Page updated 29 August 2008

As the screen above indicates, creating a bulletin is much like creating an email message. The Create Bulletin screen contains several important fields:

• Check the “Keep ALL Information Private” option to make the entire bulletin private. Uncheck the option to make most of the information public (though information in the Private section will always remains private regardless). Private areas are designated by a red border.
• Use the Language drop-down to specify the language of the bulletin.
• The Author field is filled-in according to the Contact Information form, but may be edited.
• Enter the name of your organization or company in the Organization field
• Use the Title field to enter a descriptive title for the bulletin.
• Use the Location field to enter a specific town, province or state, and country.
• Use the Date of Event drop-down menu to specify the exact date or date range of the actual occurrence. It is filled-in, but may be edited.
• Use the Date Entered drop-down to specify the date that the bulletin is being created. It is filled-in, but may be edited.
• Use the Keywords field to specify words that will be significant to others searching the Martus knowledgebase.
• Use the Summary field to enter a brief description of the incident.
• Use the Details field to enter a more detailed description of the incident.
• Use the Attachments field to associate documents, digital photos, maps, or other resource files to your bulletin. Note: attachments may be specified as public or private on an individual basis.

• Use the Private field —outlined in red below— to enter any information that you want to protect from public view. This information will always remain private.

Customizing Martus: Most Martus users find that the standard bulletin fields meet their needs. However, if a user needs to create fields beyond the standard Martus fields, they can also create custom fields of various types. For example:

Exporting and importing bulletin data. You can export the data in a bulletin to an XML file, which you can open in any application that supports XML (Extensible Markup Language). XML documents include tags that define the structure of the document, and the role of each document component in that structure. You can also import formatted bulletins from your other electronic data (for example, spreadsheets or other databases) using XML, including bulletins that have been exported from Martus. In addition, you can import files as bulletin attachments such as pictures, word-processing documents, or spreadsheets.  This ability to import and export information allows data transfer between Martus and other programs, as needed by your organization.

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Martus bulletins capture all the important information about a specific incident. A key feature is that some of the information is always kept private, while the rest can be made public. The entire bulletin, including both public and private parts, is sealed to prevent anyone from making changes.

The private section can be used for sensitive information, such as names and the status of victims, specific locations, suspected perpetrators, legal strategies, and so on. Only the person that created the bulletin, or other Martus users to whom they gave specific access, can ever view the private portion or a bulletin.