Anyone who has ever worked with building complex NoteForms in Allscripts Enterprise EHR v11 Note is probably keenly aware of the TabIndex property.  The TabIndex controls the order of the rendering on the output(s) as well as the tabbing on the inputs.

That said, I wanted to offer a simple trick that many folks are not aware of.  In my experience, the common way to set TabIndex is consecutive 1,2,3,4… However, when you are dealing with very complex NoteForms with hundreds of inputs it can be quite time consuming when you consider having to add a new input into the middle portion of the NoteForm.

Consider using multiples of 5 or 10 when building out your TabIndexes – 5,10,15,20…  This will allow you to quickly insert new inputs into the NoteForm without having to adjust the TabIndex for every input on your form.

Example:

• Input A – TabIndex = 5
• Input B – TabIndex = 10
• Input C – TabIndex = 15
• Input D – TabIndex = 20

Let’s say you need to add a new input between Inputs B & C, with the described methodology you can simply add the input and give it a TabIndex of 11 and not have to worry about adjusting the values of the other inputs.

• Input A – TabIndex = 5
• Input B – TabIndex = 10
• Input (NEW) – TabIndex = 11
• Input C – TabIndex = 15
• Input D – TabIndex = 20

Simple but very effective.