Benefits
Why Enquiries?
Key advantages of using Enquiries as part of the Navatom integrated ship management platform.
Every Observation Tracked, No Detail Lost
Ship crew capture observations the moment they occur — with structured fields for who found it, where, when, and rich-text detail with file attachments. The days of technical findings noted in a notebook and never formally escalated are over. Every enquiry enters a managed lifecycle with an immutable record from the first keystroke.
Seamless Escalation to Seven Safety Document Types
When an enquiry warrants formal classification, a single conversion action transforms it into a Major Non-Conformity, Non-Conformity, Observation, Deficiency, Near Miss, Accident, or Technical Finding — with the full description, comments, and attachments carrying forward automatically. No duplicate data entry, no lost context, no broken evidence chain between the observation and the formal safety record.
Ship Crew Empowered, Office in Control
The deliberate dual-context design gives ship crew full ownership of creating and documenting observations without requiring office involvement, while giving the office unambiguous authority over lifecycle decisions — convert, postpone, close. Neither side can overstep into the other's domain, and the complete record is always visible to both.
Full Audit Trail from First Report to Final Resolution
18 event types record every action from creation through closure — field edits, comment additions, file uploads, status changes, conversions, postponements. The immutable event log satisfies ISM Code traceability requirements without additional effort. Class society surveyors and port state inspectors will find a complete, chronological record ready for immediate review.
Connected Fleet Operations with Real-Time Synchronization
Vessels stay connected across the fleet — creating enquiries, editing descriptions, adding comments, and uploading attachments with changes synchronizing automatically across the fleet as connectivity allows. Fleet managers see the aggregate open enquiry count in their dashboard and can search across all vessels from a single interface.
Navatom Enquiries is the structured observation and issue-tracking module for maritime fleet management — capturing every technical finding, inspection observation, and voyage concern raised by ship crew in a controlled, cloud-synchronized record before they are lost in informal emails or handwritten logs. Built for the dual-context reality of ship management, the module replaces fragmented reporting chains with a single platform where vessel crew capture enquiries with full context — title, place, date of occurrence, the authority that found the issue, a rich-text description, and file attachments — while office teams manage the lifecycle, assign responsibility, and escalate when required.
At the heart of the module is a deliberate division of labour: ship crew create and edit enquiries, while the office owns lifecycle management — closing, converting, or deferring resolution to a planned drydock. When an enquiry reveals a deeper safety or compliance issue, it converts in one action into one of seven formal safety document types: Major Non-Conformity, Non-Conformity, Observation, Deficiency, Near Miss, Accident, or Technical Finding. Comments, attachments, and the rich-text description transfer automatically with the conversion, preserving every piece of evidence without re-entry. For issues that cannot be resolved at sea, a structured drydock postponement workflow defers resolution to a specific drydock event, automatically creates the corresponding DryDock task, and links any related expenditures.
Enquiries integrates directly with eight other Navatom modules, connecting maintenance logs from the Planned Maintenance System, routing conversions into Deficiency, Non-Conformity, Observation, Near Miss, Accident, and Drydock modules, and cancelling linked expenditures when postponements are withdrawn. An 18-type event log provides a tamper-proof audit trail from the moment an enquiry is created through every field edit, comment, file operation, status change, and conversion — giving class societies, flag states, and internal compliance teams a complete and traceable record. Fourteen high-priority inbox notifications and a fleet-wide open enquiry dashboard widget ensure that no observation goes unnoticed.
Capabilities
Key Features
Discover how Navatom Enquiries helps ship managers work faster and stay compliant with powerful, easy-to-use tools.
Ship-Side Observation Capture
Ship crew create enquiries directly from the vessel, recording the essential context of any technical observation or finding: a descriptive title, the location on board where the issue was found, the date of occurrence, which authority discovered it (drawn from 12 recognized maritime authorities), and a rich-text description with full formatting support. Public enquiries are visible to all parties; Private enquiries are restricted to assignees and management, giving crew control over sensitive observations before formal escalation.
The creation form is optimized for shipboard workflows — all fields are inline-editable after creation, so 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 applicable, enabling bidirectional tracing between enquiries and PMS maintenance logs from the moment of creation.
