Custom note templates let your practice design the structure of your AI-generated clinical notes — which sections appear, their order, and how each one is written — without needing Eluve to build them for you. Once a template is published and active, Eluve uses it to shape the notes it generates for your visits.
🧪 Beta feature. Template management is currently rolling out to select practices. If you don't see Templates in your settings, it isn't enabled for your account yet — contact support to request access.
Who can use it
Template management is available to users who have been granted template permissions for their organization — typically a clinic administrator or lead clinician. Colleagues without this permission won't see the Templates page at all.
Opening the template library
In the left sidebar, click Settings.
In the settings sidebar, under Preferences, click Templates.
You'll see a grid of your organization's templates. Each card shows the template's name and description, who created it (the Eluve mark for Eluve-built templates, a colleague's initials and first name for ones made inside your practice), the date it was created, and the version currently in use — for example V3.
A card may also carry a status badge:
Draft — you have unpublished work on a template that has never been published.
Read only — provided by Eluve, so it can't be edited directly. Use Save a Copy to make your own editable version.
Disabled — turned off for your organization, so it won't be available when generating notes.
Use the search box to filter by name, description, or creator. If your organization has both its own templates and Eluve-provided ones, a Show only my organization's templates toggle appears alongside the search box.
Creating a template
Click Create Template and choose how you want to start.
Generate with AI
Answer a few guided questions — note format (SOAP, BIRP, DAP, or GIRP), note length (Concise, Balanced, or Detailed), specialty, and visit type — and add any free-form instructions. One-click keyword chips add common directives for you, such as "Use bullet points where possible", "Include relevant ICD-10 codes", or "Capture what is needed to support medical necessity for billing". Eluve designs a specialty-aware section structure, which you can then refine.
Upload or import an existing note
Drop in a PDF of a note you already use, or paste its full text, and Eluve reverse-engineers the structure into an editable template.
PDF only, up to 10 MB.
Use a file or pasted text, not both — remove the file if you'd rather paste.
If the document doesn't look like a clinical note, Eluve will tell you it couldn't build a template from it and explain why. Try a cleaner example.
Start from scratch
Listed as or start from scratch beneath the other two options. This isn't a blank page: you begin with a five-section SOAP scaffold — Chief Complaint, History of Present Illness, Physical Examination, Assessment, and Plan — with four sections already marked required and each body pre-filled in the recommended placeholder style.
Editing your template
Every template opens in the authoring workspace. The left side is the section editor, where each block is one section of the note; the right side is the live preview.
For each section you can:
Switch between Generate using AI and Write manually.
Mark the section as Required.
Reorder it — drag it by the handle on its left, or use the up/down arrows in the menu that appears when your cursor is on the section title.
Delete it.
Selecting body text brings up formatting controls: heading, subheading, normal text, bold, italic, bulleted list, and numbered list.
Above the editor you'll find:
Add section — appends a new empty section.
Additional settings — the template description (what colleagues see on the card), the model preset, and the Allow groups switch.
Add group — appears only once Allow groups is switched on. A group gathers related sections under a shared name and moves as one unit; sections can be dragged in and out of it. Groups can't be nested inside other groups.
Under Additional settings, the Model slider balances speed and depth — typically Fast, Balanced, and Thinking, with a short description of each. Your practice may have its own set.
Writing sections that work well
How you write a section body is what determines the quality of the note. It isn't a place for instructions about the note — it's a model of the note.
For AI-generated sections, write the shape of the output you want, using placeholders in square brackets. That body becomes the guidance Eluve follows for that section. The starter scaffold shows the idiom:
Patient is a [age]-year-old [sex] with [relevant history]. - [symptom description] - [timing and duration] - [severity and impact] - [associated symptoms]
For manual sections, write the exact text you want. A manual section is excluded from AI generation entirely and reproduced word for word in every note. This is the right choice for attestations, consent language, standing disclaimers, and signature blocks — the wording can never drift.
Section titles do double duty. They become the headings in the finished note and the internal identifiers Eluve uses to decide which generated content belongs in which section. Keep them short and specific, and give every section a distinct title — two sections sharing a name will produce two identically-headed sections in the finished note, which is confusing to read and to sign.
Use Required deliberately. A required section must be filled in on every note. An optional section is allowed to come back empty when the visit didn't cover it. Marking everything required is the most common cause of padded, repetitive notes.
Previewing before you publish
The Preview panel on the right generates a sample note from a transcript so you can see exactly how your template reads.
Pick a transcript from the sample library, or choose Custom transcript… and paste in a real transcript from your own practice.
