Publish a DPP
Publishing makes the DPP publicly accessible at its link and QR code. Scanning that code takes any user to the public DPP viewer page.
Publishing is a deliberate, confirmation-required action. It is not triggered automatically by completing all fields.
The flow at a glance:
Pre-Publish Check
Before you can publish, Traceable runs publish checks against the DPP. The checks depend on the category. For EV, LMT, industrial over 2 kWh and stationary batteries, the data points the EU battery passport guidance marks mandatory for the category must be filled. For industrial 2 kWh or less, SLI and portable batteries (voluntary passports), a short minimum set must be filled, such as name, model, manufacturer, chemistry, weight, capacity and the CE declaration. The wizard marks these fields with an asterisk.
To see where you stand, open the product editor and go to Review & Submit (the last step). The panel there lists what still blocks publishing and updates as you save. Check Compliance is an AI feature and appears only if your company has AI access.
The Overview tab of a draft's product page shows the same live check in its Readiness card, with a Fix link for each gap that opens the editor on the right step. Check & publish runs the check again before anything is published.
The Review & Submit step shows, for each step, "N of M required fields complete", and a panel headed "N gaps must be fixed before publish" (for voluntary categories the heading counts what is left). Gaps are grouped by step; Fix jumps to the field.
How to Read the Results
The Review & Submit step shows two panels.
The red panel, "N gaps must be fixed before publish"
It lists what blocks publishing. Publishing stays blocked until these are filled.
The amber panel, "N recommended items"
It says "These do not hold publishing back. Open a step to see why each one is recommended." Each recommended item carries a plain-words reason. You can publish with recommended items open.
For example, an expired document that no rule requires does not hold publishing back, but the platform still tells you to replace it.
The Publish Action
Publishing is done from the header of the product's own page. Select the product's name in My products to open it. See The product page for the buttons by status.
- Check & publish. On a Draft product, a team member with the Publish DPPs module sees Check & publish. It shows the result of the publish checks before anything happens.
- If required items are missing, the dialog is titled "Can't publish yet" and says "N required items are missing. Fill them in and check again." Each item is a link to the place that fixes it, and a line shows how many required fields are filled. Go to the first missing field takes you to the first item.
- If nothing is missing, the dialog is titled "Publish <name>?" and says "We checked the passport against the publish rules." It ticks the required fields, the required documents and "The publish checks found nothing missing".
- An Approver or Admin confirms with Publish, and the passport goes public at its link and QR code.
- Any other Editor confirms with Submit for approval. The dialog adds: "Your team needs a second person to approve. Submitting sends it to an approver on your team." The toast reads "Sent for approval".
- Approve. On a Submitted product an Approver or Admin sees Approve, which opens "Approve and publish?" ("Approving makes <name> public at its link and QR code straight away.") with the confirm button Approve and publish. Send back to draft beside it asks for a reason of at least 5 characters, and the toast reads "Sent back to draft". Everyone else sees a disabled Waiting for approval.
- Publish version N. On an Approved product with an edit window open, an approver publishes the next version. See Versions and edit windows.
The passport preview page has its own banner with the one publish action your role allows. Its button reads Publish, Submit for review or Publish new version, and it opens a shorter confirmation without the pre-check list.
In the editor, the Submit for Review button on Review & Submit runs the same action: for an approver it publishes straight away.
When it works the toast reads "Your passport is live". If the checks fail, the dialog stays open and lists "What to fix". In a live account the chip on the product then reads Published; the stored status is Approved.
After a successful publish the toast offers Get QR code. The QR code is created when you select Generate QR Code on the product's QR page, or automatically the first time the public passport page is rendered.
The public link is /dpp/[slug], or /01/[GTIN] when the product has a GTIN. Retired slugs are kept permanently.
What Changes After Publishing
| Element | Before Publishing | After Publishing |
|---|---|---|
| DPP visibility | Private (draft only) | Publicly accessible |
| QR code | Not available | Can be generated, downloadable |
| Product status | Draft | Approved (the chip reads Published in a live account) |
| DPP URL | Not active | Active |
| Audit trail | Changes recorded | Publish event recorded |
Versioning
Each publish creates a version record. A first publish is not reliably version 1.
When you edit a published product and publish the new version:
- The new version becomes the active published version.
- The public passport page always shows the current version.
- The QR code continues to resolve to the same link, which now serves the new version.
- The Versions tab of the product page lists each version with its status, date, publisher and kind. Earlier versions are stored as snapshots and can be fetched read-only at
/api/dpp/[slug]/v/[version]without signing in. See Versions and edit windows.
Taking a passport out of public circulation
Two distinct actions exist, both in the More menu of the product's own page, below a separator. Both are for Approved products only, and both need the Publish DPPs module and an Approver-or-above role:
- Withdraw…: the product is being taken off the market, or recalled.
- Deprecate…: the model is no longer produced. A confirmation "Deprecate Product" says the public passport stays online, read-only, with a notice that the model is no longer produced, and "You cannot undo this." Confirm with Deprecate. The notice reads "Model no longer produced".
