Projects, clients and templates

In short

Clients and projects organize what you have already made. Templates are for making the next thing faster. They look like three flavours of the same feature and they are not.

Two things on this page will save you real pain: a template is a live pointer to an existing Mark rather than a saved copy of its settings, and reset is destructive in a way that delete is not.

How the three fit together

Clients and projects form a two-level hierarchy over your items. Templates sit outside that hierarchy entirely — they are shortcuts for creating things, not containers for holding them.

The arrow from template to Mark points the wrong way for most people's intuition. A template does not hold a copy of settings — it holds a reference to a Mark that still exists and can still change. Edit that Mark and every future use of the template inherits the edit; delete it and the template has nothing to copy from.

Clients

A client is the top level: the organization or person the work belongs to. Agencies use them per customer; in-house teams often use them per brand, per region, or per department.

A client is worth creating even if you only have one, because it is what makes reporting separable later. Items can also sit outside any client — the console calls this unassigned or non-client — which is fine for personal work and a nuisance at scale.

Projects

A project is the second level, and it normally belongs to a client. The console asks you to pick or create the client first, and following that is what keeps the hierarchy meaningful. A project can end up without one all the same — deleting a client leaves its projects in place and simply un-assigns them — so treat client-first as the habit to keep rather than a rule the platform will enforce for you.

Think of a project as a campaign, an event, a print run, or a season — something with a beginning and an end. "Autumn catalog", "Trade show Hall 2", "Q3 packaging". Not "Marks" or "Stuff", which describe the container rather than the work.

Assign at creation, not later. Every web creation path — the Create a TouchPoint wizard on its Full control path (the Assign this record step), Linxy IQ, both bulk tools, the batch importer — offers a client and a project on the way in. The wizard’s Simplified path and the Linxy App do not, so assign those items afterwards. Using them costs seconds. Reassigning several hundred items afterwards does not, and interaction history you never separated cannot be separated retrospectively.

Templates are pointers, not snapshots

You create a template by opening a Mark you have already configured well and choosing Save as Template. You give it a name, and it appears in your template list with a link to view the original.

That link is the clue. The template stores a reference to that Mark — not a frozen copy of its settings. Everything follows from this:

If you…	Then…
Edit the original Mark's settings	The template now produces the new settings. Sometimes exactly what you want; sometimes a surprise months later
Delete the original Mark	The template has nothing to copy from and stops being usable
Transfer the original Mark to somebody else	Same problem — it is no longer yours to read settings from
Want a genuinely frozen configuration	Keep a dedicated Mark that exists only to be a template, and never repurpose it

The safe pattern: build reference Marks on purpose. Create one Mark per configuration you want to reuse, name it so nobody mistakes it for live work — "TEMPLATE — client microsite defaults" — point it at a holding page, and leave it alone. Saving a template off a live campaign item works today and quietly changes behavior the next time somebody edits that campaign.

What applying a template copies

Applying a template is not all-or-nothing. You are offered a checklist and you tick the groups you want carried over, which makes one well-configured reference Mark usable for several different purposes.

Group	What comes across	Usually worth ticking?
Destination and rotation	The address list and the rotation mode	Rarely — the new item normally has its own destination
Password	The password protection setting	Yes, when the whole set should be protected the same way
Secure	The invited-access flag	Yes for confidential sets. Remember the invite list is per item
Geo targeting	Location routing rules	Yes — these are tedious to rebuild by hand
Device targeting	Device and platform routing rules	Yes, same reason
Client and project	The assignment	Yes when the new item belongs to the same work
Tracking pixels	Configured pixels	Yes for anything in the same campaign
Parameters	The parameter builder set-up	Yes, then adjust the campaign name
Expiration	The expiry date	Only if the dates genuinely match — check this one
Start and stop	The active window	Same caution as expiry
Scan limit	The interaction cap	Only for identically-scoped items
Webhook	The notification or webhook setting	Yes for anything feeding the same system

The two to look at twice are expiry and start/stop. Copying a date from a reference Mark built last spring is how a brand-new item arrives already expired, and the symptom — content that will not open, with no obvious cause — takes a while to trace back to the template.

Delete versus reset

These sit next to each other in the console and their consequences are not comparable. Read the table before using either on a client or project with real history under it.

Action	What happens to the items	What happens to the history	Reversible?
Delete a project	They survive, un-assigned from that project	Untouched	Effectively yes — reassign them
Delete a client	They survive, un-assigned from that client	Untouched	Effectively yes — reassign them
Reset a project	They survive, still assigned	Deleted, for every item in the project	No
Reset a client	They survive, still assigned	Deleted, for every item under every project	No

Reset at client level is the largest single act of data destruction available to you. It zeroes the counts and deletes the recorded interactions of every item beneath that client, across all of its projects, with no export prompt and no undo. It exists for legitimate reasons — reusing a client record for a new engagement, clearing test data before a launch — but export first, every time.

Deleting is the gentler choice precisely because it only removes the label. If you are unsure which you want, you almost certainly want delete.

Setting this up so it stays useful

Create the client before the first item.
Even for your own work. It costs one field and makes everything after it separable.
Name projects after the work, not the container.
"Spring launch — Hall 2 signage" reads correctly in a report next year. "Marks 2" does not.
Build reference Marks for templates, deliberately.
Prefixed names, holding-page destinations, never repurposed. This is the single habit that makes templates trustworthy.
Assign on the way in, on every creation path.
Including bulk runs, where the cost of not doing it multiplies by the run size.
Review the checklist each time you apply a template.
Especially the date fields. Ticking everything by reflex is how expired items get created.
Export before any reset.
Treat reset as a data-destruction operation, because that is what it is.

Symptoms, causes and fixes

Symptom	Cause	Fix
A template produces settings you did not configure	Somebody edited the Mark it points at	Use the view-original link to see the current source; move to a dedicated reference Mark
A template stopped working	The Mark it pointed at was deleted or transferred away	Rebuild the template from a Mark you control and will not repurpose
Cannot create a project	No client selected — a project must belong to one	Create or pick the client first
A newly created item is already expired	Expiry was copied from a template built earlier	Clear the date; untick expiry and start/stop when applying templates
Items vanished from a client view	The client or project was deleted, which un-assigns rather than deletes	Find them in the unassigned list and reassign
All interaction history for a client is gone	Reset was used at client level	Not recoverable. Restore from an export if you made one
Reporting cannot separate two campaigns	Both were created unassigned or under one project	Assign future items properly; past interactions cannot be split retrospectively

Things people commonly get wrong

"Save as Template saves the settings."It saves a pointer to the Mark. Edit that Mark and the template changes with it. Build reference Marks that exist only to be templates.

"Reset is the tidy-up option and delete is the drastic one."It is the other way round. Delete only removes a label; reset permanently destroys interaction history for everything underneath. Export before any reset.

"Deleting a client will delete its items."It un-assigns them. They are all still there, just harder to find. Look in the unassigned list.

"I will organize it once the campaign is running."Assignment is retrospective but reporting is not — interactions recorded while everything was unassigned stay that way. Assign at creation.

"Tick everything when applying a template."That copies expiry dates and active windows too, which is how a new item arrives dead. Read the checklist, especially the date fields.

Related reading: Mark settings, Batches and bulk creation, Reading your interaction data, and Transferring ownership.

In short

On this page

How the three fit together

Clients

Projects

Templates are pointers, not snapshots

What applying a template copies

Delete versus reset

Setting this up so it stays useful

Symptoms, causes and fixes

Things people commonly get wrong

Related