Improving the efficiency of team-based condition reports: Two Conservators share their experience with Horus Drive

While setting up an exhibition, two conservators used Horus Drive to centralize their condition reports. We spoke with them to understand how this tool transformed their workflow.

For this team-based condition report project, how did you organize the preparatory work on your various tablets to ensure everyone was working on the same project?

AG (lead conservator): It all came down to the preparation phase. As the lead conservator, I started by logging into the Horus Drive web interface on my computer to create the general project folder for the exhibition. After that, setting things up for the team was surprisingly simple.

CM (participating conservator): Yes, absolutely! All we had to do was open the Horus Condition Report Pro app on our iPads, go to the settings, and select the Horus Drive tab. There, we entered the login details: the URL for our secure Horus Drive account, along with the username and password. In less than two minutes, all our tablets were set up and connected to the same central repository, without any complex technical configuration required.

In practical terms, how did the transition go from your offline inspections of the artworks during the day to the centralization of data at the end of the day?

CM: Very simply. During the intervention, we maintained our usual autonomy. We completed our condition reports using the Horus Pro app without needing an internet connection. That’s one of the app’s major strengths. 

AG: The magic really happens at the end of the day. Each conservator connected to the Wi-Fi network, selected the condition reports she had created that day, and then used the “Export to PDF” and “Horus” functions to upload them to our Horus Drive account. The complete reports were instantly sent to our online server. Knowing that this hosting is located in France and fully secured by daily backups gave us immense peace of mind regarding the sensitivity of our data.

Once the findings were sent to Horus Drive, how did this tool make it easier for the lead restorer to deliver them to the client?

AG: For me, as the person in charge of coordinating everything, this was a complete game-changer. Before, I’d spend my late evenings collecting everyone’s files via email, then renaming each photo. With Horus Drive, the organization was completely automated. The platform created a specific folder for each artwork, containing the PDF, the Horus format file, and the Photos folder. Each file was already named with the exhibition number. 

All I had to do was log into the interface, download the two folders, one with PDFs and one with images, and then send them in a single batch to the sponsor. In total, it took me just five minutes to send all the reports and photo folders. Every PDF and every photo was correctly named, organized, clean, and complete, exactly as the sponsor expected.

How did this centralization enable the museum curator to work effectively with the lender to wrap up the day?

AG: Without having to wait, the museum registrar was able to download our report directly. He was able to forward the information to the lenders and save the PDFs and images to his own server.

What advice would you give to other teams conducting condition reports? 

CM: To ensure consistency within a single team, you need to agree on certain settings within the app. In our case, we made sure to enable file naming with the exhibition number and selected the “Exhibition” layout, which we found most suitable.

Next, the first file we uploaded to Horus Drive was a template. It was an initial condition report in which I had already filled in the team name, the exhibition name, the lender’s name, the location of the inspection, and even the recurring conditions specific to our type of artworks, which saved us time. The list of artworks had changed, but ideally, we would have imported the information in CSV format. 

AG: Horus Drive has been helpful to us in several ways: it backs up everyone’s data, facilitates information sharing within the team, and allowed us to automate the time-consuming tasks of naming and categorizing. This enabled us to meet very tight deadlines and efficiency requirements while maintaining our quality standards.