Defining the Documents You Use

The first step in setting documents up in Chronicle is to define a place holder for the documents that you typically have and where you get them from. For example, nearly all disaster restoration jobs have photos and you virtually always import photos from a digital camera, so you would define Job Photos as a document that comes from an imported image. This way, when you are adding documents to a job, you’ll be able to just pick Job Photos from the list and Chronicle will automatically know to look for image files. Likewise, many jobs will have an initial estimate, a final estimate, a work authorization, and so on. For each of these different documents, you want to define the name of the document (so it will be consistently named the same way) and the source of the document (scanner, imported image, .pdf file, Word file, etc.) At this point in time, you are not adding documents, but rather defining them by giving them a name.

1. On the Departments tab in the Main System Setup, go to the Documents tab and make sure the Defined Documents tab is selected.
   
2. To the left make sure you have selected the department you wish to define documents for.
3. To add a defined document, click Add.
4. Type the name of the document and click OK.
   
   Make this name as clear as possible; this is the name that must be picked each time the corresponding document is added to a job. Make sure two documents for a department don’t have similar names so the wrong name doesn’t accidentally get picked. You may use the same name in multiple departments if you wish, for example, you could have Job Photos in several departments. However, if you regularly have multiple departments for a job, you might find it clearer to use unique names like Job Photos-Water and Job Photos-Fire so it’s clear which is which in the list of documents.
5. Choose the type of document and click OK.
   
   

   Scan Image: Use this for a document or form that you will scan in. Use this for any document that must be signed by a customer. You might also use this to scan in documents that are filled out manually at the site.

   Import Photos/ Images: Use this for pictures that are on a computer disk. For example, you'd use this for photos taken with a digital camera.

   Create a Template: Use this to associate this document with a template. If you choose this, Chronicle will ask you to pick the template type to use. See Setting Up Template Documents to Include Customer or Job Info below.

   Attach an existing file from your hard drive:

   • Acrobat File: Use this for a .pdf file. For example, the Xactimate program can export estimates as .pdf files, so you'd use this file type to import Xactimate estimates in Chronicle.
   • Microsoft Word: Use this to add an existing Word document. 
   • Microsoft Excel: Use this to add an existing Excel document.
   • Web Page: Use this for a .htm or .html file.
   • Other file: Use to attach other files not listed above.

Repeat these steps for each document you need to define. You are actually adding a document but rather setting up a "placeholder" for the document. You will add the actual document to either a job file, person file, or organization file. You are also able to edit the name of the defined document.