiring a template. An inactive template stops appearing in the picker but keeps the history of every PMS document that was generated from it.
  • Curate the library — do not let it sprawl. A picker with six good templates is more useful to the team than one with thirty near-duplicates. Inactivate the ones no one is picking any more.