To get started using the system, you will first need to register your account via the Officer Registration Form - Once done, you will get access to the rest of the system.

Intelligence is the cornerstone of policing. When you encounter a vehicle acting suspiciously or have intelligence about a specific person, location, vehicle or business (either you've seen it yourself, or someone else has informed you), it's important that you submit an intelligence report via the Submit Intelligence form. 

The form is fairly intuitive, and it will be developed and sanitised by intelligence analysts. But it's important to try to get it right at first submission. Some things to remember:

1. You must not identify, or lead to the accidental identification of, the source anywhere in the intelligence form except for where it specifically asks for source details.

2. We utilise the 3x5x2 method for intel grading. This means 3 options for source evaluation (how reliable the source is), Intelligence Evaluation (how the intel is known to the source) and handling conditions (whether conditions are required). It's important that conditions are not imposed unless a DS+ has been consulted prior.

Submitting intelligence MUST be done by an officer, but it can be third party information from a civilian source.

An occurrence is a fancy name for an investigation casefile. When you make a new occurrence (see the next step below), a unique occurrence ID will be generated (following the format '1001, 1002 e.t.c.') and a new folder in the 'Occurrences' folder of google drive will be created with the same name as the ID.  (You can also find the link in the menu sidebar to the left). 

It will also auto-populate the master spreadsheet's 'Occurrences' sheet with the new occurrence's details. 

Within the new folder, you will find a subfolder named 'Attachments' and a new excel sheet called 'OEL' prefixed with your occurrence ID (e.g. '1001 OEL'). The OEL sheet contains the record of all updates, attachments and entries made to the occurrence. Each entry is given it's own OEL ID for easy navigation and communication. 

To add an OEL entry, follow the 'Add an OEL Entry' guide below.

In order to create a new occurrence/investigation, you must utilise the 'New Occurrence' form. Examples are provided in the form for ease of use. 

To add an OEL entry to an occurrence (essentially like a log of events/evidence), you should use the 'Add an OEL Entry' form, ensuring that the occurrence ID field matches your occurrence ID exactly.

Once submitted, it will automatically populate the OEL spreadsheet in your occurrence folder with the relevant details, and an OEL ID will be added to the row. 

If you happen to add attachments, these will go into the 'Attachments' subfolder where they can be accessed from, or alternatively, you may prefer to access the attachments via the OEL spreadsheet's 'Attachments' column, where hyperlinks are automatically populated.

YOU CAN NOT DELETE AN OEL ENTRY! (But you can edit after submission on the form page or via the email you are sent).

If necessary, you can message K.Jones (kyejones) on discord to request an entry be deleted.

To add records for people, addresses or vehicles you can utilise the following forms:

• Add person record

• Add vehicle record

• Add address/business record

Once you've done this, they will be populated on the master spreadsheet (where they can be searched for). This is useful for linking people, vehicles or businesses/addresses for tracking a person's intelligence and occurrences in order to build a wider intelligence picture.

Records can all be linked together via occurrences, allowing easier tracking of each record. To see how to do this, see the section on 'Linking Records' below.

In order to locate existing records or occurrences, you can utilise the 'Niche Search' page. In this page, you can search for any record type.

Useful to know: Inputting a VRM is not case-sensitive and removes any spaces or - dashes so you can write the same VRM however you want. E.g. BU15HKH & BU 15HKH output the same values

In order to use niche to it's full potential, we need to link records together to build the wider picture. When we make a new occurrence, the next step should be to search for the people, vehicles and addresses/businesses involved to see if they have records already.

If they don't already have records, refer to the previous step and add the records.

If they do, or after you've done the above, it's important we now link them. Linking can be done via (surprise, surprise) forms! But thankfully they're short, sweet and snappy.

To link any records to an occurrence (witnesses, offenders, vehicles involved, locations involved e.t.c.) we use the 'Link to Occurrence' form.

To link other records together (such as linking a person as an associate to another person, or linking a person to a vehicle as the owner) we use the 'Link to Person' form.

We can also link officers to occurrences for the purpose of providing a paper trail of who is working on what. You can choose what capacity they will be involved in the case, such as Officer In Case or Assisting or Attending Officer and many more options. We do this by using the same 'Link to Occurrence' form from earlier!

Sometimes a person, property or vehicle is dangerous or there's operational information that is important for an officer to know immediately when interacting with them. This is where markers come in.

Markers in Niche are partially aligned to PNC markers, but they do differ - often with more variety of marker options.

We can add markers to people, property or vehicles. When we do so, the marker shows as bright red when searching for the record in Niche.

It's crucial that every marker has a niche occurrence linked to it (you will be asked for an occurrence ID in the form anyway). This occurrence doesn't need to be one created entirely for the marker, but it must be an occurrence that is relevant and has some form of explanation of why the marker has been added, usually in the form of an OEL entry.

We add markers by using the 'Add Marker' form.

Sometimes you'll want to update a vehicle, person, address or officer record - For example if you input the wrong information the first time, or you gain more information about a person e.t.c.

To do this, fill in the 'Update a Record' form.