Click Generate Preview (or the refresh icon to regenerate).
Click Edit section on any part of the preview to jump straight to that section in the editor.
Below the generated note, Eluve shows how long the note took to generate — and its token usage where available — a quick way to feel the trade-off between model presets.
💡Tip: Preview with a transcript from a visit you'd actually document, not just the samples. Then try a harder one — a short visit, or one that never touches half your sections — to confirm your optional sections drop out cleanly instead of being invented.
Drafts, versions, and publishing
Templates are versioned so the template your practice is using never changes unexpectedly.
Published versions are read-only. To make changes, click Create Draft — or Edit Draft if you already have one in progress.
Your draft is private to you. Colleagues can't see it, and it has no effect on note generation.
Save Draft keeps your working copy without changing anything live.
Publish Version creates a new version and makes it the active one. This is the moment your changes start affecting new notes.
The version dropdown in the header lets you move between versions, each labelled Active, Draft, or Inactive.
To roll back, select an earlier published version and choose Set as Active from the … menu.
⚠️ Two things to know before you save:
The template name, description, and model preset are only stored when you publish. If you rename a template inside a draft and only save the draft, the new name won't stick — publish to keep it.
Switching versions in the header dropdown reloads the editor from the version you picked and discards unsaved edits. Save your draft first.
If a colleague publishes a newer version while you're editing, publishing will be refused with "A newer version is already active." Reload the page to pick up their changes, then re-apply and publish yours.
Making a template available to your team
Publishing a template isn't the same as putting it in front of clinicians. Here's how a template reaches a visit:
It has to be published and enabled. A template saved with Save template is enabled for your organization straight away. One built up from a draft becomes available the first time you publish it. Admins can turn a template on or off later with Enabled for Organization in the … menu — and once a template has been turned off, publishing a new version won't turn it back on. Re-enable it explicitly.
Each clinician can pick their own default under Settings → Preferences → Note → Default Template.
Your practice can set defaults centrally, including per specialty and per language. Contact support if you'd like these configured.
A clinician can override the template on an individual appointment from the template picker on that visit.
Once an appointment has generated a note, it stays tied to the template it used — even if that template is later disabled.
💡 Tip: Roll a new template out to one clinician first by setting it as their personal default. Once it's proven on real visits, make it the organization's default.
Sharing and ownership
The person who creates a template owns it. The owner and organization admins can edit it.
When an admin edits someone else's template, ownership doesn't transfer — it stays with the original creator.
Everyone else in your organization sees the template as read-only and can use Save a Copy to create their own editable version.
Eluve-provided templates are always read-only. Save a Copy is how you adapt one for your practice.
Admins can toggle Enabled for Organization to control whether a template is available across the practice.
💡 Tip: If you rename a section heading, the preview's "Edit section" links may not line up until you regenerate the preview. Renaming works — just refresh the preview.
Best practices
Name templates for the situation — "Physio initial assessment" rather than "Template 2". That name is what clinicians see when picking a template for a visit.
Fill in the description. It's what colleagues read on the card when choosing between templates.
Write section bodies as examples with bracketed placeholders, not as instructions.
Reserve Required for sections that must appear at every visit.
Put anything that must never change into a manual section.
Start on the Balanced model preset. Move to Thinking for long, multi-problem notes; Fast for short, highly structured visits.
Preview with a real transcript before publishing, including an awkward one.
Iterate in a draft and publish once. Publishing is what changes live notes, so there's no cost to saving a draft several times along the way.
Every published version is kept. If a new version turns out worse than the last one, Set as Active on the older version puts it straight back — nothing is lost by trying a change.
Frequently asked questions
Will editing a template change notes that were already generated?
No. Templates shape new notes going forward. Existing notes are unchanged. If you regenerate an older note, it will use whichever version is active at that moment.
Which version of the template is used for a note?
The version marked Active at the time the note is generated. Drafts and inactive versions are never used.
My template isn't showing up when I generate a note.
Either it hasn't been published yet, or it's Disabled for your organization. Check the badge on its card in the library.
Can I go back to a previous version?
Yes. Open the template, select the earlier version in the header dropdown, and choose Set as Active from the … menu.
If I disable a template, will old notes break?
No. Each appointment stays tied to the template it used, so past notes are unaffected.
I don't see Templates in my settings.
Template management is in beta and requires both the feature and the template permission to be enabled for your account. Contact support to request access.
What's the difference between this and Care Plan templates?
They're separate features. This article covers clinical note templates that drive SOAP-style AI notes.