You can export an organization from one Spider Impact installation and import it into another. You might build in a test environment and then move the finished work to production, share a working setup with another department, or keep a model organization that you can copy again and again.

The export is a single .orgtemplate file. It holds the organization's scorecards, initiatives, dashboards, strategy maps, reports, charts, briefings, datasets, Forms, Apps, and files, along with the files they depend on, such as dashboard background images.

Exporting an Organization

Click the organization name at the top to expand the organization pane, and then click the Edit button at the bottom to put the organization tree into edit mode. Click the organization you want to export and choose “Download as Template”. You can export any organization you can view.

First, choose whether to copy only this organization or to copy it along with its descendant organizations. Then use the “Also Copy” checkboxes to choose which data comes along: “KPI Values”, “Initiative Values”, “Threshold Values”, “Notes”, “Related Items”, and “Dataset Records”. To export just the structure, leave them all unchecked. When you include “Dataset Records”, the files attached to those records come along too.

Click “Download” to save the .orgtemplate file.

Importing an Organization

In the installation where you want the organization, put the organization tree in edit mode. Click the organization the new one should go under and choose “New Organization”. In the “Add Organization” dialog, choose “Upload Template File”, add your .orgtemplate file, and click “Add Organization”.

The new organization keeps the name it had when it was exported, and every link between the items inside it points to the new copies. It's an ordinary, independent organization. It isn't linked to the organization it came from, so a change to one never affects the other. That's the difference from “Copy as Template”, which creates copies inside one installation that stay linked to their template (see Templated Organizations from Datasets).

What Carries Over

Some things belong to a single installation, so the import handles them differently:

• Scoring types aren't copied. Each KPI uses the new installation's scoring type with the same name, or “Goal/Red Flag” if there isn't one.
• Standard calendars such as monthly and yearly are matched by type, and custom calendars are matched by name. If the organization uses custom calendars, create calendars with the same names in the new installation before you import.
• Owners, updaters, and organization permissions aren't included, because each installation has its own users and groups. Assign them after you import.
• Import connections aren't included, because they hold passwords and other details that belong to one installation. After you import, check the data source of each dataset that imports through a connection, and choose a connection in the new installation if it needs one. A Microsoft 365 file link isn't included either, so paste the file's link again.
• If you didn't include “Dataset Records”, datasets arrive with their fields and settings but no records.
• A KPI that gets its values from a dataset outside the export becomes a manually entered KPI.
• A Form built on a dataset outside the export is left out. So are SQL reports, because their SQL is written for the original database.
• Anything else that refers to something outside the export, such as an item in another organization, loses that reference.
• If the new installation already has a dataset with the same name, a number is added to the end of the imported dataset's name.

Spider Impact Versions

You can import a template into the same version of Spider Impact or a newer one. If an installation can't accept a template, the error message says which template versions it supports.