Some accounts are connected to an external system of record (SOR) — a clinical system such as BestNotes that owns the core record and feeds it into OutcomeTools. When that connection exists, the records the SOR owns are read-only here: you maintain them in the source system and they flow through automatically. Everything OutcomeTools owns stays fully editable.
Which records the system of record owns
Ownership is not all-or-nothing. Each connected system declares, per area of the app, whether it owns adding a record and whether it owns editing one. Different systems claim different areas, so what is locked in your account depends on which system you're connected to — the areas that can be claimed are:
| Area | Where you see it in OutcomeTools |
|---|---|
| Clients | The Client list Add control, and the client card on the Detail tab |
| Related contacts | The Related Contacts section of the Detail tab |
| Episodes | The episode rows on the Clinical tab |
| Programs | Program enrollment: admit date, diagnosis, discharge |
| Care team | The Care Team section of the Clinical tab |
| Users | The Users page (Level 5) |
| Facilities | The Facilities card on Settings (Level 5) |
What a lock looks like
Locks are visible, not silent. You'll see one or more of these:
- A "Managed in" chip replaces the button. Where an Add or Edit button would sit, a chip with a lock icon reads Managed in followed by your system's name — for example Managed in BestNotes. On the Client list toolbar the Add control is simply not shown.
- A lock icon on the field label, and the field shown as a tinted, borderless box. Individual locked fields keep showing their current value but can't be typed in or changed.
- A note at the top of the dialog. Dialogs that mix locked and editable fields carry a line reading Locked fields are managed by your system's name, so it's clear why part of the form is inert.
- Rows stop opening. Where clicking a row normally opens an edit dialog — an episode, a care-team member — the row is no longer clickable. On a care-team member, the remove control on the row goes away with it.
- The dialog opens for reading only. A locked facility, for instance, opens as Facility rather than Edit Facility, with a Close button and no Save.
The read-only treatment is a convenience, not the actual guard. For the record areas above, OutcomeTools also refuses the change on the server, so a locked record can't be added or edited from OutcomeTools by any route. A user's facility membership and program access — the separate claim described below — behave differently: a save that includes them is accepted, but that part of it is quietly ignored rather than refused.
Users, facilities, and program access
The Users page has an extra distinction worth knowing about, because two accounts connected to the same vendor can behave differently.
- A system that owns user records locks a user's identity fields and their access level.
- Whether it also owns each user's facility membership and program access is a separate claim. Some systems manage that placement and some leave it to OutcomeTools, so on one account the Facilities and Program Access fields are an editable picker and on another they show the current membership read-only.
Facilities themselves work the same way: the Facilities card on Settings is editable unless your connected system owns the facility roster.
What stays yours in OutcomeTools
Locks only cover the records the connected system maintains. Everything OutcomeTools is for is unaffected:
- Assigning, reviewing, skipping, and dismissing surveys.
- Alerts, acknowledgements, and notification preferences.
- Reports, exports, the Library, tags, notes, and page layouts.
- Administer Surveys by — the survey delivery method for a client or contact. This is an OutcomeTools setting, so when the client record is otherwise locked it appears on the card as a dropdown you can change in place (Level 4+), rather than as a plain read-only value.
How you sign in
On a connected account, most people open OutcomeTools through their system of record's single sign-on link rather than a separate OutcomeTools password. Your administrator controls whether a direct OutcomeTools login is offered at all, and can grant it to individual users as an exception — see Integrations for the account switch and Users for the per-user one.
Changing something that's locked
Make the change in your system of record. It flows into OutcomeTools automatically — there's no import step and nothing to re-enter here. If a value looks wrong in OutcomeTools and correcting it in the source system doesn't clear it, contact support rather than working around it, since anything you could change here would be overwritten on the next sync.