The blocktick SaaS helps organizations to issue blockchain-based documents with least effort. The SaaS implementation helps organizations to start issuing documents even if they have a lack of knowledge in the blockchain. Our streamlined workflow helped several organizations to issue and manage documents. We, blockchain expert team, are always open to hearing from you and updated the application according to it. The limitation of adding a custom template was one of the important feedback that we had received with our previous design. This made us redesign our workflow to which allows organizations to create custom templates. The new blocktick SaaS helps us to create, design and issue user-defined documents in a better way.
Let’s have a look into how an organization can add a custom template.
On signing up with blocktick SaaS, the issuer can now use this credentials to log in to the SaaS account.
After login, the issuer has to choose an account plan of their choice. Following that, there are exactly 3 easy steps to successfully issuing a document.
- Adding template structure
- Setting template design
- Populating and issuing documents into blockchain
In this blog, we are going to look upon the first step only. We’ll provide blogs on the other steps too.
Adding Template Structure
The first step in the issuing process is adding a template structure. As the name suggests, this can be thought of as deciding how your document should look like or in other words what data constitute your document. These structures will act as a template for issuing batches of documents.
Note: The first and second steps are a one-time process. Using one document template, batch documents can be issued at any time.
Okay, now we can move into how it works on the UI level. There is a separate page for creating, updating and managing document templates. You can visit by clicking on the TEMPLATE option on the sidebar.
You will be asked to add the template if you haven’t added any yet.
In order to add a template, the organization has to click on the ADD + button.
Via clicking, they are suggested to choose a template category in the first place. Currently, we are providing three different templates categories for documents. They are professional documents, educational documents, and customs documents template respectively.
The professional certificates are intended for professional purposes like experience certificates, professional skill acknowledgment certificates, etc.
The educational certificates are intended for educational institutions. It can be used for various applications like course certificates, mark lists, grade cards, etc.
The next one is custom documents, which can be customized in any way. The issuer is able to redesign the custom documents in their own way. This will be beneficial for any other sector of documents.
Let’s say we are going to select professional certificates. On choosing professional certificates, the issuer is directed to the next step.
In this step, the organization can name the template.
Please have extra care while naming the template. The template name should be meaningful as it is used in the next two steps.
Next, we have to choose the data tags that require for our document. Irrespective of the document category, the three tags as ID, NAME, EMAIL are mandatory. Let’s say we have to add our organization name in every document we are issuing. Then, we must select the ORGANIZATION tag from the tag list. On clicking the tag, we’ll get a preview which shows how our final CSV file will look like. This is very useful while designing the template.
These tags are listed based on the priority of the usage. If you don’t see the tag you are searching for in the listed tags, then you can always add your own custom tag. Let’s say, we would like to add our address to the document. What we are going to do for that is, add this tag as a custom tag. Enter a label for that tag, say Address or Organization Address in the input field and click ADD. This will list the entered label in the tag list, from where the issuer can choose it.
After adding all necessary tags, click on the CREATE & DOWNLOAD CSV button. On clicking, there are two processes happens in the background. Initially, the template gets saved at the database. At the same time, the saved template will start to download as a CSV file.
Now, let us examine how our final CSV file looks like. You can use any spreadsheet application like MS Excel or LibreOffice Calc.
As you see, the final CSV template will be exactly as you designed. Save this file somewhere safe, as we use this file to populate with data and later issue into the blockchain. For this reason, the downloaded CSV files are very important. Also, note that the name of the template will be the name of the CSV file.
After adding a template, the document-template page changes into as follows.
Now, you can download the template as CSV, edit the template, delete the template or set a design template, for the template you just created.
The download option and delete option are self-explanatory. Using the edit option, we can rename the template, re-assign tags and finally save it again. Let’s see how we make changes to a created template. We would like to add a phone number field this time.
On clicking on the Edit button, the settings are opened as a pop-up window. From this window, the issuer can perform all customizations which were available at the time of the creation of the template.
You are now ready to create the template of your choice. You can include as many templates as much as you want. Remember to name meaningfully, so that you can identify the right template for that purpose.
Setting up a design for this template structure and finally issuing the document will be explained in the coming blogs.