---
id: AA-00923
title: "Hosted Client Template Best Practices"
url: http://netaphor.com/kb/AA-00923/hosted-client-template-best-practices
product: "SiteAudit Hosted"
type: "How-to & configuration"
updated: 2026-06-18
access: public
---


# Hosted Client Template Best Practices

The following best practices are recommended when using Hosted Client templates

## Assign templates to new Hosted Clients

Assign templates only to new Hosted Clients. Assigning templates to production clients may produce unintended results.

## Test template rules

When rules are created or modified, it is recommended to apply the template to a single Hosted Client and test to ensure the rules behave as expected.

## Do not use existing Hosted Client databases as templates

Only use designated templates when assigning databases to Hosted Clients. Request template databases from your Hosted Server administrator. Once a template database is created, it appears as a Hosted Client database in the Hosted Administrator Viewer.

## Use caution when applying templates to Hosted Clients in production environments

It is best practice to apply templates only to new Hosted Clients. However, it is possible to apply a template to any Hosted Client. When a template is assigned to a Hosted Client, its active threshold, SLA, and notification rules are copied to the Hosted Client. This has the same effect as if the rules were created on the client. This means that SiteAudit will begin creating new incidents and notifications based on the rules that were inherited from the template. Changing the threshold rule description, deactivating a threshold rule, or deleting a threshold rule causes all associated incidents to be resolved. This behavior is the same whether the actions are performed directly on the Hosted Client or inherited from a template assignment.

## Template Assignment Behavior

The following table shows the expected behaviors for template assign, unassign, and push. Note that these actions may remove all existing custom field data.

| Template | Database | Action | Database Result |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  | locally created custom fields | Assign | custom fields and values removed |
| custom fields | locally created custom fields | Assign | locally created custom fields and values removed, custom fields from template added |
| custom fields | custom fields from template | Assign | existing custom fields and values removed, custom fields from template added |
| custom fields |  | Assign | custom fields from template added |
| custom fields | custom fields from template | Push | custom fields updated from template and values not removed |
| custom fields | locally created custom fields | Push | custom fields updated from template and values not removed |
|  | locally created custom fields | Push | no change |
| custom fields |  | Push | custom fields from template added |
|  | locally created custom fields | Unassign | custom fields and values removed |
| custom fields | custom fields from template | Unassign | custom fields and values removed |