A useful clinical template should reduce repeated typing without forcing every encounter into the same language. Repertoire’s Template Studio lets you adapt built-in templates and create local templates that reflect how you organize recurring documentation.
This guide explains the main customization paths, how recognition works, and how to keep your personal library recoverable.
Repertoire is not an EMR. Do not enter PHI, patient-specific information, or any HHS Safe Harbor identifier. Use patient-independent template content only, add encounter details in your approved EMR, and obtain appropriate IT approval before use. Read the data security and HIPAA guide, or contact Repertoire.
Decide what should become reusable
Not every repeated sentence needs a template. Good candidates usually have a stable structure but meaningful choices within that structure.
Repertoire also provides Building Blocks for independent statements, visit details, shared wording, choices, and organizational boilerplate. Before creating a new Template, use the guide to choosing between a Building Block and a clinical Template to decide which maintained object fits the workflow.
Examples include:
- A familiar assessment and plan outline
- Counseling language that needs small encounter-specific changes
- A recurring group of pertinent findings
- A preferred starting structure for a common problem
- A short piece of narrative text you repeatedly retype
Never store patient-specific details. Avoid wording that is likely to become inaccurate when reused. A template should make meaningful generic choices easier to see, not hide them inside a wall of boilerplate.
Customize an existing template
Open Menu → Browse Templates, select a built-in Template, and use Edit in Studio to open it in Template Studio. A customization creates a local override in the current browser workspace; it does not edit the shipped Template library in the project.
This is useful when the built-in template is close to what you need but you want to:
- Change the default selected options
- Add or remove recognition aliases
- Revise narrative wording
- Add, remove, or reorganize selectable content
- Change how selected options are combined in the output
Because the override is local, another browser, device, or deployment URL will continue using the original built-in template unless you transfer the workspace with Export and Import.
Create a new template
Choose New template in the template library to begin with a blank template. Give it a clear canonical title and, when useful, one or more recognition aliases.
The title should describe the problem or documentation block precisely. Short, generic titles are more likely to collide with ordinary note text. Recognition aliases should be phrases you would intentionally place on their own line, not common fragments that may appear accidentally.
Template Studio checks for exact normalized recognition conflicts. It also warns about unusually short aliases. These safeguards matter because an ambiguous phrase should not silently choose between multiple templates.
Delete or restore a template
Open Menu → Customizations to manage templates saved in the current browser. A user-created template has a Delete action. Deleting it removes the template and its recognition aliases from the library after confirmation; wording already inserted into the current session remains so work is not unexpectedly lost.
A modified built-in template has Restore built-in instead of Delete. Restoring removes the local override and returns to the shipped version approved by the authoring clinician. Organization-specific clinical review is still required. The same Delete or Restore action is available in Template Studio when editing a saved customization.
Export a workspace backup first if you may want the customization later. Deleted templates and removed overrides cannot otherwise be recovered after the confirmation is completed.
Understand the available section types
Templates can combine different kinds of sections.
Use the up and down controls beside a section to reorganize the Template without deleting and recreating content. Its wording, choices, defaults, required setting, rich text, stable ID, and Building Block link move together. The exact-output preview updates immediately.
Option groups
Option groups present selectable pieces of content. Use them when a section has multiple findings, actions, or statements that may be included independently.
An option group can render selections in several layouts:
- One bullet for each selected option
- One bullet with selected options appended using spaces
- A natural-language list ending in “and” or “or”
Choose the layout based on the final note, not merely on what looks compact in the editor. Several distinct plan items are usually easier to review as separate bullets; short related phrases may read better as one sentence.
Narrative sections
Narrative sections contain reusable prose rather than selectable options. They work well for counseling, instructions, or shared boilerplate that still needs review in every encounter.
Built-in narrative sections may render in italics to distinguish them visually from selectable bullets. Template Studio can switch a narrative section between italic and normal text.
Inline choices
Inline choices keep a small choice directly inside generated text. They are helpful when alternatives belong within one sentence and separating them into multiple lines would make the note harder to read.
Selecting a structured inline choice does not count as an ordinary manual rewrite, so the generated block can remain linked to its template controls.
Use required-field warnings sparingly
For a selectable section—or a visible fill-in in an advanced Template—enable Required only when leaving it empty would make the reusable output materially harder to review. Most controls should remain optional so a warning continues to mean something.
Before copy, an incomplete required field offers two deliberate paths: return to the Template to complete it, or choose Copy anyway. Auto-copy pauses until the field is complete. If its generated text has been edited directly, Repertoire explains that the original control can no longer be verified instead of guessing.
