After another busy few months of development, it’s time for a new release of Helm CONNECT! If you missed what happened in our last release, you can read about it here. As you might have heard at this year’s Helm Conference (our most successful conference yet!), we’ve got another exciting release full of great new features and enhancements. Here’s what you can look forward to in Helm CONNECT Version 1.17.
Maintenance by Metric
First on the list is the feature so many of you have been asking for: Maintenance by Metric! Until now, Helm CONNECT has only supported maintenance routines triggered by dates or by running hours. With Maintenance by Metric—one of our biggest, most powerful features yet—you can now trigger your maintenance routines with any cumulative reading, whether that’s running hours, fuel burn, number of tows, or any other metric you choose. Our largest customers have told us that switching to fuel burn-based maintenance has helped improved reliability and generated savings of more than a million dollars per year, and we’re excited to make this functionality available to all of our users. Check out this blog post to learn more about the future of preventive maintenance.
Select multiple assets
Another change for Helm CONNECT Maintenance customers is the ability to select multiple assets on the Maintenance > Overview > Overview tab. Once you select the assets you want to look at, just click Search to see open work items for those assets on the Advanced Search tab. If you also subscribe to Helm CONNECT Jobs or the Event Logs module and use activities, you can also use this feature to find assets engaged in a specific activity easily and quickly.
Warning if resource type doesn’t match requested resource
For our Helm CONNECT Jobs customers, we added a warning so you can see easily if you’re assigning the wrong type of resource to a job.
Override earning codes while planning or approving crew changes
In Helm CONNECT Personnel, crew dispatchers can now add override earning codes while they’re planning their crew changes, instead of having to wait until the crew is onboard. And, if crew add an override earning code when they submit a single crew change or a timesheet from Onboard, your crew dispatchers can now see the new code while reviewing pending work on the Personnel > Scheduling > Crew Changes > Pending sub tab, instead of having to approve the work first then switch to the Schedule tab to see it.
See the status of your payroll queue
Also in Helm CONNECT Personnel, we added messages to individual payroll transactions to help your payroll clerks manage their payroll queues more easily. One message will let them know if the item is in the queue for payroll generation and the other will let them know if payroll failed to generate for that item.
What’s coming next?
Coming early next year, Version 1.18 has a little something for everyone. It will introduce some powerful new billing features for Helm CONNECT Jobs, including interval billing—allowing you to bill orders without contracts—as well as custom fields for your invoice transactions and some improvements to the way time zones are displayed on your invoices. In Helm CONNECT Maintenance, you’ll soon be able to set a scheduled date for each of your tasks and maintenance checklists, and in Helm CONNECT Personnel, we’re giving your shoreside team the ability to split schedules.
That’s it for now. Be sure to check out our release notes for all the details about Version 1.17. And don’t forget that we’ll be at the International Workboat Show in New Orleans, Louisiana from December 4 to 6. Stop by Booth 1709 to say hello, play our latest game, and pick up some snazzy new socks!
Happy Helm-ing!
