Who this is for: Audit Managers and Administrators.
Making the change
Open Audits > My Audit Templates.
Open the ⋮ menu and choose Edit Template. The builder opens with the full configuration loaded, on a screen titled Edit Audit Template.
Make your changes.
Select Publish Template.
Publishing is immediate. The change is saved straight away and you are returned to My Audit Templates. There is no confirmation step and no summary of what the change will affect. There is also no Save Draft when editing a published template — see 3.3.
Versions
Every template carries a version number, and it goes up by one each time you publish — v1, then v2, v3, v4. You can see the current value in the Version field of the builder's metadata block, under the Global Template Library card. The Revisions column in My Audit Templates shows the same history as a count.
What your change affects
Change | Completed audits | In progress audits | Scheduled audits | Future audits |
Clause added or removed | No change | No change | Updated | Yes |
Checklist column toggled | No change | No change | Updated | Yes |
Findings fields changed | No change | No change | Updated | Yes |
Section toggled on or off | No change | No change | Updated | Yes |
Publish defaults changed | No change | No change | Updated | Yes |
Name or description changed | Table row updates immediately | — | Updated | Yes |
Regulation tags changed | Table row updates immediately | — | Updated | Yes |
In short:
Audit state | What happens |
Completed | Nothing. The record is frozen at the version it used |
In Progress | Nothing. The auditor keeps working on the version they started |
Scheduled, not yet started | Picks up the latest published version |
A scheduled audit that has not been opened takes the newest version at the moment someone conducts it. An audit scheduled before two republishes opened as Template: Fire Safety Inspection (v3) when it was conducted — the version current at that point, not the one in force when it was scheduled.
What does not change. The audit's own Audit Title and its Scope / Description were copied onto the record when it was scheduled. Republishing the template does not update them. If you rename a template or rewrite its description, scheduled audits keep the wording they were created with.
Check before you republish
Nothing warns you, so make this a habit:
Open Audit Records and filter to Scheduled.
Look for audits using the template you are about to change.
Decide whether those audits should run against the new version. If they should not, conduct them first, or reschedule them after the change.
Tell the auditors. They will not be told automatically that the questionnaire they are about to work through has changed.
The published audit report records which template version was used, so after the event you can always tell what any given audit was run against.
If this doesn't work
You want to change one location only — you cannot. See 2.7.
Changes did not reach a completed audit — by design. See 11.3.
Related: 2.7 Using templates across several locations · 3.3 Saving a draft and publishing · 11.3 I edited a template but a completed audit didn't change