Liquid Template Concepts

The template is the model based on which the PDF copy of an invoice, dunning reminder or account statement is rendered. It defines its contents and layout. Produced PDF documents are intended to be distributed via email or postal service to customers, and can be exported and archived.

Combining data with a template to produce an output

In addition to the fields that are printed to the PDF, the templates also include texts for the email that JustOn sends to distribute the rendered PDF documents.

An alternate version of JustOn's PDF template mechanism is built around files written in the Liquid template language. To render the files and to produce the corresponding PDF output, JustOn uses a dedicated service based on the Chromium PDF engine. Use this approach if your business requires sophisticated PDF customizations that are difficult or impossible to implement with standard templates and Visualforce PDF rendering, like, for example, custom fonts or QR codes for Swiss invoices.

Note

Be aware that creating and modifying Liquid templates requires profound skills in web development techniques, in particular, Liquid template language and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

Creating and maintaining Liquid templates constitutes custom development. Related issues are therefore not covered by the general maintenance and support contract for JustOn.

General Concepts

Template Variation

Usually, you have multiple templates that each serve a specific target. There are, basically, two ways to diversify templates:

Creating multiple templates for different targets, for example, different locales or specific customer groups,
Using both dedicated Liquid files (attachments to the template record) to customize specific parts of the resulting PDF files for different purposes, for example, invoice, credit, cancellation, and dedicated template detail records to customize email texts or counters for specific purposes (see Common Approach).

Info

You can combine the two approaches.

JustOn provides default Liquid templates for invoices, dunning reminders and account statements (in English) as well as for Swiss QR-code invoices (in English and German). Based on these files, you can define your own templates.

Example Liquid templates

Invoice Template (English)
Dunning Template (English)
Account Statement Template (English)

Swiss QR Code Invoice Template (English)
Swiss QR Code Invoice Template (German)

Template Assignment

When setting up a Subscription, Opportunity or any other object for billing, you usually specify a standard template for that object. This template is then assigned by default to all invoices created from that object.

If the source record does not specify a template, JustOn uses the one set on the related account. In case the account has not set a template either, JustOn falls back to the Default template.

As long as an invoice has the status Draft, you can assign another template to the invoice.

Common Approach

JustOn provides default Liquid template files for invoices, dunning reminders and account statements:

Liquid Template Title	Used for
`Invoice Template`	invoices, credits, cancellations, pro forma, deposit
`Dunning Template`	all dunning levels
`Account Statement Template`	account statements

In the simplest approach (no locale-specific variation, etc.), you have one template record to which are attached the Liquid template files, as well as are associated the template detail records to cover your use cases. Now depending on the use case, JustOn uses the template record, the Liquid file attachment or the associated template detail to produce the PDF file and the email.

template_v2_process
Example use cases

Your business may, however, need to cover more complex scenarios, like multiple locales, different customer groups, etc. In this case, you double this structure: You create a second (third, etc.) template record intended for the specific purpose, and attach the corresponding specific Liquid template files and associate the relevant template detail records.

Use Case	Data Category	Data Origin
Invoice	PDF layout and standard texts	Invoice Liquid template
	Email standard texts	Template record
	Counter	Template record
Credit	PDF layout and standard texts	Invoice Liquid template
	Email standard texts	Credit template detail record
	Counter Optionally, if different from invoice counter	Credit template detail record
Cancellation	PDF layout and standard texts	Invoice Liquid template
	Email standard texts	Cancellation template detail record
	Counter Optionally, if different from invoice counter	Cancellation template detail record
Dunning reminder	PDF layout and standard texts	Dunning Liquid template
	Email standard texts	Dunning template detail record
	Counter	Dunning template detail record
Account statement	PDF layout and standard texts	Account statement Liquid template
	Email standard texts	Account statement template detail record
	Counter	Account statement template detail record

Configuring Templates
Configuring Template Details

Limitations

Be aware of the following restrictions:

No external resources will be loaded (like image URLs).
To embed assets (images, fonts etc.), you have to use data URIs. The assets must be encoded as base64 strings. For details, see Embedding Assets.
By default, backgrounds are not rendered. To control this behavior, use specific CSS styles per element:
```
-webkit-print-color-adjust: exact;
```
No scripts can be run.
The following tags are allowed: a, abbr, acronym, address, area, article, aside, b, base, basefont, bdi, bdo, big, blockquote, body, br, button, canvas, caption, center, cite, code, col, colgroup, data, datalist, dd, del, details, dfn, dialog, dir, div, dl, dt, em, fieldset, figcaption, figure, font, footer, form, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, head, header, hr, html, i, img, input, ins, kbd, label, legend, li, link, main, map, mark, meta, meter, nav, noframes, noscript, ol, optgroup, option, output, p, param, picture, pre, progress, q, rp, rt, ruby, s, samp, section, select, small, source, span, strike, strong, style, sub, summary, sup, svg, table, tbody, td, template, textarea, tfoot, th, thead, time, title, tr, track, tt, u, ul, var, wbr.
Consequently, the following tags are not allowed: applet, audio, embed, frame, frameset, iframe, object, script, video.