Onboarding
These guides walk contributors through the steps for handing data over to finwave. There are three onboarding paths — pick the one that matches how you’ll be working with finwave.
Which path is mine?
Section titled “Which path is mine?”| Web — Submit Encounter | Azure Storage Explorer + SAS link | finwave Desktop App | |
|---|---|---|---|
| You install | Nothing — it’s a page in the finwave web app | Microsoft’s free Azure Storage Explorer | The finwave desktop client |
| Your credential | Your finwave login | A one-time SAS link we email you | Your finwave login |
| Best for | Submitting encounters one at a time, with full metadata | One-off batch uploads of an existing dataset | Ongoing libraries that change over time |
| Volume | A handful of encounters | Hundreds to thousands of files in a single dataset | Long-lived collections of any size |
| Metadata | You fill in date, location, license, organization, behaviors per encounter | We do it on our side after upload | Discovered automatically from EXIF / GPS / folder structure |
| Manifest + review | Not needed — you ARE the review | We do it on our side after upload | You do it locally before sync, with progress and resume |
| Picks up where it left off | Browser remembers an in-progress draft | No — re-uploading is your job | Yes — every stage is resumable |
Use the web Submit Encounter form if: you have a few encounters to log right now and want full control over each one’s metadata, license, and organization. This is the same form you use day-to-day in the app.
Use the SAS-link path if: we sent you an email with a link ending in ?sv=…&sig=… and asked you to upload a batch of files.
Use the desktop app path if: you have an active research collection that grows over time, you want finwave to discover and group your images automatically, or you want sync that resumes after disconnection.
Guides
Section titled “Guides”- Submit Encounter (web) — Use the in-app submission form to log a single encounter with images, location, license, and other metadata.
- Uploading via Azure Storage Explorer — You received a SAS link from us. Install Microsoft’s tool, attach the container, drag and drop your files. No Azure account or finwave login required.
- Desktop Client Onboarding — Install the finwave desktop app, run discovery on your image directories, build a manifest, and sync. Designed for long-lived collections.