Contents

Introduction

The rotation planning stage covers the work-flow from creating a first rotation plan draft to push the plan into life. Please enter the module by clicking Rotation Planning icon on the Modules ribbon or press Ctrl+Alt+O hotkeys.

Open

Then open Rotation Planning view:

Open

New - creates a new rotation plan.

Open - opens details of an existing plan.

Delete - removes a rotation plan.

Duplicate - creates a new plan with the same details as an existing one.

Print - shows a list of customized reports linked to Rotation group (see Housekeeping > Rotation Reports section).

View Filter:

• Planning contains rotation plans on a preparation stage.
  All the information is editable for these plans (a manager can open plan, adjust its details, assign persons to shifts); 

• Processed shows plans that were already activated.
  Processed plans as a part of the Rotation Maintenance sub-module. Some information cannot be changed but it is possible to register exceptions in shifts assignments;

• Declined displays declined plans.

Procedure

Step 1: Creating New Plan

At Rotation Planning view, click New button to start creating a new plan:

Specify for what vessel you create a plan, using

To remove unneeded vessel from the list use

You can also select a Project to link your plan to (optional).

Needed projects should be created beforehand (see Defining Shifts and Projects section).

Type plan description, define its Start and End dates.

Select Plan Code.

Click Create button.

Step 2: Setting up the new plan

After creating a plan, double-click it or use Open button to enter its properties:

1. You are at Details page by default.

   It contains main general information about your plan.

   Here you can leave plan description and change start/end dates or plan code.

2. The Notes tab allows a user to input any comments/information related to the rotation planning work-flow.

3. The Plan tab is used to specify shifts for different vessel positions and assign persons to shifts.

   See Plan Tab sub-section below.

4. When we specified shifts (assigned persons), we can get a graphical presentation of a plan on the Graphic tab.

   See Graphic Tab sub-section below.

5. When the rotation plan is confirmed to be correct, you can activate it from the Activate page.

   See Step 3: Activate a Plan.

Plan Tab

The Plan tab is used to specify shifts for different vessel positions.

Adding positions

On the left side, you can see the vessel you are working with.

Now we need to add positions that will be maintained in this rotation plan.

To add a position, you should click a vessel, then use Add Position button and select a position from the list.

To delete a position from rotation tree, please select it and click Delete Position.

If you would like to save the changes, please click Apply button (or Cancel if you do not want to save the changes). 

If you have paused working over a certain plan & want to leave your comment that will be visible at this stage only - please use the Remark column.
It is not used after plan activation & doesn't give any affect to the module.

Add all needed positions in the same way, one by one.

Specifying shifts for the position

All added positions will be seen under the vessel. To specify shifts for a position, select a position.

To the right part of the screen, define a shifts rotation (plan) for this position.

After choosing Rotation, Measure will be set automatically (read-only field).

Then click Add Shift button and select shifts.

Don't forget to Apply the changes.

Assigning Persons (optional)

After you defined shifts, you can assign persons to specific shifts at planning stage.

This is how the plan looks like when person is assigned to the shift:

To assign a person, select a shift in rotation tree and click browse button near Person field at the right or Assign Position button under the Manage Menu.

The standard Find Person screen appears. It provides 4 major ways to find a necessary person:

Copy Positions/Structure

Copy Positions

This can be rather time-consuming to create each new plan from scratch.
To help you out from doing the routine work, we developed functionality of copying the positions or whole plan structure.

Open the Rotation module > Rotation Planning tab > select a newly added plan > Plan tab.
The functionality of Copy Positions enables you to use the same structure as defined for any vessel/department of your organization structure.

The dialogue form will offer you to choose any department for current vessel & the option to be used when creating positions:

Copy positions from:

• If you select vessel – positions from all departments for this vessel (from Org. Structure) will be inserted to the left to select from; 

• You can select separate department(s) - positions from certain departments for this vessel (from Org. Structure) will be inserted to the left to select from;

Options:

All positions from selected Organization Structure - your list of positions for a new plan will contain exactly the same positions that are defined for selected organization level.

Minimal Safe /Company Required Manning - system will check the corresponding settings in Org. Structure -> General tab:

The corresponding number of positions will be added to the plan (for example three Second Officers).

After that you can add shifts to positions.

Don't forget to Apply the changes

Copy Structure

You also have possibility to copy whole plan structure with positions and shift plans (rotations) for your plan from another existing one.

Open Rotation > Rotation Planning tab & select a newly added plan > open Plan tab.

Use Copy Structure command:

You should select the plan that is needed & its structure will be copied to the right.

Then you can continue with any standard modifications that should be done for current plan to be consistent, e.g. delete some positions or add more, modify related shifts.

Don't forget to Apply the changes.

Graphic Tab

When you specified positions and shifts then assigned persons to some of them, we can get a visual presentation of your plan on the Graphic tab.

Shifts are shown as colored rectangles according to the colors set up in the shift definitions (see Shift Definition section):

The vertical red line indicates the today's date.

Use controls for Zoom In/Out & Locate Date for your convenience.

At the top of the screen you can see a scroll bar. Click small triangles at the right (>) and left (<) to go further in the future or back in the past.

To scale the graphic, click the scroll bar and move the mouse cursor to the left to see a larger period or to the right to see tiny details.

If any crew changes (ports) are registered for the vessel in the Crew Change module, they will appear as small rectangles in the same line with the vessel name.

Step 3: Activate a Plan

When the rotation plan is confirmed to be correct, you can activate it from the Activate tab.

During activation, the plan status is changed from Planning to Processed.

If any persons have been already assigned, activities will be created for all the involved seamen according to the shifts setup. 

To activate your plan, click the Activate Plan button:

Status Log displays status messages that can be then saved or printed if necessary.

After activating the plan, you will be able to continue working with it on the Rotation Maintenance view.

Select target plan and click Reset Activation button:

Confirm.