What’s new in Helm CONNECT 1.30?

I’m happy to introduce you to some of the features and improvements available in our latest release, Helm CONNECT 1.30!

Introducing Dynamic Forms

In Helm CONNECT Compliance, you can now streamline your form library and simplify data entry for your crew to ensure they capture the information you need. If you currently have multiple versions of the same form in Helm CONNECT—because you require different fields for different scenarios—you can replace them with a single form that displays different fields based on the information that was entered in a previous step. For example, you could create a single near-miss form with specific fields for environmental, injury, or illness-related situations. Or a single training form that displays different fields for each position.

Improvements to the Payroll and Crew Scheduling Modules

For our Helm CONNECT Personnel customers, we made so many great improvements to our Payroll and Crew Scheduling modules that I don’t know where to begin!

Let’s start with the highlights for the Payroll module:

• If your crew members travel internationally for their work, you can now add nationalities to their crew profiles.

• You can now create payroll rules that automatically select the highest rate.

• You can now assign default payroll classes to your crewing requirements. You can also protect payroll classes for specific crew members so they always override other payroll class assignments, including any default payroll classes assigned to crewing requirements.

• In addition to First In, First Out (FIFO) banks, you now have the option to create two new types of banks: Dollars Only and Average Dollars. You can also transfer money between Dollars Only and Average Dollars banks.

• You can now override the minimum and maximum bank settings for specific crew members.

• You can now add work factors to your earning codes. This option will work well for companies, such as our Canadian customers, who calculate sea days in their payroll.

• We added change logs for payroll schemes so you can see which rules have been added, deleted, or modified and who made the change.

• We added three new conditions for the date targets in your payroll schemes: crew change hours (exact), crew change hours (rounded), and crew change hours (individually rounded).

In the Crew Scheduling module, we focused on improvements to crew changes based on customer feedback:

• You can now publish planned crew changes with unassigned positions.

• You can now edit the Position and Crew fields on published crew changes, edit completed crew changes from history, and edit the current crew.

• The visibility of the Pending tab and Approval Date field now depends on the approval policy you have configured.

• We’ve given you more options to set the actual dates and times for multiple crew members with two new buttons on the Crew Changes tabs: Set All Crew On and Set All Crew Off.

• If you have permission to do so, you can now delete crew from crew changes in several places.

• You can now add locations and descriptions to crew changes.

Deprecation Notices

Here are a couple of important reminders before we go:

• End of Support for Windows 8/8.1 and Windows Server 2012/2012 R2: We’re ending our support for Windows 8/8.1 and Windows Server 2012/2012 R2 on January 15, 2025. After that date, we will no longer test Helm CONNECT for compatibility with or provide fixes for any issues reported with Windows 8/8.1 or Windows Server 2012/2012 R2. These changes are necessary because Microsoft ended its support for Windows 8/8.1 in January 2023 and its support for Windows Server 2012/2012 R2 on October 10, 2023, and no longer provides security updates, fixes, or technical support for any issues related to these products. Click here for more information.

• End of Support for TLS 1.0 and 1.1: We’re ending our support for Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.0 and 1.1 on January 15, 2025. After that date, we will require all integrations with Helm CONNECT and the Helm CONNECT API to be secured using TLS 1.2 or later. This change is necessary to enhance security and continue providing best-in-class encryption for your data. Click here for more information.

That’s it for now. Check out our release notes for more details about Helm CONNECT 1.30, 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.