Dual-Context Office-Ship Workflow
Enquiries operates with a clearly defined division of authority between ship and office. Ship crew create enquiries and 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 — converting to safety documents, closing, reopening, setting office assignees, and approving postponement requests. This separation prevents the ambiguity of concurrent edits while ensuring office teams have complete visibility 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, and Add File and Remove File govern attachment management. On the ship side, additional gating restricts comment and edit operations to the enquiry's creator, captain, or named assignees — preventing unauthorized modifications to open records.
- Ship creates and edits; office converts, closes, and postpones
- 5 granular access rights: Add, Convert, Postpone, AddFile, RemoveFile
- Ship-side: creator / captain / assignee gating on edits
- Company-side: office assignee / admin gating on lifecycle actions
- Read-only company view prevents concurrent edit conflicts
7-Type Safety Issue Conversion
When an enquiry reveals a formal safety or compliance issue, a single conversion action transforms it into one of seven structured safety document types: Major Non-Conformity, Non-Conformity, Observation, Deficiency, Near Miss, Accident, or Technical Finding. The conversion is seamless — the full enquiry description all threaded comments, and all file attachments carry forward into the new safety record without manual re-entry, preserving the complete evidence chain from first observation to formal finding.
Converted enquiries move to the Converted status, which is terminal and distinct from Closed — a converted enquiry cannot be reopened, as the issue now lives in the destination safety module. The link between the enquiry and its converted counterpart is maintained permanently, allowing compliance teams to trace any deficiency, near-miss, or accident record back to the shipboard observation that triggered it and the crew member who first reported it.
- Major Non-Conformity, Non-Conformity, Observation, Deficiency, Near Miss, Accident, Technical Finding
- Description, comments, and attachments transfer automatically
- Converted status is terminal — distinct from Closed
- Permanent bidirectional link maintained after conversion
- Convert Enquiry access right required on company side
12-Authority Found-By Classification
Every enquiry records who or which organization discovered the issue using a structured authority enum with 12 recognized values: Port State Control, Harbor Master, Classification Society, P&I Insurance, H&M Insurance, Flag State, CDI inspection, SIRE inspection, Safety Terminal Inspection, Office, Ship, and Other. This classification is not decorative — it determines the urgency and escalation path of the enquiry, as a Port State finding demands a different response timeline than an internal ship observation.
The 12-authority taxonomy is drawn directly from the maritime regulatory and commercial landscape that ship management companies operate within. Filtering and analytics by found-by authority let fleet managers identify which regulatory bodies are generating the most observations across the fleet, and which vessels are generating disproportionate external findings — intelligence that drives proactive compliance programs.
- Port State, Harbor Master, Classification Society, Flag State
- P&I, H&M, CDI, SIRE, Safety Terminal Inspection
- Office, Ship, Other — 12 values total
- Drives escalation urgency and response timelines
- Filterable for fleet-wide authority trend analysis
Drydock Postponement Management
When an enquiry cannot be resolved during a voyage, the postponement workflow formally defers resolution to a specific drydock event. Selecting DryDock as the postponement type automatically creates a corresponding task in the DryDock module, linking the two records. The enquiry's status updates to reflect the active postponement, and the postponement reason — chosen from 12 structured codes including Voyage Complications, Weather Conditions, Man Power, No Expertise, Parts Available, Inaccessible, and Management Hold Order — is recorded as part of the immutable event log.
Postponements pass through a three-state approval workflow: Requested (pending office review), Approved, or Rejected. Cancelling an approved postponement removes the linked DryDock task and cancels any related expenditures in the Expenditure module — ensuring that the drydock planning scope always reflects the current set of active deferred work items without orphaned tasks accumulating in the DryDock module.
- DryDock postponement type auto-creates DryDock module task
- Requested → Approved / Rejected three-state workflow
- 12 structured postpone reasons including Hold Orders and Priority
- Cancel removes linked DryDock task and cancels Expenditure records
- Postpone Enquiry access right required
Rich-Text Description & File Evidence
Each enquiry carries a full-featured rich-text description that supports formatted text, inline images, and structured content. Descriptions are stored in dedicated cloud storage rather than the database, with content-based deduplication preventing redundant storage when descriptions are copied between enquiries or carried forward during conversion. The cloud storage model ensures descriptions scale independently of the database and remain accessible even for large, image-heavy narratives.
Attachments support seven 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.
