Scrivener for Fire Investigation????

Scrivener
1

Hi All,
I am looking for some advice on using Scrivener for writing fire investigation reports.
My agency has an online system for entering reports and a set of paper based forms for recording field notes. The method that the agency pushes is to have us either write the report directly into the online system or else to use a word processor and then cut and paste sections as needed.
This does not work well for me and I am looking for a better way to get myself organised.
I am hoping to find a way to create a project template which includes all of the relevant report sections and which also allows me to store my field notes, photographs and research notes in one place.
I may take up to a hundred photographs in an investigation and then cull them to 6 to 10 for inclusion with the submitted report. If I could then link my text to the correct image for each point in the investigation it would really help.
I also find myself spending a lot of time researching topics online and would like to be able to include that research in the project, even if only bibliographic references make it into the submitted report.
I would still need to copy and paste to get the information into their computer system but it may make better sense at my end if everything is in one project file rather than scattered in random places on my different computers.

As I said at the outset any advice on ways to do this would be greatly appreciated. I have owned the software for a number of years but am still an absolute newcomer in terms of using it and I keep creating blind alleys for myself - and then giving up in frustration.

TLB

2

I’m not sure about the steps you’d need to do in between, but once you have a Project set up with the bare bones of what you want in the report, you can turn that project into a template for quickly creating/recreating future reports.

One idea is to create a structure to your liking.
Then create a Legend File of sorts. This legend file will be used as a guide for yourself/users so they know how and what to place in the report.

After you’ve created the basic structure, create a Template folder, and place a copy of the blank report. Be sure to set the Template folder as a template folder for Scrivener awareness to treat it as such. Your templates can be made in the same way a fiction Character or Settings template is made, with tables etc.

And since you already know you’ll be working with potentially 100s of photos, I’d brush up on the adding/importing/placing/place holders section of the Manual. Also look into the use of Scrivener links within the project.

And don’t forget that you can use in line comments and footnotes, that can be ignored upon compile of the output document (PDF, word etc). That way you can leave yourself quick unofficial reasoning notes or questions to be answered. That can be ignored and not added when you export to PDF or word with the right settings.

Another idea for structure is similar to how blogs are typically handled in Scrivener, Year (Folder), Month (Folder), Report date/name (Folder), Information (Text File).

But depending on the file size of the numerous photos you’ll likely add, keeping a yearly project might be a bit much for open/close Backups. So, depending on how many reports your average is, you could create a folder structure outside of scrivener, for year, Month, Date, name etc and either just keep each project as either a monthly, weekly (52 weeks), or individual project report.

3

Thanks for this.
I have now converted the hard-copy form into a word document that I will use to create the separate sections required for the final report. There will be a folder for images, either copied into the binder or linked to it, from where they will be separated into draft images and submitted images.
I can either scan my field notes or preferably complete them on the ipad version when it becomes available.
One aim is to be able to store all of the source documents and images in a binder. The online forms can be filled by copy and paste and then the entire binder can hopefully be uploaded to my agency server. This would mean that they have the completed report for normal use, all of the source docs and images etc for future reference - and I don’t have to worry about storing any of it at my end.

TLB

4

You might be able to create template files in word and then import them into a scrivener file.