This time of year is usually tradeshow season for us here at Helm. Normally, we’d be looking forward to the International WorkBoat Show in December, putting the finishing touches on a new game for the booth, and designing the latest version of our wildly popular socks. Although “normal” looks a little different this year, and we’re not travelling to our favorite tradeshows for now, we’re still working hard to bring you the best software in the marine industry, with all the tools you need to make your business successful. And now, it’s my great pleasure to introduce the latest release of Helm CONNECT!
Shore version of the Work Rest module is now available
We have an exciting announcement: our new Work Rest module is here! Work Rest is a set of tools to help you manage your crew’s fatigue, and is the first of four major improvements to Helm CONNECT Personnel that we’re rolling out over the next year. In Helm CONNECT 1.20, we’re making the shore version of Work Rest available and in our next release—slated for early next year—it’ll be available for your assets as well. For more details about the Work Rest module, check out this blog post.
More improvements to cumulative readings
In our previous release, we made it easier to control how cumulative readings values are entered in maintenance checklists by allowing you to restrict the Add or Total entry fields and set daily ranges for each cumulative reading type. In Helm CONNECT 1.20, we added two more great improvements for cumulative readings:
- Propagate component readings down to their sub components: Instead of having to enter readings for each component and for each of their sub components, your crew can now enter a reading for just the component and let the system apply that reading to each sub component automatically. By limiting the number of readings your crew have to enter, you can decrease the amount of time they spend recording readings as well as help reduce data-entry errors. You can control which components can propagate their readings and which sub components can receive those readings. For more details, check out this article.
- Bulk correct maintenance templates: If you set daily ranges on your cumulative reading types and enter a reading outside the expected range while completing a checklist, you’ll now see a new window called “Bulk Correct Maintenance Templates” that lists any maintenance templates affected by the out-of-range reading and allows you to correct when they’re due.
Note: You must add a new permission called “Can Bulk Correct Maintenance Templates” to the roles of any users who need to see and use the Bulk Correct Maintenance Templates window.
New report data source for emergency contacts
To address a gap on the reporting side of things, we added a new data source called Emergency Contacts that makes it easy to pull up a list of crew names, email addresses, phone numbers, emergency contacts, and other employment details when you need it. This new data source contains most of the fields from the Details and Emergency Contacts sub tabs in Management > People > People, as well as any custom fields that you add to the two sub tabs. It also includes information about whether or not the person is an active employee. Keep in mind though, that it doesn’t contain any of the fields that are only available to Helm CONNECT Personnel subscribers, such as the fields from the Personnel, Crew Groups, Payroll Classes, or Rates sections at the bottom of the Details sub tab.
As the Emergency Contacts data source provides access to potentially sensitive information, such as names and contact information, we created a new group in the permission tree for it called Sensitive Reports so you can manage who has access to this data. Even if someone currently has permission to the Reports group, you’ll have to give them permission to the new Sensitive Reports group if you want them to use the Emergency Contacts data source.
We’re deprecating IE 11 in Version 1.21
One more important thing before I go: in Version 1.21—slated for early next year—we’ll stop supporting Internet Explorer 11 (IE 11) and begin supporting Microsoft Edge. If you’re currently using IE 11, we recommend that you start transitioning to one of our supported browsers (latest released versions of Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge) to avoid any disruption to your use of Helm CONNECT. For more details about this change, check out this article.
That’s it for now. Be sure to check out our release notes for more details about Helm CONNECT 1.20 and subscribe to our newsletter to stay up-to-date on the latest Helm news. Your account manager would also be happy to answer your questions about anything in this release or to set up a demo for you.
Stay safe everyone and happy Helm-ing!
