Drafts, versions and publishing

This article explains how drafts and versions work, so you can change your pricing without surprising a buyer. Editing a configuration never changes what your buyers see. You always edit a draft; buyers are priced from the published version, and the two meet only when you publish.

Why it works this way

Because a quote has to outlive a rate change. If your machine rate went up in April and a customer asks in November about a quote you sent in March, you need to be able to answer them. Quotometry can, because the quote records the version that priced it, and that version never changes.

It also means you can spend an afternoon reorganising your materials without a single buyer being priced from a half-finished configuration.

Before you publish

Two habits are worth forming:

• Look at the simulator. The panel beside the editor prices a real part from your draft. If the number surprises you, find out why now.
• Check your golden parts. Pin the jobs whose right price you know and see all of them at once. A change that fixes one job and breaks three is much easier to spot here than in your invoices.

What publishing does

1. Runs the publish checks. A configuration that cannot produce a sane price will not publish, and the check names the setting that is the problem rather than failing vaguely.
2. Creates a new numbered version, recording who published it and when.
3. Moves every widget that offers this configuration to the new version.

Go back to an older version

Every version is kept. If a change turns out to be wrong, republish the old version: it is published again as a copy with the next version number, so the history stays complete. Recovery is one action, not an afternoon of remembering what you changed.

Test mode

A test widget prices from the same configuration but never uses your quota and never creates a real order. Use one on a staging site, or while you are still deciding. See Widgets and theming.

Exporting

A configuration exports as the JSON document the engine actually reads, not a report about it. That is the document you would give to your own developer, or take with you if you left. Nothing about your pricing is locked in a format only we can read.

Next steps

• Simulator and golden parts: try a change before you publish it.
• Your first configuration: what to set before the first publish.
• Versioning and changelog: how quotes record the version that priced them.