Home Forums Discussions General Discussion How to move templates

I would like to move some templates I created from the practice wide template lists to personal template side. I appreciate your thoughts.

Administrative Options

Under Practice-Wide Preferences:

Set Practice Templates (you must restart AC for changes to take effect)

Bert,When I go to "set practice template" in admin section., The tempalate created is under ADMIN not under my name. It can not change. When I open the template section by Right click it show the template in the practice wide side. In the right side column. The right side or practice wide template is crowded I would like to move some I like to the left side column that carry my name or provider name. I am not I undrestant what you said. Can you clarify. Thanks

That's a good question. There may be a much easier answer as there usually is but here is what I had to do to make that happen. If you made all your templates in the admin section and shared them, they all show up under any person in the practice in the practice wide templates section. But you just want the ones you used most commonly under your personal templates. Those are templates you formed as a user and not as admin.

So open a patient. Right click on the area you want to bring the templates to the other side. This is moderately slow but I had to "export" each template I wanted. So click on the template in Practice Wide Templates that you want in your personal templates and click "export". Export it to your desktop or a folder on your desktop so it's easy to find. Then click import (from local folder), go to the folder and import it. Done.

Sounds more painful than it is but it can be time consuming if you have a lot of them.

That's why it's probably best to create your personal templates under CTRL+F1 on the main screen. You can share these if needed which will have them show up in Practice Wide Templates.

I have no idea how this happened. I decided to try a little experiment. I spent over an hour deleting EVERY template on my sandbox in my virtual machine. Everyone. Mouse click on delete, followed by finger on Enter key. I got into quite a rhythm at times.

Then I closed the window, and they all came back. I tried again as Admin and they didn't. But, then I tried again as myself and they didn't either. Of course, the last two I just did one category and not all 12 or so. I hope that the problem isn't getting rid of all of the templates. It made no sense.

Anyway, if anyone cares or wants to know, I was able to get rid of every single name associated with a template and replace it with mine. That way, I can do what I want with the template. Delete it, share it, copy it. No more Mr. ADMIN

I must say the templates are the one last frontier I don't understand. I have no idea why the same template is owned by so many people. Even owned by "labs" and "follow-ups." We had one MA here for one day. One day! And, her name is connnected to at least 50 templates. She didn't make one. All I can think of is if they use one, they own it. But, how would you get 50 in one day? And, why would she even use it.

Baffled. Any ideas?

Well, I can get all of your Admins to change to Mohamed in one fell swoop. Of course, you would have to delete all of your templates. These would then be replaced again. You would, of course, want to make a backup.

I will say myself that it is absolutely brilliant!

At the very least, Bert, I can say that AC support is with you on this one. I am a GI doc and my wife is an internist. My goal was to:
a). delete 99% of the templates in AC and
b). set up two distinct sets of templates, one for each of us (some shared, some not) plus several to be used by support staff for letters, receipts, etc.

I would think the basics of this are not an uncommon scenario for new users.

I felt foolish because I was spending so much time trying to accomplish what should be such a simple task. It seemed crazy that to accomplish goal a). I had to go through and delete every template one-by-one. And delete each template several times, once for each user (including all those who never did, and never will see a patient). No "shift-click delete" to get rid of a whole series of templates...no "delete admin templates to delete them all"...no shortcuts whatsoever.
I tried to understand the concept behind the structure, creation and sharing of templates but I could not. (What exactly does it mean that a template is "Admin" as compared to "shared"? What is the difference between creating a template under my user name and sharing it, vs. as "Admin" and sharing, vs. IN the admin section)? I missed an entire talk at the ACUC because I spent over an hour with low, then high level ACUC support in an attempt to get an answer to this. I got answers and felt great, until I tried to use them and it became clear that the answers were wrong. I went back and was told, "oh,I guess we don't really understand this either".

The end result was that later I spent hours to mechanically change the templates in a way that makes no conceptual sense, but to some extent allows me to get most of what I want. At least the whole time, I could put out of my head the annoying thought 'there must be an easier, quicker way to do this'....because I don't think there is. And if there is, AC support doesn't know it.

Well, hang in there, because my fix is pure genius.

Although it doesn't change the fact that the same problem may occur again. I do know the difference between Admin and Shared, and I will "share" that with you later unless someone else does.

But, it will have to wait until I reply to a few of your other good comments, as usual. (Not that I will reply as usual -- which is true -- but that your comments are good, as usual)

I'm assuming Admin templates are basic standard templates shared across all users. Shared templates can be any personal user's personal templates that they share or unshare with the whole network.

The longer I use AC the more odd things I find and this is one of them. I just wonder how certain things came about in AC that are odd little idiosyncracies of the program.

I am worried that if my genius technique is used so that all of my templates are BERT rather than any other name including Admin, the other names will sneak back in. That's the weird part.

Bert, there is a default group of templates that you are given when you start AC. This same group of templates is shared through Admin templates. I believe every time you create a new user that default group of templates is created for the new user to have in their personal templates. ...Either that or they are automatically given the Admin set of templates, but I'm pretty sure I've long since deleted those.

