MDRS:Crew Report Instructions

Important Notes

Daily Crew Reports from MDRS are now being posted to the MDRS website using a new process which ensures automated posting via email and reduces workload for our volunteer staff.

The reports are to be submitted via email in Draft mode, and reviewed by the MDRS Web Team before going live on the website.

Please read through all of these instructions. It's very important they are followed exactly to ensure a smooth workflow for everybody.

Any questions to Mission Support, other conversations, and/or personal comments need to be sent in separate emails with subject:

"Mission Support [query] or [greetings] Crew XXX"

If you have any questions on this process for submitting crew reports, please contact your Capcoms or the Web Team using the alias mdrs-reports.gp@marssociety.org

Crew Reporting Instructions

1. Write your report using the standard crew report templates, using a text editor or Microsoft Word. Be sure and save a copy on your local computer in case you need it for your own purposes after the mission. Bold and Italics are ok but fonts will be ignored and converted to what is used on the website. Please ensure the line breaks and paragraph breaks are single instances. This is to avoid an excessive amount of whitespace in your report, which looks bad on the website and typically needs to be manually fixed by the Web Team.

2. Make sure your email client is configured to send email as Plain Text, not HTML email. If you are using Gmail, you should be ok. With other mail clients, you might need to adjust your settings. If you use Microsoft Outlook, this setting is in the "Format Text" tab of the ribbon.

3. Open a new email message with the Mission Support alias in the TO: line and the following email address in the CC: line of your new email:

 zafa277fusi@post.wordpress.com

Do not use this email address for anything else, because it is an automated email address and nobody except for the website itself is on the receiving end. If the emails sent to it are not in the proper format, they will be ignored.

4. The subject of your email should use the standard formatting procedure mentioned in the Capcom Guide:

Crew XXX ReportName Date

5. Paste in your entire report to the body of the email. Again, please do not change your fonts as they will not be reflected on the website.

6. This Step Is Important: include the following tags in your email. The exact order is below, followed by a description of each tag.

[title Your post title - MONTH DDth/rd]
[status draft]
[category sol-summary]

YOUR REPORT INFORMATION HERE

[end] 

Here is a description of each of these tags:

For the [title] tag, here are the available options:

Commander Report
Sol Summary
Operations Report
Crew Photos
EVA Report
Journalist Report
Greenhab Report
Science Report
Astronomy Report
Creative Report
Mission Plan
Mission Summary

And the date format should be "MONTH DDth/rd" - for example: "December 25th"

Include the following tag to ensure that your report is uploaded to the website in Draft form and not Published form, which would be very bad; if you don't do this correctly or omit this tag, your report will show up on the website without any review, and this fact will be noticed by others (including who did it!!)

[status draft]

Next, include the type of report:

[category ReportName]

where "ReportName" is one of the following:

sol-summary
operations-report
commander-report
crew-photos
eva-report
journalist-report
greenhab-report
science-report
astronomy-report
creative-report
mission-plan
mission-summary

Complete your email with this tag:

[end]

Make sure it’s on its own line with a blank line above it. Everything after this tag is ignored (i.e. signatures). Again, please use separate emails to ask other questions, conversations, or for personal comments.

7. Include any images as attachments to your email. Be sure and follow the standard procedures for photos including their approx. sizes and the naming conventions. Naming photos with spaces is OK, as the names of photos can then easily be converted into captions by the Web Team, if that is desired.

Example Report

Here is an example report so you can see the exact format in action:

TO: Mission Support
CC: zafa277fusi@post.wordpress.com
SUBJECT: Crew 500 Commander Report 25Nov2020
 
[title Commander Report - November 25th]
[status draft]
[category commander-report]
 
Commander Report
Mars Guy, Commander of Crew 500
 
Today we landed on Mars!  We are the first successful human mission to the Red Planet and everybody back on Earth is celebrating our awesome accomplishment!  We are going to make sure our ISRU fuel system is working correctly so we can get home.
 
[end]