Publish a DPP
Publishing a DPP makes it publicly accessible. Once published, the product's QR code is generated, and scanning that code takes any user to the public DPP viewer page. This is the step that brings your product into regulatory compliance with the accessibility requirements of EU Battery Regulation 2023/1542.
Publishing is a deliberate, confirmation-required action. It is not triggered automatically by completing all fields.
The flow at a glance:
Pre-Publish Completeness Check
Before you can publish, Traceable runs a completeness check against the DPP. This check evaluates the product's data against the mandatory and recommended field requirements for its battery category.
To check at any time, open the product editor, go to Review & Submit (the last step), and click Check Compliance. This neither submits nor publishes anything; it only reports the current state.
The editor also reports progress continuously without you asking. The Review & Submit step shows how many required fields are complete — for example, "7 of 84 required fields complete" — above a list of the EU Battery Regulation gaps that must be fixed before publication. Each gap is a link that jumps straight to the step holding that field.
How to Read the Results
The completeness check result is displayed as a structured report with three sections:
Mandatory fields — all must be complete to publish
Every field in this section is required by EU Battery Regulation 2023/1542 for the product's battery category. If any mandatory field is empty, publishing is blocked until it is filled. The report shows the field name, the DPP section it belongs to, and a direct link to edit it.
Recommended fields — should be complete but not required to publish
These fields are not strictly required for publication but are expected by regulators as part of a complete DPP and are included in the compliance score calculation. You can publish with recommended fields incomplete, but the compliance score for this product will reflect the gap. A tooltip on each recommended field explains why it is considered best practice to complete it.
Warnings — informational notices that do not block publication
Warnings highlight conditions that may indicate data quality issues without necessarily blocking publication. Examples:
- "Nominal energy content does not match the calculated value from capacity × voltage (tolerance: ±5%). Please confirm the entered value is correct."
- "Manufacturing country is set to a high-risk jurisdiction. Ensure supply chain due diligence documentation is attached."
- "No compliance documents are attached to this product. Attaching a test report or Declaration of Conformity is strongly recommended before publishing."
Warnings are advisory. Review each one and satisfy yourself that the data is intentional before proceeding.
The Publish Action
Once the completeness check shows no blocking mandatory field gaps:
- Open the product editor and go to Review & Submit (the last step).
- Review the outstanding gaps. Use Check Compliance to re-run the check, and Save as Draft if you want to stop without submitting.
- Click Submit for Review.
Submitting is not publishing. Submit for Review moves the product into review; publication is a separate, deliberate action taken after the review completes — see Wizard steps for the step-by-step surface. Once the product is published:
- The product status changes to Published.
- A QR code is generated and linked to the product record.
- The DPP becomes publicly accessible at its permanent URL (
https://app.traceable.digital/dpp/[slug]). - An audit trail entry is created recording the publication event, the user who performed it, and the timestamp.
The public DPP viewer URL is stable and permanent. It will not change if you update and republish the product.
What Changes After Publishing
| Element | Before Publishing | After Publishing |
|---|---|---|
| DPP visibility | Private (draft only) | Publicly accessible |
| QR code | Not generated | Generated, downloadable |
| Product status | Draft | Published |
| DPP URL | Not active | Active and permanent |
| Compliance score contribution | Excluded | Included in account score |
| Audit trail | Changes recorded | Publish event recorded |
Versioning
Every time you publish or republish, Traceable creates a version record. Versions are numbered sequentially starting at v1.
When you edit a published product and republish the revision:
- The revision becomes the new active published version (e.g., v2).
- The previous version (e.g., v1) is archived internally. It is no longer served via the public DPP URL.
- The QR code continues to resolve to the same URL, which now serves the new version.
- A snapshot of the previous version is retained in the audit trail and can be viewed by clicking Version History on the product page.
Version history is visible to operators in the Company Portal. It is not directly exposed in the public DPP viewer, which always shows the current published version.
Taking a passport out of public circulation
Two distinct actions exist, both in the product's actions menu (the ⋯ button at the end of its row in Products):
- Withdraw / Recall — the product is being taken off the market, or recalled.
- Deprecate Product — the product is no longer sold, but is not being recalled.
Withdraw / Recall
The dialog is headed "Withdraw or recall this product" and the action is confirmed with Withdraw product. It is not a single click: the form requires you to state why.
- A reason. The recorded reason comes from a fixed vocabulary rather than free text, so withdrawals stay comparable across your portfolio and legible to an authority. The values in use include market withdrawal, safety recall, safety defect, non-compliance, regulatory directive, counterfeit, customer complaint, end of life, supersession and operator request.
- Context, minimum 10 characters. The form refuses to submit without it — "Provide at least 10 characters of context." A bare reason code is not accepted as a record.
- A successor product, where the reason implies one. Supersession requires you to name what replaces the battery; the form reports "Successor required" if you do not.
- Whether an authority has been notified, with examples of the national bodies concerned (DGCCRF, BNetzA, MHRA). This is recorded alongside the withdrawal rather than being something you track separately.
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.
For machine consumers — a registry, a resolver, another company's system — the passport's API route responds HTTP 410 Gone, which is the correct signal that the resource existed and has been intentionally removed, rather than a 404 implying it never existed. The human-facing page cannot return a clean 410 through its route, so it additionally carries a noindex robots directive to keep the withdrawn passport out of search results.
Why the record survives the withdrawal
Withdrawal removes the passport from public circulation; it does not erase it. The passport remains subject to the Batteries Regulation's accessibility and record-keeping obligations for its retention period, 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 above is 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 and public response codes are therefore accurate; the exact on-screen layout is not described.
After Publishing
Once your DPP is published, the immediate next steps are:
- Download the QR code — go to the QR Codes section and download in SVG format for print and PNG for digital use. See QR Codes.
- Monitor the compliance score — check the product's individual score and resolve any recommended field gaps to maximise your account compliance rating.
Blockchain anchoring of DPP versions (recording a cryptographic hash on a public blockchain) is on the roadmap. See Blockchain Anchors.