Note: Changing a template needs the Administrator, Manager or Builder role.
Every client Report is built from a Report template. The template holds the Report's Parts and their settings, the starting text for the cover page, executive summary and Text Parts, and the whole Assessment: its groups, items, grades, weights and tags. Configure the Report covers the first setup. This article covers what happens to your clients' Reports when you change the template later, and when more than one template is worth it.
Your templates live in Settings > Templates > Strategy.
How template changes reach your Reports
What a template change does depends on what you change and on the Report's status. Only Open Reports can pick up template changes. Completed Reports never change, whatever you do to the template.
Assessment changes reach Open Reports on their own: adding an item or group, or changing an item's name, Description, Health Standard, Reference Instructions, options, weight or tags, updates every Open Report on that template right away.
Part changes need a click: adding a Part, reordering Parts or changing a Part's settings reaches new Reports automatically, but Open Reports only get it when you click Apply Part Settings To All Drafts.
Text your team has written stays: changing the template's cover page, executive summary or Text Part text doesn't overwrite the text in existing Reports.
Deletions are immediate: deleting a Part, an Assessment item or an Assessment group removes it from every Open Report at once.
What an Assessment change keeps
When an Assessment item changes on the template, your team's work on that item in each Open Report stays: the Grade, Status, Risk, Solution and budget amounts they filled in aren't touched. The item's name, Description, Health Standard, Reference Instructions, weight and tags always follow the template. Where a field on the item is still empty in a Report, it picks up the template's default.
Items and groups added with Manual Item or Manual Group belong to one client's Report only. Template changes don't change, remove or reorder them.
Applying Part changes to Open Reports
Part changes wait until you push them, so you can finish a set of changes before your clients' Open Reports see them.
Go to Settings > Templates > Strategy and open your template.
On the Parts tab, make your changes.
Click Apply Part Settings To All Drafts. Every Open Report on the template gets the template's Parts and Part settings.
To try a change on one Report first, open that Report's Settings and use the Template Settings tab. Changes there still save to the template, and Apply To Current Report pushes them to that one Report only. Check it, then apply to all.
Note: Apply Part Settings To All Drafts copies the template's Part settings over any you changed for one client in Current Report Settings. Parts you added to just one Report stay as they are.
Pulling updated text into a Report
The cover page, executive summary and Text Parts keep the text written in each Report, so a template text change only reaches new clients' first Reports. To bring the template's text into an existing Report, use the buttons on that Part in the Report:
Reset Content From Template replaces the Part's text with the template's.
Append Content From Template adds the template's text below what's already there.
Both work one Report at a time.
Deleting Assessment items and groups
Deleting is the one template change that removes your team's work.
Important: Deleting an Assessment item or group from the template removes it from every Open Report straight away, along with the grades, notes and budgets recorded on it. There's no undo, and recreating a group with the same name gives you a new, empty group: it doesn't bring the data back. Completed Reports keep the item. If you delete something by mistake, ask for a person in the chat in the bottom right straight away and tell us when it happened. A restore from backup is usually possible if we catch it quickly.
Why one template usually works best
We recommend running every client on one Report template and using tags to scale the Assessment to each client:
Consistency: your team follows the same Assessment with every client, so the process is predictable and easier to train.
One place to change: an improvement to an item reaches every client's Open Report at once.
Comparable Health Scores: scores mean the same thing across clients when everyone is graded against the same items.
A second template makes sense when a team needs a genuinely different Assessment or Report, for example a Client Success team that reviews different things from your vCIO team. Configure the Report sets out the starting tag strategy, with 1. Fundamentals and 2. Comprehensive.
Items you don't grade
You don't need to grade every item on every Assessment. An item with no grade doesn't count toward the Health Score, so you can skip what doesn't apply yet and build the Assessment out over time. The Assessment explains how the Health Score works.
Getting the latest Strategy Overview Assessment
The Strategy Overview template is in the Marketplace. Importing it creates a new template in your account rather than updating yours. See The Marketplace.
Common questions
Will changing my template break existing Reports?
Changing your template doesn't break existing Reports. Assessment changes reach Open Reports on their own and keep your team's grades and notes, Part changes wait for Apply Part Settings To All Drafts, and Completed Reports never change. The one change that removes data is deleting an Assessment item or group.
Can I undo a template change?
Template changes have no undo button. An edit to an item or a Part can be changed back by hand, and your team's grades and notes are kept either way. A deleted Assessment item or group can't be brought back by recreating it, so ask for a person in the chat straight away if that happens.
I added a Part to the template. Why isn't it in my client's Report?
A Part added to the template reaches new Reports automatically, but an Open Report only gets it after someone clicks Apply Part Settings To All Drafts. A Completed Report never gets it.
Should I create more than one template?
One Report template is usually enough, with tags deciding how much of the Assessment each client gets. Add a second template only when a team needs a different set of Assessment items or a different Report.
Next: Report Parts Overview