Tag: newsletter

Paper manuals in digital times

In most industries you can observe a trend towards digitization. There is no global player who has not started strategic projects to transform their company to meet the requirements of the digital age. This trend is also true for the yachting industry. More and more of the documentation comes in digital form and needs to onboard a yacht when it leaves the shipyard. As a service provider we support the shipyards preparing the documentation for the crew. To achieve this we follow a proven process. You can read all about our work in our latest article.

Trending charts in IDEA

Good news for all the engineers out there: In July we started implementing a new feature in IDEA that was often requested by engineering departments and technical managers: trending charts.

With the scheduled release in September 2019 the engine room log gets new chart capabilities that allow filtering, custom charts and much more.

How to get started with IDEA’s new purchasing system

We have already mentioned it in the past: the support for our old product IDEA VIO is running out by the end of 2019. Seven years after the introduction of IDEA.NET and one year after the release of IDEA Yacht we will end the support for our beloved product.

The reason for this decision is mainly of technical nature. In terms of software development IDEA VIO is a dinosaur. The support for 3^rd party tools and frameworks used within VIO was discontinued years ago by the manufacturers. For over 7 years after developments ceased we did our best to keep VIO fully operational, even on Windows 7. But now with the end of support for Windows 7 by Microsoft it is a task we cannot manage anymore. The technologies (frameworks, browser etc.) are changing so fast these days that VIO cannot be maintained anymore from our side.

You can continue using IDEA VIO and work with it like you have done for so many years, but we cannot guarantee compatibility to new systems like Windows 10 or mobile devices.

If you are interested in upgrading please contact us. We can provide you with detailed information on our latest product IDEA Yacht and the update process.

Summer season 2019 is in full swing and like all of our clients we are working hard to get things done and keep our valued customers happy.

As planned at the beginning of this year we are delivering our second major update in 2019. We used the past quarter to improve one of our core modules in IDEA Yacht: the stock control and purchasing system.
Besides these developments, we released the first version of our new product IDEA FMP (Fleetmanagement Portal) and made it available for selected companies for testing. The feedback we received is now used to optimize our product and finally start promoting it in the yachting industry.
Please find below more information about these topics.

A new look and improved functionality for Stock Control 2.0   

In about a week’s time, on 10.7.2019, we will release our second major update in 2019. The second update will present IDEA’s Stock Control Module in a new look. We improved the usability and added new functionalities that complement our stock control & purchasing module nicely.

Like in other parts of IDEA before, we now changed the purchasing overview to a server side grid that improves loading times drastically. At the same time, the view itself was modernized and filter options were added to make it easier to navigate a large number of POs in different states.

One of the greatest setbacks in this view until now has been the missing adaptability of IDEA’s PO workflow to internal vessels or management company workflows. With the new version, crew members and/or management can now add or rename purchase order states themselves to reflect their individual purchase order workflow.
With the revamp of the stock control module we introduce a budget and approval function for purchasing. Administrators can now create budgets for roles and/or departments to control expenses of the vessel.

These functions are complimented by improved stock management and stock history capabilities. Users can now reproduce all spare parts movements in detail. Every time the stock level of an item is changed, the change is tracked with amount, reason and person who triggered the change.
A complete list of all improvements and bug fixes can be found in our release notes, which will be available by the 10th of July.

Fleetmanagement

In February 2019 we started our journey to develop a fleet management portal that would be compatible with both our products, IDEA Yacht and IDEA SBA. This task was more complicated than initially anticipated and resulted in quite some development work, but we finally managed to release a first version that is able to cope with all our product databases and helps fleet managers to supervise their vessels.
Although we already have a working version out there, we are not tired of improving and bringing it up to the next level. To ensure these actions, we need you to test the FMP in order to generate Feedback and to drive enhancements forward.
The more feedback we get – the more useful features can be implemented into the FMP.
If fleet management sounds interesting to you, please feel free to contact us or request a demo access to FMP.

You want to know more? Join our community: Newsletter or contact us directly!

IDEA YACHT – new functions and features – release of 2019.2 by beginning of July

We are constantly working on new functions and features to stay ahead of the industry rules and regulations mentioned in the third article below, which shall help our customers to prevent from any imponderability’s and to manage their daily tasks on-board much more efficiently than before. 
Therefore, we would like to introduce a few more features of IDEA YACHT.Please find below some of the highlights for the next release. 

Improved Stock Control Module

The stock control module provides a detailed overview of all items, which have entered and left the vessel.Due to several adjustments, changes within the stock can now be easier identified and reasons for them recorded.

Besides the better overview, it is now possible to integrate new items one time and adjust the amount of it manually. This saves time adding new items to the system and prevents from any discrepancies of the real stock on-board and the ones included in the database.

New IDEA Yacht update 2019.1

In the past months we received a lot of feedback from our clients. This feedback is very valuable to us as a company as it shows what we do well and where we have to improve. For our first update in 2019, we decided making it “your version” by concentrating on your improvement and feature requests and implementing as many as we can. The results can be seen in IDEA Yacht version 2019.1.

Please find some of the highlights of this update
below.

Horizontal layout

The two pictures below illustrate the difference between a vertical layout and a horizontal layout:

(Img 1: Vertical layout / version 2018.4)

(Img 2: Horizontal layout / version 2019.1)

The change has many benefits for you as a user. A lot of whitespace between the lines is eliminated which means that more information can be displayed in the same amount of space. This results in a better overview and less scrolling.

