What a Template is and what it's made of
A Template (Asset Template) is the blueprint every asset of a given type is created from. If you manufacture or manage multiple units of the same product (e.g. an industrial fridge model, a line of sensors, a standard plant), you define the template once and then create one asset for every real-world unit.
A template is made up of four parts:
1. Variables
Variables define which data an asset of this template will expose: each variable has a key, a data type, an optional unit of measure, and a flag indicating whether it's writable (i.e. whether you can send commands to the device, not just read values).
Example: an "Industrial fridge" template might have the variables temperature (numeric, °C, read-only), compressor_active (boolean, read-only) and setpoint (numeric, °C, writable).
2. Integration
The integration defines how physical devices communicate with Trackle Spaces. Four types are supported:
| Type | When to use it |
|---|---|
| Trackle | Devices using the native Trackle module/SDK. |
| MQTT | Devices that publish/subscribe to MQTT topics with a configurable payload. |
| HTTP | Devices that periodically call the Trackle Spaces HTTP APIs (also lets you configure an "offline" timeout). |
| Seneca | Devices compatible with the Seneca protocol: telemetry and remote commands via tenant, External ID and token. |
The integration type is a property of the template: every asset created from that template communicates the same way.
3. Alarm rules
Alarm rules are conditions on the template's variables (e.g. "temperature > 8°C for more than 10 minutes") that, when they occur on an asset, generate an alarm in that specific asset's history. Rules are configured at the template level and automatically apply to every asset using it. Learn more in Alarm rules.
4. Template dashboards
Every template can have one or more shared dashboards, visible on every asset using that template. You can also set one dashboard as the "home dashboard": it will be shown first when you open an asset's detail page. Learn more in Dashboard.