Content & Templates
Digital Product Passports in tieback separate what information is included from how it is presented. This page explains the content configuration side — how brands control which product data appears in the passport.
Content Configuration
Every passport is backed by a passport template — a configurable structure that determines which information categories and fields are included in the passport experience.
Templates give brands precise control over their passport content:
- Include or exclude entire information categories — for example, a brand may choose to include sustainability data and materials composition but defer supply chain disclosure until a later phase.
- Control field-level visibility — within each category, individual fields can be enabled or disabled to match the brand’s disclosure strategy and data readiness.
- Adapt to regulatory requirements — different product categories and markets have different disclosure obligations. Templates can be configured to satisfy the applicable requirements without unnecessary over-disclosure.
How Templates Work
A passport template is composed of content blocks — each block represents a category of product information. Blocks cover areas such as:
Each block can be independently enabled or disabled. Within each block, the set of included fields is explicitly defined. Only data for included fields appears in the rendered passport — everything else is excluded, regardless of whether the underlying product record contains it.
Template-Governed Rendering
This is an important architectural point: the passport template governs what the consumer sees, not the raw product record.
A product record may contain extensive structured data — covering dozens of fields across multiple categories. The passport template acts as a controlled lens over that data, presenting only the fields that the brand has chosen to include.
This means:
- Adding data to a product does not automatically expose it in the passport. The template must explicitly include the relevant fields.
- Disabling a field in the template removes it from the passport even if the product record contains a value for that field.
- Different templates can present different views of the same product data, supporting different disclosure strategies or regulatory contexts.
Configuring Templates
Templates are configured in the tieback dashboard through the content management interface. The typical workflow is:
- Select or create a template — each brand has at least one passport template. For most brands, a single template covers all products.
- Enable the relevant content blocks — choose which categories of information to include.
- Review field-level configuration — within each enabled block, confirm that the intended fields are included.
- Publish — when the template configuration is finalised, publish it to make it the active governing template.
Changes to the template take effect the next time a passport is previewed or rendered. Published passport snapshots retain the content structure that was in effect at the time of publication.
Template and Product Relationship
In the current model, a brand’s published passport template applies to all products under that brand. This provides a consistent disclosure framework across the product catalogue.
Future releases will support more granular template assignment — such as per-product or per-category templates — for brands that need different disclosure structures for different product lines.
Content vs Presentation
Templates control content — what information is included. They do not control presentation — how that information looks visually. Presentation is handled by themes, which are covered in Themes & Presentation.
This separation means:
- a brand can update its visual presentation without changing the content structure
- a brand can adjust its disclosure strategy without redesigning the passport layout
- content and design decisions can be made independently