- Full-featured rich-text editor with cloud storage
- Content-based deduplication prevents redundant storage
- 7 attachment types: Diagram, Photo, Manual, Form, Chart, Document, Other
- Add, Edit (rename/reclassify), Remove operations with access control
- All file operations recorded in 18-type audit log
Threaded Comments & Collaboration
A threaded comment system allows ship crew and office staff to collaborate on an enquiry without leaving the platform. Comments are synced bidirectionally between ship and office via the synchronization layer, so a response from a superintendent is visible to the vessel crew within minutes of the next data sync. Comment operations — create, edit, and delete — are available to both sides, but edit and delete rights are restricted to the comment's original author, preventing unauthorized modification of the collaborative record.
When an enquiry is closed or converted, the comment thread becomes read-only on both sides, preserving the complete conversation as part of the permanent record. This ensures that the back-and-forth between ship and office that often contains critical diagnostic information is never lost when an enquiry reaches its terminal state. All comment operations are captured in the 18-type event log with full attribution.
- Bidirectional comment sync between ship and office
- Own-comment edit and delete restriction (author-only)
- Thread becomes read-only on Close or Convert
- Available to both ship and company assignees
- Comment operations recorded in immutable event log
18-Event Audit Trail
Every action taken on an enquiry is recorded as an immutable event in a tamper-proof log covering 18 distinct actions: creation, closure, reopening, field updates (place, date, title, description, assignees, found-by authority), comment operations (create, edit, delete), file operations (add, edit, remove), conversion, and postponement events. Each event carries a timestamp, the user who performed the action, and the contextual data of the change — producing a second-by-second narrative 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 reconstruct the complete history of any enquiry years after the fact, including who changed the description, who added a file, who requested a postponement, and who approved it. The tamper-proof event architecture satisfies the traceability requirements of ISM Code audits and port state control inspections without any additional reporting effort.
- Creation, closure, reopening, conversion, and postponement events
- Field updates: title, place, date, description, assignees, found-by
- Comment operations: create, edit, delete
- File operations: add, edit, remove
- Tamper-proof — no events can be modified or deleted
PMS Maintenance Integration
Enquiries connects bidirectionally with the Planned Maintenance System at two points. First, an enquiry can be created directly from a PMS maintenance log — when a maintenance job reveals a technical issue beyond its scope, crew can open an enquiry linked to that specific job without leaving the maintenance workflow. Second, the maintenance-related classification on an enquiry enables fleet-wide queries that return all maintenance-linked enquiries, giving technical superintendents a cross-module view of observations arising from maintenance activity.
This integration prevents the common pattern of maintenance-discovered issues being noted informally in the work log but never formally tracked. By surfacing the link between the maintenance record and the enquiry from the moment of creation, the integration ensures that every observation arising from a maintenance job enters the formal enquiry lifecycle — with its own status, assignees, audit trail, and potential conversion to a safety document.
- Create enquiry directly from a PMS maintenance log
- Bidirectional link: enquiry → maintenance log
- Maintenance-related classification on enquiry
- Fleet-wide maintenance-linked enquiry queries
- Prevents maintenance-discovered issues from being informally logged only
Fleet-Wide Dashboard & Notifications
The Open Enquiries dashboard widget provides a real-time count of open enquiries across the fleet, configurable into the company dashboard alongside other operational KPIs. Fleet managers can monitor the aggregate observation backlog without navigating into individual vessel records, and drill down to the underlying list when the count warrants attention.
Fourteen high-priority inbox notification types cover every significant lifecycle event: 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 appropriate stakeholders on both the ship and office sides based on their role and assignment to the enquiry, ensuring that no lifecycle event is missed regardless of whether the recipient is at sea or in the office.
- Open Enquiries widget: count of open enquiries fleet-wide
- 14 high-priority inbox notification types
- Notifications route to ship and office assignees
- Configurable dashboard placement alongside other KPI widgets
- Drill-down from widget count to underlying enquiry list
Three-Panel Detail View
The enquiry detail view uses a three-panel layout engineered for efficient review of complex records. The left sidebar holds the definition panel (title, status, place, date, found-by authority, related type, public/private flag) and the assignees panel (ship assignees with rank badges, company assignees) — all inline-editable on the ship side. The center panel renders the rich-text description, occupying the primary 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 is collapsible to maximize the description viewport on smaller screens. When an enquiry is in Closed or Converted status, the entire detail view transitions to read-only mode — the editor, comment input, and all action buttons are replaced with their read-only counterparts, making the terminal state visually unambiguous.
