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Renaming Your Slug

Module: ChemIQ For: Admin

Renaming your portal slug isn't a typo correction — it's a policy decision. Before your slug activates, a rename is reversible. After activation, the old slug is permanently reserved to your company and serves a redirect to your new URL indefinitely.

This page covers both states, the verbatim warning Tellus shows you before an activated rename, and the real-world reason this rule exists.

Where to Rename​

  1. Open ChemIQ from the main navigation
  2. Go to Public SDS Portal
  3. In the Portal Config panel, click the Edit button next to your slug
  4. Enter the new slug — the same character rules and reserved-word checks apply (see Claiming Your Slug)
  5. Click Save slug

What happens next depends on whether your current slug has activated.

Pre-Activation Rename (Soft)​

If your slug has not yet activated — meaning no product has been public for 7 consecutive days — a rename is a clean swap:

What happensOutcome
The new slug is reserved to your companyNew URLs go live immediately
The old slug is released back to the namespaceAnother company could claim it tomorrow
No redirect is createdThe old URL stops resolving as soon as the change saves

This is the safe window. Use it for typo corrections, second-thought brand decisions, or test-environment cleanup before going to production.

You'll see a confirmation dialog explaining that the old slug is being released and any in-progress draft URLs you've shared will stop working — but there's no permanent-redirect warning, because no permanent redirect is needed.

Post-Activation Rename (Permanent)​

Once any product under your slug has been public for 7 consecutive days, your slug is permanently reserved to your company. From that point forward, every rename creates a permanent 301 HTTP redirect from the old slug to the new slug, and the old slug can never be reassigned to any other company.

Tellus surfaces this with a warning dialog you cannot dismiss without reading. The exact copy you'll see (this is the OSHA-driven language signed off by Tellus's EHS expert review):

This slug is permanently reserved.

You've published SDSs at sds.tellusehs.com/{old_slug}/.... QR codes printed on drums, totes, and secondary containers may have been distributed to your customers and worksites. Workers may scan those codes for years.

You can rename your portal to a new slug. The old slug will redirect to your new URLs indefinitely so existing labels keep working. The old slug cannot be reassigned to another company — ever.

This is an OSHA-driven safety decision under 29 CFR 1910.1200(g). It is not configurable.

[Continue rename] [Cancel]

If you click Continue rename, the change saves immediately. Both the company-portal slug and any per-product slugs that have activated under it are preserved in a redirect map maintained by Tellus indefinitely.

Why This Matters​

The rule sounds heavy-handed until you walk through the timeline of a real chemical container.

Picture Day 0: you publish SDSs and print QR-coded GHS labels on a batch of solvent drums. Those drums ship to a customer warehouse, get partially used, sit on a shelf, get moved to a secondary container, get re-labeled by hand, and eventually get scanned by a worker during a spill in Year 4.

If Tellus had recycled your old slug to a different company in Year 1, that worker would land on the wrong SDS — wrong product, wrong hazard data, wrong first aid. Under OSHA, that's not just an availability failure (1910.1200(g)(8)) — it's an affirmative misinformation event under (g)(1), (h)(2)(iii), and (f)(11). Workers act on the wrong information. Citations follow. So does tort liability.

The permanent-redirect rule exists to make that timeline impossible.

Concrete Implications for You​

If you've...Then a rename means...
Printed GHS labels with the old slugThose labels keep scanning correctly forever. The QR resolves through the redirect to the new URL.
Shipped containers to customers with the old URL on the packing slipCustomer scans still work — they just land on the new canonical URL.
Linked your old portal URL from your company website footerVisitors still land on the catalog. Update the footer link at your leisure; nothing breaks if you forget.
Embedded the old URL in contracts or master service agreementsThe redirect handles it. Update on the next contract renewal cycle, not urgently.
Were planning to free up the old slug for someone elseYou can't. The old slug is yours forever; it cannot be reassigned to another company.

The redirect is permanent and recursive — if you rename again a year from now, the original slug still resolves through the chain to your latest current URL.

Product Slugs Follow the Same Rule​

The 7-day activation and permanent-redirect rules apply to per-product slugs within your catalog too. A product's slug is locked the same way once it has been public for 7 consecutive days. After that, renaming a product slug creates a permanent in-portal redirect from the old product URL to the new one — and the old product slug can never be reused by another product in your catalog.

This matters mostly for power users who rename products in their catalog. If you uploaded a product as acetone and later split it into acetone-67-64-1 and acetone-tech-grade, the original acetone URL would redirect to whichever product inherited the rename — and the slug stays out of circulation for any future product.

Practical Guidance​

A few patterns that work:

  • Sandbox first. If you're not sure about your slug, claim it in the development environment at dev.tellusehs.com and stress-test the URL by sharing it with one or two customers. Find typos there, not in production.
  • Rename early or not at all. If you spot a mistake, rename within the first 7 days — that's the only free window. If you miss it, rename only if the new slug is genuinely better; don't churn for cosmetic reasons.
  • Don't rename for company name changes. Tellus does not auto-update your slug when you change your legal company name (Acme Chemicals Inc. to Acme Industries LLC). Customers may have your old URL in their systems; the redirect path is more disruptive than just keeping the original slug.
  • If you rename after activation, update your internal docs. Pin the new URL in your internal HazCom plan, sales playbook, and customer-onboarding emails. The old URL will keep working forever, but consistency reduces confusion.

Permissions​

RoleCan rename the slug
Admin✓
Manager—
Program Coordinator—
Employee—