My take on the benefits of "Includes"

The "Includes" feature has many benefits.

Instant Text is capable of dealing with enormous glossaries, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it should be made to. :) Imagine you had a glossary of 5000 words and phrases (just plucking figures out of the air here) which mainly dealt with cardiology reports and another one of similar size full of OB/GYN terminology. Typing vc in one would get you, for instance, vena cava and in the other you'd get vaginal canal. If they were combined, you would have to choose from both possibilities, making the flow of work a little less fluent.

Keeping glossaries separated ensures that the long forms that appear in the advisories are much more likely to be ones that you want at that time.

Including glossaries, instead of merging, works very well on several levels. If you have a base glossary of general or much-used terms and then include a glossary on a particular specialty or from one doctor, you will find you are working very efficiently. It is the work of just moments to change which glossaries are included in your base one, or you might chose to set up several glossaries each of which have your base, plus a particular doctor or specialty, plus one for sutures, one for ages, one for dates, etc., as required.

It is quite possible to have many glossaries included in one. Dr. Bloggs, the GP, might have a glossary with dates, ages, drugs, and headings included, whereas Dr. Shinyscalpel probably wouldn’t need the dates or drugs (save for a specialized few) but might need the headings glossary and would make much use of sutures and surgical instruments. When you log on and hear Dr. Bloggs' sweet voice you just open his previously prepared glossary and away you go.

The order in which the includes are shown within a glossary determines the order in which the entries appear in the advisory. This works in the same way as the merge feature, but of course it takes just a moment to change the order of includes.

Another BIG benefit of using includes is that every time you add something to a glossary, IT will automatically update it wherever it happens to be included. For instance, if you add "#4-0 Ethibond" to your sutures glossary and that glossary is included in seven other base or specialty glossaries, it will be automatically updated in ALL of those glossaries. No need to wonder where else you use sutures or go hunting to see which ones need to be updated.

Can you tell that I love the Includes feature? :)

MarieR