A required field never infers a clinical fact, recommends a choice, or prevents copying. The built-in library leaves fields optional; local and importing authors decide whether a warning belongs in their reviewed workflow.
Order sections and active problems
Section order is part of the reusable Template. The up and down controls in Template Studio move a section with its stable ID, rich text, choices, defaults, required setting, and Building Block link. Saving a reordered approved Template changes its fingerprint and requests re-review.
The current note has a separate order. Move controls at the top of an active Template panel move that panel and its generated note block together only while the block is untouched and adjacent in the expected structure. Undo restores both orders. Repertoire will not silently move clinician-edited text across unrelated content; move that wording directly in the note instead.
To review several active problems without reordering, choose Next or use Command/Ctrl + Up/Down. With focus in the Template workspace, Alt + Up/Down changes panels, Alt + Left/Right moves between controls, and **Shift
- Alt + Up/Down** reorders an untouched problem.
Turn existing note text into a template
If you already wrote the wording you want to reuse, select that text in the note and choose Save template. Template Studio opens with the selected wording as narrative content.
This is often the fastest way to grow a useful library: draft patient-independent language, then save the wording that proves worth reusing. Never draft with patient details and attempt to remove them later. Make encounter-dependent parts explicit placeholders or choices to be completed only in the EMR.
Use recognition aliases carefully
Repertoire’s automatic recognition is exact by design. A diagnosis title or alias must occupy the complete line, apart from capitalization and trailing punctuation.
Building Blocks use the same rule for exact names. Statements and narratives can expand after the brief pause; inline choices and option sets require a saved default. Templates take priority over Building Block names, and duplicate names remain untouched. Keep a Building Block choice without a default when silent selection would be inappropriate; users can still reach every finished choice through search, Common visit details, or the dot-phrase picker.
A good alias is:
- Distinct enough not to appear accidentally
- Easy for you to remember
- Specific to one template
- Long enough to avoid collisions
After saving a template, test its title and each important alias in a temporary blank note. Confirm that the intended template appears and that ambiguous wording remains untouched.
If you prefer not to rely on recognition, you can always insert the Template from Menu → Browse Templates.
Pin frequently used templates
Use the pin control beside a Browse result to add that template to your favorites. Pinned templates appear as quick-start buttons before any problem is active. After you insert the first problem, the same favorites remain available in an Add another favorite tray below the final active template panel.
Pins are browser-local preferences. They make common multi-problem workflows faster, but they do not duplicate or modify the underlying template. Unpinning a template removes its quick-start buttons without deleting the template itself.
Review local changes
The template library provides a customization review that shows locally added and removed lines. Use this view periodically, especially after a series of experiments.
Ask three questions during review:
- Does every default statement apply often enough to deserve that position?
- Are important alternatives visible, or buried in narrative text?
- Would another clinician understand what each selection changes in the note?
Clear labels make the template easier to audit months later, even if you are its only user.
Customizations compares a saved working version with its built-in starting point. Library Review serves a different purpose: it moves continuously through the current working library, including Building Blocks, and records Approved or Needs work decisions with optional contextual no-PHI notes. When reviewed wording, defaults, aliases, or linked shared content change, the item becomes Re-review required automatically. Use both views: Customizations explains what changed from the shipped starting point, while Library Review records whether the version you actually use has been reviewed.
Back up the library you build
Custom templates and built-in overrides live in browser storage. They are not associated with an account and do not automatically follow you to another browser.
After meaningful customization:
- Open Menu → Approval & Backup.
- Choose Export workspace.
- Save the downloaded Repertoire workspace file somewhere appropriate for your organization’s policies.
- Keep a recent export before clearing browser data, changing devices, or moving the app to a different domain.
Import validates and sanitizes a complete workspace bundle, checks identifiers, references, aliases, and recognition conflicts, and asks for confirmation before replacing reusable templates and starting notes. It does not replace browser preferences or the current draft, and it offers a same-tab Undo after confirmation. Treat an export as a workspace backup rather than a human-editable template file.
A practical template-design pattern
When creating a template, begin small:
- Add a precise title and one reliable recognition phrase.
- Put stable shared wording in a short narrative section.
- Add only the options that change frequently enough to justify a control.
- Choose defaults conservatively.
- Insert the template into a test note and read the output without looking at the controls.
- Revise anything that is unclear or too easy to overlook.
- Export the workspace after the template proves useful.
The best template is not necessarily the most comprehensive one. It is the one that makes relevant choices visible and produces wording that remains easy to verify.
For more detail about what the browser preserves—and what it does not—continue with session-only writing and backing up your Repertoire templates.