Drafts, published and retired versions

A template changes through its versions. Each “version” is one copy of the template: you write a draft, publish it, and later retire it. A draft nobody wants is deleted. A published version never changes, so a project follows exactly the version it runs. To change a template, you make a new draft, and new work starts from it once it is published. Running work moves to a newer version only when a manager moves it and the change is safe.

A new version always takes the next number: v1, v2, v3. These acts make or change a version:

• The usual work on a new property or engagement starts from the newest published version of the default template.
• New project chooses the newest published version for you. A manager can pick an older published one, and a message warns that it is not the newest.
• A draft or a retired version is never offered for new work.

A fix in a newer version reaches running work only when a department manager or a company administrator moves that work. The system allows the move only when the difference cannot spoil work already done: new wording, a new checklist, a new place a checklist line is answered from, a new task that nothing already in the work waits for, a new job role to record a client's task, a changed due date of a task, or a change to where an answer shows on another task's card. Anything else keeps the work on its version, and the screen says why. A link from a task to a task of another template, such as from an engagement’s work to a property’s, is not part of either version: work keeps the links that were in effect when it started, whatever version it moves to. A check on a line the newer version rewords or removes starts unchecked; who checked it and when stays in the record. See Move work to a newer version.

• A template has at most one draft at a time. While it has one, Revise and Open a draft are grayed out.
• A draft that nobody wants is deleted, not retired. The next new draft takes the next number after the highest one left, so it can take the deleted draft's number.
• A template's name is fixed once any version of it is published. Its kind of work can still change.
• Two published versions can be live at once. Retire the older one when nobody should start work from it.
• Publishing or retiring a version does not change work that is already running. Projects keep their version until a manager moves them, one at a time, to a newer published version of the same template.