Customising Your Consultation Templates

Customising Your Consultation Templates#

Daobook comes with four consultation templates. Copy one and change its fields, and your notes follow the way you already work — your headings, your order, your checklists.

Step 1: Open your templates#

Go to Settings, open the Communications tab and click "Consultation Templates". You'll see:

• System Templates — the four built-in ones: Initial Consultation, Return Consultation, General and Simple.
• Business Templates — the templates your practice has made.
• My Templates — your personal templates. This list only appears in practices with more than one practitioner.

Step 2: Make your own copy#

System templates can't be edited directly. Click "Customise" next to the one closest to how you work. Daobook copies it — an Initial Consultation becomes Initial Consultation (Custom) — and opens the copy for editing.

Step 3: Name it and choose what the note shows#

The editor shows your note in the middle, the way a consultation will. With no field picked, the panel on the right shows the template itself: give it a Name that says what it's for, such as Fertility Initial or Pain Follow-up, then tick or untick Show Prescription Builder and Show Acupuncture Points under In the note. The note in the middle shows those sections while they're ticked.

Step 4: Arrange the fields#

Click a field on the note to pick it. It takes a green edge and its settings open on the right.

• Drag a field by the handle on its left to move it.
• Choose Half width under Width to make a field half width, so two fields sit side by side.
• Type a new Label to rename the field.
• Click Remove to take a field out of new consultations. Consultations that already recorded it keep it.

Click the note away from any field to see the template's own details again.

Step 5: Add your own fields#

Pick the field the new one should follow, then click a type under Fields on the left. It goes in under the field you picked, or at the end of the main fields if nothing is picked:

• Rich text — a free-text box.
• Single tick box — one checkbox, such as Consent given.
• Tick boxes — a checklist. Type each choice under Options, and click "+ Add option" for the next.
• Diagram — places the body chart, the tongue diagram or one of your own diagrams inside the note. See Your Own Diagrams and Diagrams in Templates.

Measures, under the field types, adds a rating scale that feeds one of your measures (see Tracking Progress with Measures). Add as many fields as you need.

Step 6: Add default text (optional)#

Pick a rich-text field and type under Default text to pre-fill it whenever a new consultation starts — a standard diet and lifestyle paragraph, say. You can edit or delete it during the consultation, and the note in the editor shows it in the field's box. Tick boxes and diagrams have no default text.

Step 7: Save#

Click "Save Template" in the bar under the note. Until you do, the bar says Unsaved changes, and Cancel leaves without saving.

In a practice with more than one practitioner, owners and admins also see Availability in the template's details. Keep personal means only you can use it; Share across business makes it available to everyone at your practice. Only owners and admins can edit a shared template.

Step 8: Use it#

In a consultation, choose your template from Template: at the top right of the note.

To have it open automatically, set it as the Default Consultation Template on an appointment type — see Step 4 of Setting Up Your Calendar.

Retiring a template#

Click "Archive" on a template you no longer use. It leaves the template picker for new consultations, and every consultation already written with it keeps it. Archived templates sit at the bottom of the list with a Restore button. The × deletes a template outright, and only works on one that no consultation has used.

---

Tips:

• Changing a template doesn't restructure notes already written with it.