Using Chronolator Documents
Special Columns
Chronolator treats most of the columns in a chronology table as free-form text, only checking them if the Case Review Administrator has deemed them mandatory. However, some columns play a major role in the way a Chronolator Document is processed.
These special columns are described below.
Up to five special columns can be used to specify when an event happened:
Chronolator can populate the Sequence column with event reference numbers, which can also be used to specify the order of events on a particular day when you do not know their times. If you need to do this and the Administrator has not included one, you can add a Sequence column using the Tools > Sequencing > Add column button (this is the only change you can make to Administrator-defined column headings).
Chronolator allows you to enter dates in many formats. For example, all the following will be recognised:
Chronolator expects a Date column to contain a single date and no other words or characters except a question mark at the start if you are unsure of the exact date. For example ? 22 may 2016 is OK, but 22 may 2016 ? and probably 22 may 2016 would not be allowed.
The Format Dates menu on the Chronolator toolbar lets you set all the dates you have entered in a Date column into a consistent format. This means you can enter dates exactly as they are on the original records, which is easier and less prone to error.
Chronolator is also flexible about the formats used in any Time columns in the table. For example, the following will all be recognised:
As with dates, if you are unsure of a time you can put a question mark before it.
After the Event Order columns comes the Source of Information column, where you specify the source of your information about the event.
When entering the source of your information, do not include your own organisation or department. This information will be added by the Administrator who sent you the document.
For example, suppose you work at the Berrick New Town Clinic and are entering data you have obtained from a Health Visitor's notes. You should record the source of information simply as, say, HV notes, not as Berrick New Town Clinic HV notes. The administrator who sent you the document will add Berrick New Town Clinic when using Chronolator to combine chronologies. (You can see an example of this in Specify where the document came from).
Authors and Reviewers can annotate a chronology with special 'events' called Author Notes. To create one, start the Source of Information column with one of the characters # ^ ¬ ~ . Author Notes bypass all event validations except Date and Time.
To add an Author Note at the start of a chronology, you can use a date in the year 0100.
A Glossary column can be included which should contain only abbreviations that have been defined in the Abbreviations Glossary - for example, somebody's initials. This can be useful when a chronology contains information pertaining to more than one person. Chronolator will check that anything in this column has been defined in the Abbreviations Glossary.
You can view the glossary and add your own abbreviations to it by pressing the Tools > Glossary > Edit button on the Chronolator toolbar. Each abbreviation can be up to ten characters long, and its definition up to thirty.
Chronolator insists that the Start Date and Source of Information columns must always be completed. The Case Review Administrator decides what other columns are mandatory.
The Admin > Show Document Details button on the Chronolator toolbar displays a summary of what special columns and abbreviations the Case Review Administrator has set up.
It will usually be obvious from the column headings what type of data is expected. If not, ask the person who sent you the document to explain them.