Creating a New Area of Practice or Area of Practice File Based on an Existing One

Last reviewed: 06/02/2003
Article ID: R10841

The information in this article applies to:

Summary

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When setting up a new Area of Practice (AOP), it may be useful to use an existing AOP as the basis for the new one. For example, suppose you have an AOP called "Personal Injury" and you want to create an AOP called "Medical Malpractice" that uses files similar to the ones in the "Personal Injury" AOP. The instructions in this article can help you accomplish this.

It may also be useful to be able to create new AOP files based on existing files. For example, suppose you have a file in the "Personal Injury" AOP called "Other Case Information", which you want to copy to the "Workers Compensation" AOP. The instructions provided below make it possible to avoid having to recreate the file from scratch in the target AOP.

Creating a New AOP Based on an Existing AOP
Creating a New AOP File Based on an Existing AOP File

Creating a New AOP Based on an Existing AOP

Use the following procedure to create a new AOP based on an existing AOP:

  1. From the PracticeMaster menu, select Maintenance | File Maintenance. Click Yes to make a temporary backup when prompted.
  2. Click OK when the backup has completed.
  3. In the File Maintenance window, right-click the AOP you want to copy and select Export Area of Practice Template....
  4. In the Export Path field, specify a drive and path for the export file (e.g., c:\export). The AOP template will be exported to a folder named after the AOP, inside the specified folder.
  5. If you want to use the documents from the existing AOP in the new AOP, select the Export Documents check box. All files in the existing AOP's Document Path will be copied to a folder named DOCS under the AOP folder.
  6. Click OK. If you receive a message indicating that the Export Path does not exist, click Yes to create it.
  7. When the export is complete, click OK.
  8. In the File Maintenance Window, click Close, and then minimize PracticeMaster.
  9. Using Windows Explorer, navigate to the directory with the exported AOP files (e.g., c:\export\PI).
  10. Rename the AOPNAME.AOP file to use the base name of the new AOP you want to create (where "AOPNAME" represents the base name of the AOP you exported). For our example, you would rename PI.AOP to MEDMAL.AOP.
  11. Close Windows Explorer and maximize PracticeMaster.
  12. From the PracticeMaster menu, select Maintenance | File Maintenance. Since you made a temporary backup earlier in this procedure, you can opt to skip the backup when prompted.
  13. Right-click Areas of Practice and select Import AOP Template.
  14. In the Import Path field, enter the path to the AOP export file, which has a file extension of *.AOP and is located inside the AOP folder under the folder you entered for the Export Path in step 4. (In our example, you would enter C:\EXPORT\PI\MEDMAL.AOP.) Or, you can click browse and browse to the folder.
  15. Click OK.
  16. Once the import has completed, click OK.
  17. In the File Maintenance window under Areas of Practice, highlight the AOP that has the same name as the original AOP with the words "(Copy 2)" after it (e.g. "Personal Injury (Copy 2)").
  18. Right-click the copy of the original AOP and select Edit AOP Information....
  19. Edit the Description field to the new AOP name (e.g. Medical Malpractice), and click OK.

Your new AOP has all the files that were in the original AOP, but without any of the records in any of the files. The AOP is ready to be customized with its own files (if any).

Creating a New AOP File Based on an Existing AOP File

To create a new AOP file based on an existing file, add a new file to the desired AOP using the same filename as the file you want to copy. Then, copy the data files from the original AOP folder to the target AOP folder. Adding the new file to the AOP adds the file to the list of files for the Area of Practice whereas copying the data files from the source AOP to the target AOP implements the exact same file structure. The following instructions describe the procedure in complete detail:

  1. From the PracticeMaster menu, select Maintenance | File Maintenance. Click Yes to make a temporary backup when prompted.
  2. Click OK when the backup has completed.
  3. In the File Maintenance window, right-click the AOP that has the file that you want to copy.
  4. Select Edit AOP Information... and note the AOP Name. The name of the AOP is also the name of the folder in which the Area of Practice is stored.
  5. Click Cancel to close the Edit Area of Practice window.
  6. Right-click the AOP that has the file that you want to copy, and select Print File List.
  7. Select the Preview option and click OK.
  8. Note the Name and Description of the file that you want to copy, and then click Close.
  9. Right-click the AOP to which you want to add the new file, and select Edit AOP Information.... Note the AOP Name and then click Cancel. The name of the AOP is also the name of the folder in which the Area of Practice is stored. 
  10. Right-click the AOP to which you want to add the new file, and select Add New AOP File.
  11. In the File Name field, enter the name of the original file (as noted in step 8). 
  12. In the Description field, enter the name of the original file (as noted in step 8).
  13. Click Next three times, and then click Finish.
  14. Click Close to close the File Maintenance window.
  15. From the PracticeMaster menu, select Help | About PracticeMaster. Note the program directory. Click OK to close the About PracticeMaster window.
  16. Using Windows Explorer, navigate to the PracticeMaster program directory (as indicated in step 15). Expand the directory and double-click the folder for the AOP that has the file you want to copy. Right-click the FILENAME.DAT and FILENAME.IDX files and select the Copy menu option to copy the files to the Windows clipboard (where FILENAME represents the name of the file, in our example, PI.DAT and PI.IDX).
  17. Using Windows Explorer, navigate to the AOP where you want the new file copied. Right-click the folder for this AOP and select the Paste menu option to copy the files from the Windows clipboard to the new folder. You will be asked if you want to overwrite the existing files, select Yes to All.
  18. If there were records in the AOP file that you copied, you may want to erase the file data in the new file before adding new records. You can use the following instructions to do this:
    1. From the PracticeMaster menu, select Maintenance | File Maintenance. Click Yes to make a temporary backup when prompted.
    2. In the File Maintenance window, click the plus sign (+) next to the AOP containing the new file. Then, double-click the new file.
    3. On the Utility tab, click Erase File Data.
    4. Click Yes when you are prompted to confirm that you want to delete all data. All records in the file will be deleted, but the file's structure will not be affected. Click OK when the process has completed.

You have now created a new AOP file with the same fields and formatting used by an existing file. If desired, make any necessary changes to the file to make it work for the target AOP. Once you have made any changes to the file structure, the new file will be ready to use.

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