In This Topic

Create a blank Internal Chronology document
Distribute the Internal Chronology document
Collate the completed Chronology documents into the Composite Chronology document

Chronolator adds data checking and manipulation capabilities to a document containing Word tables. This section provides an overview of using it to produce a multi-agency chronology.

See The Chronolator Process for an overview of how Word documents are passed around during the course of a review.

The main steps in using Chronolator are as follows:

Create a blank Internal Chronology document (see Creating a new Internal Chronology Document)
Distribute the Internal Chronology document to the participating agencies so they can input their own data (see Distributing the Internal Chronology Document)
Collate the completed Chronology Documents and produce the final Composite Chronology document (see the Step by Step Guide in the Using Chronolator Documents Help)

If Chronolator encounters a problem, it issues a message. See Appendix B - Chronolator Messages.

Create a blank Internal Chronology document

When an investigation is about to begin, you must decide what information needs to be collected and under what table headings. Often this decision will be made for you by a Review Panel or similar body.

You create a new Internal Chronology document by using the Chronolator Online Workbench. The principal component of the Internal Chronology is a table with all the required headings, but it can also contain a preamble - for example, an explanation of what the case is about and what sort of information is required.

See Creating a new Internal Chronology Document for more details.

Distribute the Internal Chronology document

When you have created the Internal Chronology document, you circulate copies of it to the agencies who need to contribute information to the investigation. Any convenient medium can be used for distribution: email, CD, or a file sharing Web site for example.

If the document is confidential, you can protect it in several ways:

If sending it by physical means, use Royal Mail Signed For or another secure service
If sending electronically, consider using Word’s standard password protection features (see Protecting a document with a password) and sending the password separately

Collate the completed Chronology documents into the Composite Chronology document

As people complete the Internal Chronology, Chronolator ensures that information which you have deemed mandatory is indeed entered. Documents are automatically checked for correct sequence of dates and times. Incomplete or invalid information is highlighted and the user is prompted to make any necessary corrections.

You can begin compiling the Composite Chronology document as soon as completed chronologies start to come back. There is no need to wait until they have all been returned.

Chronolator helps you maintain an audit trail of which Internal Chronologies provided the information in a Composite Chronology. You say how you want to identify the Internal Chronology you are importing (for example, Berrickshire Police), and Chronolator adds that identification to the Source of Information column in the Composite Chronology.

As the agencies’ chronologies are imported and merged, you use Chronolator to sort the composite table by date and time and to translate the dates and times from the various agencies into a consistent format.

Finally, you can use standard Word features to add any additional formatting desired.

Creating Composite Chronologies is described in Creating a Composite Chronology document.