Manage Multiple Document Templates in Dochly

Updated June 2026 7 min read Template Editor

As your Dochly implementation grows, your template library grows with it. What starts as two or three templates can quickly become twenty — proposals, contracts, invoices, NDAs, offer letters, SOWs, regional variants, archived versions. Without a clear system for naming, organizing, and governing your template library, admins spend time hunting for the right template, users generate documents from outdated versions, and nobody knows which template is used for which workflow. This guide gives you the framework to manage a template library at any scale.

Naming conventions

A consistent naming convention is the single most impactful thing you can do for template library management. It makes templates instantly scannable, eliminates confusion about which template to use, and makes archived versions easy to identify without opening them.

Recommended naming format:

[Document Type] — [Variant] [Status Tag]

Template Name	Document Type	Notes
Proposal — Enterprise	Sales Proposal	Active. For deals above £50k.
Proposal — SMB	Sales Proposal	Active. For deals under £50k.
Contract — MSA	Master Service Agreement	Active. All new customers.
Contract — MSA v2 [ARCHIVED Jun 2026]	Master Service Agreement	Inactive. Previous version.
Invoice — Standard	Invoice	Active. One-time billing.
Invoice — Recurring	Invoice	Active. Monthly subscription.
NDA — Mutual	Non-Disclosure Agreement	Active. Both parties.
NDA — One-Way	Non-Disclosure Agreement	Active. Customer only.
Offer Letter — Full-Time	HR Document	Active. Permanent employees.
SOW — Fixed Price [DRAFT]	Statement of Work	Draft. Under construction.

The status tag ([ARCHIVED Jun 2026], [DRAFT]) in the name makes the template's state immediately visible in the list view — even before checking the Status field. This is especially useful when filtering by Active status to find live templates quickly.

Template status management

Every Dochly template has one of three statuses. Managing status correctly is what keeps your live workflows running from the right template and your archived versions preserved for audit.

Active

Live and available for generation

Only Active templates can be triggered by Flows, buttons, or approval processes.

One Active version per document type is the goal
All generation workflows point to this template
Set to Inactive when replacing with a new version

Draft

Being built or updated

Draft templates cannot be triggered by any automation — safe to edit without affecting live workflows.

All new templates start as Draft
Duplicates of Active templates start as Draft
Promote to Active only after testing

Inactive

Retired but preserved

Inactive templates cannot be triggered — but remain in the system for audit and rollback.

Set to Inactive rather than deleting old versions
Can be reactivated instantly if rollback is needed
Add archive date to the template name

Organizing by team and object

For orgs with many templates across multiple teams, organizing by department or primary Salesforce object makes it significantly easier to find the right template and assign appropriate access. Here's how a well-organized template library looks across teams:

Sales — Opportunity object

Proposal — Enterprise Proposal — SMB Contract — MSA NDA — Mutual NDA — One-Way Order Confirmation

Finance — Opportunity / Contract object

Invoice — Standard Invoice — Recurring Invoice — Milestone Credit Note Renewal Notice

HR — Custom object

Offer Letter — Full-Time Offer Letter — Part-Time Employment Agreement Policy Acknowledgment

Operations — Case / Account object

SOW — Fixed Price SOW — Time and Materials Onboarding Packet Case Closure Summary

Access control

Not every user should be able to create, edit, or delete templates. Template access is controlled through Salesforce profiles and permission sets — the same model used for all other Salesforce data. Define access levels clearly from the start to prevent unauthorized changes to live templates.

Role	View Templates	Generate Documents	Create / Edit Templates	Publish / Archive
Sales Rep	✓	✓	✗	✗
Sales Manager	✓	✓	✗	✗
Ops / Admin	✓	✓	✓	✓
Legal Reviewer	✓	✗	✓ (Draft only)	✗
System Admin	✓	✓	✓	✓

For contract and invoice templates specifically, restrict publishing rights to Salesforce Admins only. Legal clause changes and pricing updates should never be publishable by non-admin users without a review step. See the Salesforce documentation on permission sets for implementation details.

