Advanced templates give you granular control over how CoVet structures your most-used medical records.
You can rename labels, reorder sections, set default normal text, and fine-tune spacing, all without any technical setup.
You can check out this article for more on the Personalization feature.
The article below contains information on the best way to customize or personalize existing templates. If you would like information on how to create a fully custom template from scratch, please check out this article.
Before You Get Started
If you're new to generating records in CoVet, we recommend starting with How do I create a medical record from an audio recording? before diving in here.
Once you’re comfortable with that functionality, you should try building a template entirely from scratch. For that, check out our article on Creating Custom Templates.
A Quick Note on Terminology
Advanced templates are built from three nested layers.
A Section is the largest grouping. Think Subjective, Objective, Assessment and Plan in a SOAP note.
Inside each section you'll find one or more Subsections, which gather related fields together (Vitals and Physical Exam, for example).
The individual fields are called Elements. This might include things like "Current Medications" or "Eye Findings,” and each element has a Label (the word or phrase that appears before the content in your final record) and optional default content.
These terms appear throughout the interface, so it helps to have a rough mental model before you start.
Term | Definition |
Element | The basic unit of an Advanced Template. It represents a specific part of the medical record. For example, current medications in patient history or eye findings in a physical exam. Each element has a label and content. |
Label | The word or phrase that serves as a placeholder for an element. Using the example above, the label might be “Current Medications:” while the content that follows lists those medications. |
Subsection | A group of related elements. Some subsections contain many elements while others might contain one. “Vitals” and “Physical Exam” could be two subsections in the Objective section. |
Section | The largest grouping in a template, containing one or more subsections. A SOAP record, for instance, has Subjective, Objective, Assessment and Plan sections. |
Header | The title of a section or subsection within the record. |
Finding Advanced Templates
Advanced templates live alongside all your other templates.
Go to the Templates page from the web or mobile app, and you'll recognize them straight away by the "Advanced" badge next to their name.
When generating a record, Advanced templates appear in the same template picker you already know, the workflow is identical to any other template.
What You Can Customize
When you open an Advanced template for editing you'll see the Template Details page, where each section is listed with a collapse/expand toggle on the right.
Expanding a section reveals its subsections and elements.
Everything in the builder, Sections, subsections, and Individual elements, can be reordered by grabbing the drag handle (the two-line icon on the right edge) and dragging it up or down.
You can rearrange things as many times as you like, and the reset options described below mean you can always return to the default if you change your mind.
Template-Wide Settings
The toolbar above the template sections gives you controls that affect the whole template.
The Star marks the template as a favourite.
The Detail level dropdown adjusts how verbose CoVet is when generating records.
The Preview button shows you exactly how your record will look with your current settings.
The three-dot menu (⋮) holds several powerful options: set this template as your default, enable or disable Default Normals.
The Custom Instructions button, the same Personalization feature you may know from Standard templates, lets you add free-text guidance that CoVet applies across the entire template. For more, see Using Custom Instructions for Standard and Advanced Templates.
Editing Elements
Each element row shows a visibility toggle (the eye icon) and a pencil icon. The visibility toggle instantly hides or shows that element, and its label, in your final records. Scroll through your most-used template; some elements are hidden by default, and you might find useful ones waiting to be turned on.
The pencil opens an edit panel with three options:
Label: change what appears in your record before the content. Any separator you want (such as a colon) needs to be included in the label itself.
Default Normal: adjust or clear the text CoVet inserts when you don't mention that element during a consult.
Remove entire line when there's nothing to say: hides the element automatically if there's no content and no default normal text, keeping your records concise.
Editing Subsections and Sections
Hovering over a subsection row reveals a pencil icon that opens a small edit panel. Here you can give the subsection a header that will appear in your final record, and control how many blank lines appear between elements within that subsection.
The same idea applies to sections: the Edit button on any section header lets you rename it and set the spacing between subsections.
Note that section headers only appear in your record when you use "Copy All" and they act as visual dividers when you're pasting an entire record at once.
Rich Text Formatting
Wherever you can edit a label, a subsection name, or a section name, a small formatting toolbar is available. Highlight any text and you can bold it, italicize it, underline it, or change its size using the heading presets (Heading 1 is the largest; Normal is the default body size).
One setting worth knowing lives outside the template builder: under Profile & Settings, choose how CoVet copies text:
Rich Text (default, preserves formatting)
Markdown (useful for systems like ezyVet that render markdown automatically)
Plain Text (no formatting, maximum compatibility).
For a full overview, see How Do I Use Rich Text or Markdown in CoVet?
Resetting Changes
Whenever you modify something, a small indicator appears next to it to flag that it's been customized. To undo a specific change, click the reset icon next to that element, subsection, or section to return it to the CoVet default in one click.
To start fresh, the three-dot menu at the top of the template has a Reset Entire Template option that restores every setting at once.