Improved input screens

Until now, the input screens within IDEA yacht were still based on the old IDEA.NET user interface which was replaced last year. As a result, they were hard to navigate and it was even harder to grasp all the information presented in this screen. We designed new input screens throughout the program that are more structured and easier to handle.

(Img 3: Ticking of a maintenance task)

New permission manager

The permission manager received a complete overhaul. The old version did not go along with the new design and was difficult to use. All permissions were on a single page which resulted in a lot of scrolling. This new version creates a simpler overview and a new toggle feature enhances the usability of this module.

(Img 4: Permission Manager)

Some other improvements include:

– Improved scalability of windows through removal of iframes and implementing responsive design, resulting in better viewing from tablets.
– Spare parts can be defined for “One-Time Tasks”
– Entries in the rotation log of the Crew & Guest Database can now be edited to correct false entries.
– and many more…

You can find the complete list of changes in this update here.

In the next update, we will continue to implement your ideas to make IDEA Yacht an even better software. We rely on your feedback, good and bad. Please let us know your thoughts and ideas by sending an email to feedback@idea-data.com.

Introduction to Maintenance Methodologies

Maintenance is a widely used concept in all industries today. In the yachting industry, most vessels use preventive maintenance as their method of choice. However, there are more methodologies in use than just preventive maintenance. In our latest article, we would like to introduce you to the history of maintenance and give you an overview of the most common maintenance methodologies. You can read the full article here.

So stay tuned!
Carolin Eidecker & Daniel Wolthausen

Release Update

2019 is still young but we are already working hard on the announcement of our first update of the year. To achieve this, we gathered a lot of feedback over the last few months and tried to integrate as many improvements as possible, including suggestions and feature requests from our clients. Consequently, you can expect many enhancements to the user experience of IDEA YACHT. The next version will be available by the beginning of April 2019.
This certainly does not mean that we have already reached all of our goals for 2019; further developments and improvements are coming soon. This update is just the beginning of several new features for IDEA YACHT. Stay curious and expect cool things for the rest of 2019.
Until then, please keep sending us feedback and suggestions on IDEA YACHT. This helps us to further improve IDEA, making it even more invaluable for all of our clients.

Company Insights

Although we are a software company that has developed products in-house for nearly 20 years, even we have to rely on tools to help us with our daily tasks. One of these tools is a help-desk software called Freshdesk, developed by Freshworks. Freshdesk supports our customer care staff in keeping track of your requests and helps them to respond as quickly as possible.
Whenever you contact us via email (support@idea-data.com), a new support ticket is automatically generated within our Freshdesk system. The ticket is immediately assigned to one of our customer care agents who will take over your request. Freshdesk has reduced our average response time to new requests to less than 4 hours. Most of the tickets are resolved in less than 24 hours. This would not be possible without the right tools to support our great team.
As a client, you can easily check the status of your ticket in our support portal. Additionally, the portal gives you the option to read through a growing number of FAQs, manage your open support tickets or create a new one. Freshdesk was designed to streamline the customer support process for both customers and providers and we are confident that you will be satisfied with the increased efficiency.

In our first newsletter in 2019 we would like to give you an outlook on our plans for 2019 and introduce our latest software release for IDEA Yacht.

The roadmap 2019

During the last years we saw a much faster development on all aspects of software, especially with regards to browsers and operating systems. That is why we decided to intensify our efforts to update our code basis to ensure future compatibility with browsers and operating systems.
Apart from this we proceed to improve our new user interface based on the feedback we received from all our clients and introduce new / improved functions in certain parts of IDEA Yacht. The focus here is on stock control and log and rounds.
It will be a busy year for our development team to implement everything that is currently planned, but we are certain to present you a lot of new features and improvements in 2019.
Nevertheless do not hesitate to get in touch with our team if you have ideas for a new feature or an improvement for IDEA Yacht. This helps us to develop a useful tool to support you in your daily work.

IDEA Yacht version 2018.4 release

At the beginning of January we have released IDEA Yacht version 2018.4. Besides a lot of improvements on the user interface and some bug fixes, we implemented a new brand new forms functionality as part of safety documents module. A user can now create, manage and fill-out forms directly at the screen and save it in a history for easy access during a survey.
The roll-out of this update for our online clients has already started. Our replicator customers will be contacted soon to update their installation. All our clients with a valid support contract are eligible to the update and can request the update file: support@idea-data.com.

Tech corner

Nowadays technology is evolving at an ever faster pace introducing new gadgets and devices on a weekly basis. One of the technologies with the biggest impact on our daily lives is the Internet of Things (IoT). It is already changing our lives without being noticed by a lot of us. Please read more about this technology in our short introductory article on our news blog.

We are proud to announce that on 5th November we have released our biggest update for IDEA YACHT since its initial release in 2012.
Version 2018.3 is a major milestone in the lifecycle of our product and brings a bunch of new features. The most significant change is the look and feel of IDEA YACHT. With this version we introduce a new design for our software and new modern libraries to improve usability and response times to make working with IDEA more comfortable and intuitive.

Apart from the design and the modernization of the backend we implemented some new functionalities:

• Calendar: Events can be entered into a calendar to trigger maintenance and show upcoming tasks and events in an easy to grasp overview
• Trash Bin: A trash bin holds all deleted items from the vessel database comparable to the windows trash bin. If items were deleted from the vessel database by accident the contents can be restored by the crew.

Survey: Training at IDEA Office

We are currently evaluating the options for training facilities in our offices.
The best way to do this is by involving you in the process. That’s why we prepared a short survey to gather feedback from our customers.

Training Survey

We would appreciate it, if you could offer some time to answer the survey and help us to improve our services.

Thanks and best regards

Tobias