The Templates feature allows you to create and manage entities at scale. Before templates start generating entities, you need to ensure they are set up correctly. Previewing templates can save time by catching errors and ensuring the templates generate the right entities. You can evaluate whether the template you’ve configured works as intended, and identify possible improvements. You can adjust the template then preview it again to re-evaluate until you are happy with the result.
Understand your options: In-UI preview and preview download
You have two options when previewing templates: In-UI preview and preview download. In-UI preview allows you to see the first 100 template-generated entities with a subset of related information. Preview download allows you to generate a file that contains all template-generated entities and related information.
Understand in-UI preview
In-UI preview, gives you a basic idea of what your generated entities will look like, but is limited to a subset of data and does not include specifics about template-generated errors.
Generate your first in UI preview
When you click Continue at Stage 2 “Template type” settings, and reach Stage 3 "Confirmation", you’ll see a message above an empty “Preview” reporting table that says “Your preview may take time to load” while the first 100 rows are generated from the template. Then you’ll see a subtitle that says “Preview of the first 100 campaigns, ad groups, keywords or ads”, and the table is filled with data for the examples generated.
Edit your template
To edit your template, do the following:
- Click Confirmation after previewing to identify things to change.
- Edit the template.
Note: Templates are always created in the paused state. You must click the Status icon menu Enable option for the template to create active entities.
- Check through the data to ensure that the configured template meets your requirements. The rows are presented 25 to a page. Navigate the pages using the buttons in the bottom right of the screen.
Update your template
To make changes to the template, click the stage title in the visual flow representation at the top of the page to return to the settings stage that contains the template settings you want to edit. After editing, click Save & Continue until you reach Stage 3 where you can preview and evaluate the edited template.
Understand preview download
Preview download allows you to view all potential generated entities and proactively fix errors that might occur. To initiate the preview download, click preview download. After clicking the button, a dropdown menu displays the file formats that can be downloaded.
Note: The downloaded file is saved in the download folder on your computer or other device.
Supported Rows and Columns
The downloaded file contains the following information:
- Rows: All of the information for the entities generated, based on the template settings.
- Columns: Depending on the template type, all parent columns are included. For example, when downloading ad templates, both ad groups and campaigns are included. For ad group templates, only campaigns are available. This will help you visualize the campaign hierarchy and provide more context. The goal is to reduce the need for multiple clicks in the UI to locate the template's parent entity.