How did you delete them? That seems to be the topic of this thread.

Is it just I or is AC's server particularly slow today?

I went to the Admin section then ordered by user or section I wanted to clear then I clicked delete a couple times. After that delete has the focus so you can just keep tapping Enter repeatedly to delete the templates in a line. It would be better if one could CTRL/SHIFT select the templates. (I checked first, I see NACNCD is tomorrow.)

Wow. Never knew about that focus thing. Sure is quicker that way. That does get rid of Admin and as many as you want, but I don't think you could get them back with one name on them.

Hey, what was your ingenious solution to renaming the templates?

I would Export Practice Templates, then do some work on that file to remove extra unwanted templates, then import back. The only problem being I need to check if it is safe to import back. Because I'm not very good at the 'do work' stage.

Mohamed, were you able to get what you wanted?

Good thinking Ben. Pretty close. You export the templates to an .xml file by default. You then change that to a text file. Under edit, you choose Replace and you then take every user name and change it to your user name. So:

Find what: Admin

Replace with: Bert

hit enter and select Replace all and presto, every template under the name Admin is now under Bert. Repeat this process for every user name. Change back to an .xml file and import.

Pretty cool.

Apparently this was an intersting topic. I read all the response. I have to admit some of them were a little complicated for me to follow. What I did to move some templates was what Travis suggested . It was simple enough to follow . Simply exporting the desired template to the desktop and immediatly imported the same template to the personal side. It was simple and easy to do.
Now I went further and crated a folder on my desktop. In word document I started to create several templates. Then I started AC and from the main screen (again as travis suggested) by cliking Ctrl+F1, I was able import all these template to AC on the personal side.
Now I have creating a folder on the desktop that contains all my templates, includig new ones. The folder can be save on a thumb drive or CD. I propably will make another one that has practice wide templates.
All in word format. It can be easly edited and modified. And more imported can be saved Outide AC.

Mohamed, Thanks for letting us know how you dealt with this. General Surgeons think alike I guess. I'm glad you got it figured out. Good idea keeping a copy of your templates too. I'm going to do that as well.

I concur. It's always nice to see how things turned out... especially after we go off topic.

Scalpel, did you ever send a bug report asking why the behavior had changed?

I did not send a bug report on this issue directly. I've sent several recently so I think the AC crew is worn out with me. Just little stuff like the template cursor staying at the top, inability to directly input the ICD code in the Assessment and have it transfer over to the Orders, and some minor others.

Travis,
Don't hold back. From the way Jon talked at the ACUC, they have hundreds. Yours will just blend in. :-)

I'm going to keep sending them! For a "newer" user like myself, the upgrade has been one of significant disappointment. I fear that v5 was rushed out with a lot of little annoyances/bugs/changes that just make life suck during day-to-day practice. I unfortunately did not forsee these problems prior to upgrading even after playing with v5 for 5 months. I fear again that the PM system will be the same and rushed out "just to have it".

Most of us, including John, knew that CCHIT sucked and got trapped into it and rushed out a "less than stellar" product. It's like hospitals and JCAHO. JCAHO absolutely sucks but somehow has developed this ridiculous power and progressively worsens hospital care.

JCAHO. You mean the organization that ensures you will not drink a cup of coffee in the nursing area? I always get a kick out of that. 364 days of the year, I have Diet Cokes and Dunkin' Donuts coffee next to the charts except for JCAHO. 364 days of the year, the patients' names and doctors are spelled out so you know who is whom and where they are and then change to initials after that.

Yeah, B.T in room 323 w/dr H.L is really helpful. (The board is not visible by patients.

I feel bad sometimes because I am always big on AC, and Jon appreciates that, but sometimes I can be his biggest critic on the boards.

As you know, Ed, my programmer and I, have three programs we made. One day I said to Ed, "Can we add this and that?" And, he snapped back, "Can we get the version we have now perfect and bug-free before we move forward. That's how I felt about v4. How many places do you see AC advertised? The only ones I see are the trade shows and this board. Maybe it's in a few magazines. But, this board sells a lot of programs. And, some of these suggestions, five or five-hundred are very good. As someone once said on here or somewhere, the slogan for AC should be, "Made by a doctor for doctors." And, where else can you get your ideas from than a hundred doctors who use it everyday and post their experience with it.

I hate JCAHO. My mother always told me to never say hate, but I absolutely hate JCAHO. Hate.

I love AC. I gripe about all the little things I would fix because it's not perfect and I want it to be. Take 100 doctors, put them in a room, and develop the perfect EMR for all of them. Ain't happenin' my friend.

But we all do basic things every day with our EMR. Those things should be perfected, perfectly perfected. Yet we tend to get a bunch of crap that will only benefit a few while the major things that we all use (i.e. letter writer, orders, reminders for f/u screening exams, streamlined workflow, I could go on) tend to fall to the wayside.

That's why I try to be vocal on the boards about things that need to be addressed.