Enquiries

Ship crew create enquiries directly from the vessel. They record the essential context of any inquiry, technical or not. That means a descriptive title, the place on board where the issue was found, the date of occurrence, and the authority that found it. The authority is one of 12 recognized maritime authorities. A rich-text description with full formatting support completes the record. Public enquiries are visible to all parties. Private enquiries are limited to assignees and management. This gives crew control over sensitive observations before formal escalation.

The creation form is built for shipboard work. All fields are inline-editable after creation. Crew can begin with partial information and complete the record as they gather more detail. A related-type field links the observation to a maintenance context when it applies. This allows tracing both ways between enquiries and PMS maintenance logs from the moment of creation.

Enquiries works with a clear division of authority between ship and office. Ship crew create enquiries. They hold full edit rights over the title, place, date, description, found-by authority and assignees throughout the Open state.

The company side reads the same record but manages the lifecycle. It converts enquiries to safety documents, closes them, reopens them, sets office assignees and approves postponement requests. This separation prevents the ambiguity of concurrent edits. Office teams see everything from the moment an enquiry is created.

Five granular access rights govern what each user can do. Add Enquiry controls creation. Convert Enquiry gates conversion to safety types. Postpone Enquiry controls drydock deferral. Add File and Remove File govern attachment management. On the ship side, extra gating limits comment and edit actions to the enquiry's creator, captain or named assignees. This prevents unauthorized changes to open records.

Enquiries connects both ways with the Planned Maintenance System at 2 points. First, an enquiry can be created directly from a PMS maintenance log. A maintenance job may reveal a technical issue beyond its scope. Crew can then open an enquiry linked to that job without leaving the maintenance workflow.

Second, the maintenance-related classification on an enquiry enables fleet-wide queries. They return all maintenance-linked enquiries. Technical superintendents get a cross-module view of observations arising from maintenance activity.

This integration prevents a common problem. Issues found during maintenance get noted informally in the work log and are never formally tracked. The link between the maintenance record and the enquiry is visible from the moment of creation. So each observation from a maintenance job enters the formal enquiry lifecycle. It has its own status, assignees, audit trail and potential conversion to a safety document.

The Open Enquiries dashboard widget gives a real-time count of open enquiries across the fleet. It can be placed in the company dashboard alongside other operational KPIs. Fleet managers can monitor the total enquiry backlog without opening individual vessel records. They can drill down to the underlying list when the count needs attention.

Fourteen high-priority inbox notification types cover each significant lifecycle event. These are enquiry created, closed, reopened, description updated, title changed, assignees changed, comment added or edited or deleted, file added or removed, converted, postponed, and postponement cancelled. Notifications route to the right people on both the ship and office sides. They go by role and assignment to the enquiry. No lifecycle event is missed, whether the recipient is at sea or in the office.

Each enquiry carries a full-featured rich-text description. It supports formatted text, inline images and structured content. Descriptions are stored in cloud storage built for them, rather than in the database. Content-based deduplication avoids redundant storage when descriptions are copied between enquiries or carried forward during conversion.

The cloud storage model lets descriptions scale independently of the database. They stay accessible even for large, image-heavy narratives.

Attachments support 7 structured file types: Diagram, Photo, Manual, Form, Chart, Document and Other. Each attachment carries a type classification, an optional caption and full upload provenance.

File operations — add, edit (rename/reclassify), and remove — are gated by Add File and Remove File access rights and are recorded as distinct events in the 18-type audit trail, creating a complete chain of custody for every piece of evidence attached to an enquiry.

A threaded comment system lets ship crew and office staff work together on an enquiry. They never have to leave the platform. Comments sync both ways between ship and office through the synchronization layer. A response from a superintendent reaches the vessel crew within minutes of the next data sync.

Comment actions (create, edit and delete) are open to both sides. Only the original author can edit or delete a comment. This prevents unauthorized changes to the collaborative record.

When an enquiry is closed or converted, the comment thread becomes read-only on both sides. The complete conversation stays as part of the permanent record. The back-and-forth between ship and office often contains critical diagnostic information. It is never lost when an enquiry reaches its terminal state.

All comment operations are captured in the 18-type event log with full attribution.

Each change to an enquiry made on board reaches the office. Each office decision reaches the ship. This covers creation, edits, comments, files, closing, conversion and postponement.

Company-side handlers process incoming ship actions (create, edit, comment, file actions) and update the office database. They also trigger search index updates for fleet-wide search.

Synchronization is designed for the maritime communication environment. Pending changes are queued. They merge on their own when connectivity fluctuates. Conflict resolution keeps the enquiry record intact whatever order ship and office changes arrive in. The audit trail stays coherent across all deployment contexts.

The enquiry detail view uses a 3-panel layout built for efficient review of complex records. The left sidebar holds 2 panels. The definition panel has title, status, place, date, found-by authority, related type and the public/private flag. The assignees panel has ship assignees with rank badges, and company assignees. All of it is inline-editable on the ship side.

The center panel shows the rich-text description. It takes the main viewport for the most content-dense part of the record.

The east dock panel houses three tabs: Comments (threaded conversation), Attachments (typed file list with add/edit/remove controls), and Events (the chronological 18-type audit log). The east dock collapses to give the description more room on smaller screens.

When an enquiry is in Closed or Converted status, the whole detail view switches to read-only mode. The editor, comment input and all action buttons are replaced with read-only versions. This makes the terminal state clear to see.

Each action on an enquiry is recorded with who and when. This covers creation, closing, reopening, each field change, comments, files, conversion and postponement. Each event carries a timestamp, the user who performed the action and the contextual data of the change. The result is a second-by-second account of the enquiry's entire lifecycle.

This event log is not an editable summary. It is the authoritative record. Class societies, flag state inspectors and internal compliance managers can rebuild the complete history of any enquiry, years after the fact. That includes who changed the description and who added a file. It also includes who requested a postponement and who approved it.

The history gives ISM Code audits and port state inspections the trail they ask for without extra reporting.