I’m proud to say that we’re finishing this year on a high note with another strong release full of features and improvements inspired by and suggested by you, our customers. Let’s take a closer look at our final release of 2022: Helm CONNECT 1.25.

The new Crew Scheduling module

First, I’m excited to announce that our new Crew Scheduling module—a simple, visual way of quickly assigning crew to assets—is now available! Please check out this blog post for all the details, and reach out to your account manager if you have any questions or would like to set up a demo.

Manage your work-rest data with My Helm

With your crew in mind, we added a new My Helm menu to the top of the menu bar so individuals can quickly and easily take care of the things they’re responsible for. All the tabs in this handy new dashboard will only display information relevant to the logged-in user. In this release, we’re starting our rollout of My Helm with a Work Rest tab for your crew to manage their work-rest data. In future releases, we’ll add tabs for your crew to see their certifications and crew changes and to manage any work they’ve been assigned.

Access your analytics data in Helm CONNECT

Our Maintenance and Compliance (MC) and Jobs Dashboards help you visualize and filter your data by combining data sources across Helm CONNECT. In this release, we’ve put this valuable information at your fingertips by embedding it in Helm CONNECT.

Note: To help you control which users can view this data, we also added a new Dashboards permission. Users will not receive this new permission automatically after the upgrade to Version 1.25. If any of your users need this permission, you must manually add it to their roles.

 

Add corrective actions when you need them

Previously, you could only create corrective actions while completing an audit or filling out the approval section of a form. Now, you can add them manually from the Compliance > Corrective Actions > Corrective Actions tab or the Maintenance > Overview > Advanced Search tab.

Note: If you add a corrective action in one of these two new places, it will be immediately published with a status of Open. And to give you full control over who can add corrective actions manually, we added a new Add New Corrective Action permission under Compliance > Corrective Actions.

 

More control over the required fields on your tasks and corrective actions

We’re giving you more control over the required fields on your tasks and corrective actions so you can ensure all the information needed for your departmental reporting has been captured. From the Tasks and Corrective Actions tabs under Setup > Field Configurations, you now have the following three options for your required fields:

• Not required: These fields won’t prevent users from saving or finishing an item if they haven’t been filled in.
• Always required: These fields must be filled to save or finish an item.
• Only required on completion: These fields must be filled to finish an item, but users won’t be prevented from saving if they haven’t yet been filled.
  Note: To protect your compliance workflow, corrective actions containing fields set to “Only required on completion” can’t be finished onboard; they must be finished on shore.

Automatically import external readings into Helm CONNECT

To save time and reduce the errors associated with manual data entry, you can now use our API to automatically import readings taken by external systems, such as sensor monitors, directly into Helm CONNECT. You can report on these external readings with the help of a new Readings Value data source and can view them in the following places:

• Onboard > Logs > Logbook: When external readings have been posted for the current day, you’ll see a new External Readings Posted icon to the right of the date picker. External readings are displayed when you click Show All and are included in PDF reports and CSV exports.
• Onboard > Logs > History: External Readings and External Cumulative Readings are new options in the Type filter.
• Maintenance > Overview > History: External Readings and External Cumulative Readings are new options in the Type filter.

Pre-fill fields with the name of the logged-in user

To save time, most fields in Helm CONNECT Maintenance and Helm CONNECT Compliance that require a user to select their own name from a list (for example, the “Created by” field on a new task or the “Posted by” field on a note) will now pre-fill automatically with the name of the logged-in user. You’ll also notice this change in the Logged By fields on events and activities logged from Onboard > Logs.

Inspected By fields on checklists and the Filled By fields on forms work slightly differently than other name fields because the user who starts a checklist or form is not always the same user who finishes it. If the user leaves the Inspected By or Filled By field empty, that field will be filled with the name of the logged-in user when the checklist or form is finished. However, if the user selects a name from one of those fields—even the name of another user—the selected name won’t be overwritten with the name of the logged-in user when the checklist or form is finished.

Note: For this feature to work, the status of the logged-in user must be active, and they must have either the Can Log In To Shore or Can Log In To Asset setting selected on their profile.

Add hyperlinks to your notes

You can now add hyperlinks to your notes throughout Helm CONNECT. This clever little feature gives you the option of including clickable links to items in history or to websites that might be relevant to an open task or even to an external storage system. Any URLs you added to your notes before this release will automatically become clickable once you upgrade to Version 1.25.

Improvements to interval billing

For our Helm CONNECT Jobs customers, we made several improvements to our popular interval billing feature in this release. You can now control which interval each trip is assigned to, and you have the flexibility to change the interval on a trip to another one that’s ready to bill if you need to. You also view and invoice up to three intervals in advance, allowing you to calculate and invoice billing transactions before the start or end date of an interval has passed.

Note: To help you control which users can bill future intervals or change the billing interval for a trip, we added two new permissions: Bill Future Intervals and Use Different Billing Interval. Users will not receive these new permissions automatically after the upgrade to Version 1.25. If any of your users need these permissions, you must manually add them to their roles.

Save and share filters on the Trips grid

Another handy new feature for Helm CONNECT Jobs is the ability to save your frequently used filters on the Jobs > Dispatch > Trips tab (also known as the Trips grid) and share them with other users, divisions, or assets so you can all work with the same view.

We’ve deprecated Windows 7

And finally, I want to remind you that we officially ended our support for the Windows 7 operating system in this release. You’ll find more details about our deprecation of Windows 7 here.

That’s it for now. Be sure to check out our release notes for more details about Version 1.25 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!