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Store and templates

Every lab you deploy starts from a template — the definition of a machine: its base system, the software baked into it, its resources, and what it offers the people who deploy it. The labs in the catalog are templates someone has already written. This section covers the two ways to get more of them:

  • The App Store — ready-made apps you can open with one click once they are installed on your platform.
  • Your own templates — define a lab environment yourself, build it, and deploy copies of it for you, your workgroup or everyone.

Template, lab and copy​

Three words that are easy to mix up:

What it isWhere you find it
TemplateThe definition — files, settings, resources. Nothing runs.Instances → My Templates
LabA published template, listed in the catalog for people to deployLabs in the sidebar
CopyOne running machine deployed from a template, with its own dashboardInstances → My Instances

One template can have many copies. Changing the template does not change a running copy until that copy is redeployed.

Who can author templates​

Template authoring may not be open to you yet

Building your own templates is being rolled out gradually. If Instances → My Templates shows Template authoring is in admin preview, authoring has not been enabled for your account. You can still deploy published templates from Labs, use the Workgroups tab, and deploy templates an author has shared with you.

The pages in this section that cover creating, building and sharing templates are written for authors — people for whom authoring is enabled.

WhoCan author templatesCan deploy templates
Platform administratorsAlwaysAlways
Users on a paid planOnly if your administrator has opened authoring to paid plansYes — their own, public ones, and ones shared with them
Users on the free planOnly if your administrator has opened authoring and set a Zeal amount that unlocks it, and they have that much ZealNo

By default, authoring is limited to administrators.

The template lifecycle​

A template moves through four stages. The editor shows them as a strip across the top, and the later stages stay locked until the earlier ones are done.

  1. Configure — edit the template's files and settings.
  2. Build & validate — the platform checks your template for mistakes and builds it into an image.
  3. Deploy — run copies of the built image.
  4. Share — give other people access, or publish it for everyone.

Deploy and Share unlock after the first successful build. After that, any edit you make is saved immediately, but copies keep running the last built version until you build again and redeploy.

In this section​

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