Staring a new search
Select New Search
Enter Search Details: Date and Time received, Incident area, Date Search started
Select save or refresh
This saves the record and the system will allocate a unique search reference number, required to generate reports.
Enter Missing Person(s) details as far as known, this is usually sketchy at first and is likely to be held by the controller from police information. Enter brief detail of the incident and escape route if planned.

Interviews tab.
Select one missing person from the drop down, and assign the witness information to that person. (It may be necessary to press the "save or refresh button" again).
Set interviewee filter to Current Search.
Under "Modify interviewees" select "Add New". This area is to record interviewees' personal information.
Enter name and address details, these can be edited later, if required.
To enter the information obtained from the interview, first select the interviewee from the drop down list and then note that their address details appear in the grey shaded box. Enter information obtained.
Witness information can be unreliable and should be printed at this stage for the controller to make a judgement as to the most likely evidence. The situation of "red fleece, green fleece" will be recalled by most team members!

Pager calls tab
Record as necessary, note that the form contains the format for the structure of the message

Radio log tab
To save time, the short and full callsigns are generated automatically. Entering the callsign ref. causes the programme to "look up" the correct callsigns. For example, entering 'c' in the To field will display TC and T'dale Cont on the record, and TC in reports.

Entering any callsign unknown to the programme will open a window to allow addition to the callsign table. Strict observance to callsign procedure should be encouraged by control as loose allocation of callsigns causes the list to grow longer and create similar callsigns which are really duplicates. Inspection of the callsign table will show those already allocated and it should be remembered once a callsign is created it is difficult to remove. This involves tampering with the records which removes the authenticity of the log.

Use abbreviations to speed entry as listed in the abbreviations table:

Only use the remarks column where the event is of sufficient importance to be considered a key event in the search. An entry here is included in the "key events" report

Callsigns Tab
Select the callsigns which are in use with the "make active " button. Apply a filter to display "Callsigns this search" only. To edit the callsign select the History button and add details of the leader, operator, personnel and equipment.
In each case enter details below the ? and then delete the ? record. Do not add any details to the ? record.

Personnel tab
To initially populate the table with names of Team members, use Window, "Search Control database", then open the Personnel table. Enter each name and select their status from the dropdown. The member's ref will be added automatically. Close the table and return to the main form via Window, main form. Once entered, the names will be available for selection on each search. More names can be added or edited as required by returning to the table.

Police tab
Collect as much as possible and fill in promptly. Officers are often only contacted once and details are quickly forgotten.

Reports tab.
Reports are generated automatically from the data entered. The programme will first require the search ref number to obtain the appropriate data from the tables. The key events report is best given to the police, as it only contains items of radio traffic considered by the operator and controller to be of importance.

Equipment tab
This is not in use with this version

Jotter
Details entered here are not reported on printouts, but telephone numbers, casualty location and other frequently used information can be appended for quick access. The box will scroll when the list becomes too long.

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