Template vs Configuration

[Liberteks]

Forgive the naivete, I'm new to Yealink. It's unclear to me what the difference is between a phone template and configuration file. They seem similar to me, except one is xml and the other text (or bin).
As I provision new phones, I'm not able to determine where the configuration comes from, or if even need to concern myself, since the phone template is on the 3CX server.
We have T2 and T4 series phones.

Any assistance is appreciated.