2022 has been a busy year so far here at Helm Operations. Our Sales team is happy to finally be back on the road and catching up with our wonderful customers in person. And of course, here at home, we’re still working hard to build the best software in the marine industry, with all the tools you need to make your business successful. It’s now my great pleasure to introduce Helm CONNECT 1.24, our latest release!
Streamline your dispatching process with the Helm CONNECT Portal
I’m excited to announce the official release of the Helm CONNECT Portal! This secure, easy-to-use interface allows your customers and agents to send order requests directly to Helm CONNECT and view the status and details of their orders in real-time. Your dispatchers can review order requests right from the Request Manager and bring them seamlessly into Helm CONNECT, thereby saving time and eliminating the need for duplicate data entry. Check out this blog post and reach out to your account manager to learn more about this incredible new tool and how it can streamline your dispatching process:
Use titles and labels to identify individual forms
If finding one form in a list of items with the same name has ever felt like finding a needle in a haystack, here are two great new ways to make each form stand out:
- Title: This field doesn’t require any configuration on the template and allows users to enter up to 50 characters of text at any stage in the form’s workflow.
- Label: Once you configure this field on the template, it will be populated automatically when a user fills out the form. For example, if you configure a Crew Selection drop-down field to populate the Label field, when a user fills out the form, the name they select from the Crew Selection drop-down will populate the Label field automatically.
Stop closing the Task and Corrective Action windows by mistake
Here’s one of those small-but-mighty changes that will make many people happy. Drumroll, please! As you know, accidentally clicking outside a Task or Corrective Action window closes that window without saving the data you’ve already entered. We agreed with our customers that this behavior was incredibly frustrating, especially for new users, so we changed it. Now, the only way to close those windows is to either click one of the buttons along the bottom of the window—such as the Cancel, Finish, or Create button—or click the new X button in the upper right corner of the window.
Hide the “Uncontrolled Document” watermark when it isn’t needed
Due to the compliance risks associated with distributing uncontrolled documents, all documents printed from Helm CONNECT include an “Uncontrolled Document” watermark on every page. However, some customers need the option to hide the watermark in certain situations. In this release, we added a new Hide Watermark check box on the Compliance > Documents > Document Control tab that allows you to hide the watermark on new or existing documents.
Note: To help you maintain tight control over which users can modify this setting, we also added a new Hide Document Watermark permission. Users will not receive this new permission automatically after the upgrade to Version 1.24. If users need this permission, you must manually add it to their roles.
Let other users know when you’ve added notes to corrective actions
Notes are an important way to add comments and feedback to corrective actions. You can now send an email notification to selected users if you’d like them to know when you’ve added a note.
We’re deprecating Windows 7
I want to remind you that we’re ending support for the Windows 7 operating system in Helm CONNECT Version 1.25. If you’re currently using Windows 7 for any of your asset installations, we recommend that you start transitioning to one of our supported operating systems (64-bit versions of Windows 8 or Windows 10) to avoid any disruption to your use of Helm CONNECT. Check out this article for more details.
That’s it for now. Be sure to check out our release notes for more details about Version 1.24 and subscribe to our Helm Connector 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. And don’t forget to join us for Helm Conference in September, right here in Victoria, BC, for three full days of learning, inspiration, and fun! You won’t want to miss this chance to see the future of our product, meet our team, and explore our beautiful city.
Stay safe, everyone, and happy Helm-ing!