A Deprecated passport can still be corrected: Edit passport opens an edit window, and the new version is published as a correction. The product stays Deprecated. See Versions and edit windows.
Withdraw
The dialog is titled "Withdraw <product name>?". A click outside it does not close it. The action is confirmed with Withdraw passport, and it is not a single click: the form requires you to state why and to type a confirmation word.
- A reason. Choose one of ten reasons: Safety recall; Safety defect identified; Counterfeit / forged DPP; End of life; Market withdrawal; Replaced by a newer SKU; Compliance gap identified; Customer complaint volume; Regulatory directive (informal); Other (operator request).
- Details for the public notice (10 to 1000 characters). These appear in the public notice, so leave out anything confidential. The button stays disabled until 10 characters are entered, and the form says "Provide at least 10 characters of context."
- Successor product. Required for Market withdrawal and Replaced by a newer SKU, optional otherwise (End of life no longer requires one). The form reports "Successor required" if you do not name one where it is required.
- Authority notification. The checkbox "I have notified the relevant authority (recommended for this reason)" and the field "Authority notified (e.g. DGCCRF, BNetzA, MHRA)" appear for Safety recall, Safety defect identified and Compliance gap identified. They do not appear for Counterfeit / forged DPP. For the same three reasons the dialog shows a red note: "Inform the market surveillance authority immediately where the battery presents a risk (Art. 38(9))". The same sentence appears as a badge beside each of those reasons.
- What happens. The dialog lists the consequences. "Printed QR codes keep working and show that notice." For a counterfeit withdrawal it says instead that the public sees only the withdrawal notice, with no passport data, at the passport's address and its QR codes. If the model has battery units it adds "The N battery passports for this model show it too." It ends with "You can't undo this on this version. To bring the passport back, reopen it and publish a new version."
- Regulatory directive. The reason Regulatory directive (informal) opens three more fields: a required yes or no question on whether the directive orders the battery data frozen, a required field for the authority that issued the directive, and an optional field for the directive's reference number. The authority takes letters, digits, spaces and a few punctuation marks, up to 120 characters; the reference takes up to 64. Traceable records these answers and does not notify the authority. If the answer is yes, the product stops accepting battery management system updates until you publish it again. Publishing again ends the freeze but does not erase the record: the answer, the authority and the reference stay with the withdrawal and in the audit trail. Nothing else about the passport changes, and neither the authority nor the reference is shown on the public passport. The text in Details for the public notice is shown there, so write it for the public.
- Confirmation. The field Type WITHDRAW to confirm takes the word in capital letters, exactly as shown. The Withdraw passport button stays disabled until a reason is chosen, the details are long enough and the word is typed. Cancel closes the dialog without withdrawing. Some reasons ask for further details, and the form shows what is needed.
- The result. When it works, the toast reads "Product withdrawn" and says "<name> is withdrawn. Its public passport stays online, read-only, under a withdrawal notice." For a counterfeit withdrawal it says "Its public page now shows only the withdrawal notice, with no passport data." instead. If the server refuses the withdrawal, the toast reads "Withdrawal failed" followed by the reason.
To bring a withdrawn passport back, open its product page, select Reopen and give a reason, make any changes during the edit window, then select Publish again.
What the public sees afterwards
A QR code already printed on a battery keeps existing, so its URL continues to be requested long after a withdrawal. That is why withdrawal is a change of passport state and not a deletion.
The passport stays online, read-only, with a notice at the top that gives the withdrawal date, your reason and your statement, and a link to the successor product if you named one. The notice also carries the reason's plain sentence, a "Legal basis" line, the sentence "The passport stays available for batteries already on the market." (not for counterfeit), and the line "Authorities and persons with a legitimate interest: contact <support email>." For machine consumers (a registry, a resolver, another company's system) the passport's API route answers HTTP 200 with an availability object that carries the same notice, so a recall is never hidden behind a "not found". The page carries a noindex robots directive to keep the withdrawn passport out of search results. If the reason is counterfeit, the public sees the notice only and none of the product data.
Withdrawing for a safety or non-conformity reason (recall, safety defect, non-compliance) also removes the verified mark from the certificates and documents shown on the passport.
Why the record survives the withdrawal
Withdrawal takes the passport out of active use; it does not erase it. The passport stays online so that it remains available for batteries already on the market, and the withdrawal itself is written to the audit trail with its reason, context, successor and authority-notification state. That record is what an authority inspects.
The behaviour and the dialog wording above are taken from the platform's own withdrawal implementation, not from walking the dialog on a live product, deliberately, because completing a withdrawal on a shared environment would take a real passport out of public circulation. The field requirements, dialog text and public response codes are therefore accurate; the visual layout of the dialog is not described.
After Publishing
Once your DPP is published, the immediate next step is:
- Get the QR code. Select Get QR code in the toast, or open the product page, go to the Batteries & QR tab, open Filter & export and choose Model QR code. Select Generate QR Code if no code exists yet. See QR Codes and Batteries and QR.
Blockchain anchoring of DPP versions is not available yet. See Blockchain Anchors.