<< Click to Display Table of Contents >> Navigation:  Data Manager > Integrate Two Templates

This operation is used as an aid in updating a customized version of a standard template with an updated version of the standard template.

 

 

Select the two templates that you would like to integrate to create a new template from (neither of the selected templates will be modified in any way).  When you have selected two templates, click the [Next] button which will prompt you with the following dialog:

 

 

Normally you would select your custom template as the base template because you typically want to inherit the properties of the new updated template, but that might not always be the case.  It would depend on what the updated template changed vs the previous version of the standard template.  For example, if it was only adding a few new topics but didn't change any layouts, you might want to select the new standard template as the base in order to prevent your custom layouts from be replaced by the layouts in the standard template.

 

You also need to select the name of the new template to be created by the integration process.

 

Click [Next] which displays the following dialog:

 

 

If it all looks good, click the [Integrate] button to begin the process.

 

What the integration does:

•Saves the base template as the new template.

•Clones the base template's Report/Work Views and associates them to the new template.

•Adds any missing chapters/topics to the new template.  It will do its best to match the new chapters and topics to the old ones to prevent adding duplicates, but might not be perfect if the captions don't match up.

•For every chapter and topic that was in both templates, it updates each of those chapter/topic layouts as well as each of those topic checkbox groups and hints (any chapters or topics that were only in the base template will retain its settings).

•Template images will also be copied (duplicates will be overwritten).

 

At completion of the integration, you may have to use the Report View Manager to make any adjustments to chapters and topics that might have been added in the wrong location or even duplicated.  Remember, it is only an aid for preforming moist of the work typically needed when integrating an updated version of a standard template into a customized version of it.  Due to the flexibility of WhisperReporter's customization ability, results of the integration can be perfect or can vary significantly.