Using a base template

The most efficient way to manage a growing template library is to build and maintain a base template — a blank, branded document with only header, footer, page layout, and brand styles applied — and use it as the starting point for every new template.

What goes in the base template

Company logo, header layout, footer with company details and page numbers, standard fonts and colors, page size and margins, and a confidentiality notice. No content sections — just the shell.

How to use it

When you need a new template type, duplicate the base template and add the content sections for that document type. Brand updates — new logo, new colors — only need to be applied to the base template and then re-duplicated for future templates.

Keep the base template as a Draft permanently — it should never be Active, since it has no content. Name it clearly: "BASE TEMPLATE — Do Not Activate". This prevents it from accidentally being selected in a generation workflow.

Regular library audits

Template libraries accumulate clutter over time — test templates nobody cleaned up, duplicates from aborted update attempts, templates for workflows that no longer exist. A quarterly audit keeps the library clean and ensures every Active template is intentional.

Review all Active templates — confirm each one is still actively used. Active templates with no generation events in the past 90 days may be candidates for archiving.
Review all Draft templates — identify any Drafts that have been sitting untouched for more than 30 days. Either complete and publish them or delete them if the project was abandoned.
Review Inactive templates — confirm each inactive template has a clear archive date in its name. Remove any that are past your document retention policy period.
Verify Flow references — confirm every automation that generates documents is pointing to the correct Active template. Flow misconfigurations that generate from the wrong template are easy to miss without a periodic check.
Review access permissions — confirm that only the right users and profiles have template editing access. Permission creep happens — periodic access reviews prevent unauthorized changes.

Reducing your template count with conditional logic

The best way to keep your template library manageable is to have fewer templates. Every separate template you create is another object to maintain, update, test, and govern. Conditional logic lets one template do the work of many.

Before creating a new template, ask: could this variation be handled by a conditional section in an existing template? In most cases, the answer is yes.

Without conditional logic

Proposal — Enterprise
Proposal — SMB
Proposal — Partner
Proposal — Enterprise EU
Proposal — SMB EU
= 5 separate templates to maintain

With conditional logic

Proposal — Master
(handles Enterprise/SMB/Partner tiers and EU/non-EU jurisdiction variations via conditional blocks)
= 1 template to maintain

The only time you genuinely need separate templates is when the documents are so structurally different that conditional logic would make the template unreadably complex, or when they are based on different primary Salesforce objects. For the same object with content variations, always use one template with conditional sections.

Best practices summary

Use a consistent naming format — [Document Type] — [Variant] [Status Tag] across every template in your org
Build and maintain a base template — use it as the starting point for all new document types to ensure brand consistency
Use conditional logic to minimize template count — one smart template beats five simple ones every time
Restrict editing access — only admins should be able to publish or archive templates. Legal and financial templates especially need governance.
Archive instead of delete — set old templates to Inactive with the archive date in the name. Never delete templates used for legal or financial documents.
Audit your template library quarterly — clean up drafts, verify Active templates are current, and confirm Flow references are pointing to the right templates
Follow version naming strictly — include version number or date in template names when maintaining multiple versions. See editing and updating templates for the full versioning guide.

Frequently asked questions

There is no hard limit on the number of templates in Dochly. However, keeping your Active template count low — through the use of conditional logic and a clear naming system — makes the library significantly easier to maintain and reduces the risk of users generating from the wrong template.

Yes. The Dochly template list can be filtered by status (Active, Draft, Inactive) and searched by template name. This is another reason consistent naming conventions are important — a clear prefix like "Invoice —" or "Proposal —" makes filtering by document type significantly faster.

Use Salesforce record-level sharing and permission sets to restrict which templates specific profiles or roles can see and generate from. For example, you can configure HR document templates to only be visible and usable by users with the HR profile — not visible to sales reps at all.

Templates are stored as native Salesforce objects and are included in your Salesforce org's standard backup and data export processes. For additional backup, you can duplicate critical templates to a sandbox org as a recovery point before making major updates.

A well-organized template library is the foundation of a reliable document automation system. Clear naming, strict status management, and minimal template count through conditional logic keep your org maintainable as it scales. Next steps: Template editor troubleshooting guide · Edit and update an existing template