- Left: definition fields + assignees (inline-editable ship side)
- Center: rich-text description (primary viewport)
- East dock: Comments, Attachments, Events tabs
- East dock collapsible to maximize description viewport
- Full read-only mode when Closed or Converted
Office-Ship Synchronization
Enquiries synchronizes between office and vessel deployments via 19 dedicated synchronization handlers — 13 on the ship side and 6 on the company side — covering every enquiry lifecycle event. Ship-side handlers process incoming company actions (close, reopen, convert, postpone, comment, file operations) and apply them to the local vessel database. Company-side handlers process incoming ship actions (create, edit, comment, file operations) and update the office database, triggering search index updates for fleet-wide search.
The synchronization architecture is designed for the maritime communication environment: all pending changes are queued and merged automatically when connectivity fluctuates. Conflict resolution preserves the integrity of the enquiry record regardless of the order in which ship and office changes arrive, ensuring that the audit trail remains coherent across all deployment contexts.
- 19 synchronization handlers: 13 ship-side, 6 company-side
- Covers all 15 lifecycle events across the workflow
- Company-side handlers trigger search index updates
- Real-time fleet-wide synchronization — queue and merge on reconnect
- Conflict resolution preserves audit log integrity
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about Enquiries answered.
How do ship crew create and manage enquiries? +
Ship crew open a new enquiry from the vessel's enquiry list. They fill in the title, place (location on board), date of occurrence, found-by authority (selected from 12 options including Port State, Classification Society, Flag State, CDI, SIRE, Office, Ship, and others), and a rich-text description.
They can also set the visibility to Public or Private and link the enquiry to a maintenance context. After creation, all fields remain inline-editable by the crew member who created it, the captain, or named assignees.
Crew can add threaded comments and attach files classified as Diagram, Photo, Manual, Form, Chart, Document, or Other. Ship crew can also close or delete their own enquiries and reopen closed ones.
How does the conversion to safety issues work? +
Any Open enquiry can be converted to one of seven safety document types by a company user with the Convert Enquiry access right: Major Non-Conformity, Non-Conformity, Observation, Deficiency, Near Miss, Accident, or Technical Finding. The conversion is a single action that copies the full rich-text description, all threaded comments, and all file attachments into the new safety record in the destination module.
The enquiry moves to Converted status, which is terminal — it cannot be reopened because the issue now lives in the safety module. A permanent link between the enquiry and the converted record is maintained, allowing traceability in both directions.
Can enquiry resolution be deferred to a drydock period? +
Yes. Company users with the Postpone Enquiry access right can submit a postponement request specifying DryDock as the postponement type, selecting one of 12 structured reasons (Voyage Complications, Weather Conditions, Man Power, No Expertise, Parts Available, Inaccessible, Misuse, Management Hold Order, Officer Hold Order, Policies, Priority, or Other).
The request enters a Requested state pending approval. When approved, a corresponding DryDock task is automatically created in the DryDock module and linked to the enquiry.
If the postponement is later cancelled, the linked DryDock task is removed and any related expenditures in the Expenditure module are cancelled automatically.
How does the enquiry module integrate with planned maintenance? +
Integration with the Planned Maintenance System operates in two directions. First, an enquiry can be created directly from a PMS maintenance log when a maintenance job reveals a technical issue outside its scope — the link between the maintenance log and the enquiry is established at creation.
Second, the maintenance-related classification on an enquiry enables fleet-wide queries that return all maintenance-linked enquiries, giving technical superintendents a cross-module view of observations arising from maintenance activity. This prevents maintenance-discovered issues from being informally noted in work logs and never formally tracked.
What audit trail is available for compliance purposes? +
18 event types record every action in an immutable, tamper-proof event log: creation, closure, reopening, field updates (place, date, title, description, assignees, found-by authority), comment operations (create, edit, delete), file operations (add, edit, remove), conversion, and postponement events. Each event carries a timestamp, the acting user's identity, and the contextual data of the change.
The event log is not editable — no update or delete operations are permitted on existing events. Class society surveyors, flag state inspectors, and ISM auditors can reconstruct the complete history of any enquiry from creation to resolution, including every field change, every comment, every file operation, and every status transition.
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