CompassAir Web Basic User Guide

Volume 3 – Views

1      COMPASSAIR – MESSAGES WINDOW (HOME SCREEN)

2    COMPOSING MESSAGES

1. The System Administrator will, in advance, allow each user access to departmental and individual addresses for which they have been authorised as well as apply any restrictions (such as “Cannot Send”). The associated messages are then available in customisable Views. Customisation can be by sent/received, read/unread as well as by mailbox, whether flagged etc

2. After Views have been created, by clicking “More”, particular Views (i.e. a user’s favourites) can be selected/filtered for display. This is achieved by toggling each one, on or off. Their order can also be changed by dragging each up or down
3. New Views can be created using the drop down selections pane, starting by editing an existing View and then saving it with a new name. Each is defined by preferred characteristics such as sender, keywords, etc and, for ease of reference, can be colour coded

3      CREATING CUSTOM MESSAGE VIEWS

1. Customised “Views” that contain messages with specific characteristics can be created. In this example, a View is created that contains only incoming unread messages along with subject that contains the vessel name “Santa Maria”
2. Start by highlighting a View and then click the edit icon
3. The procedure requires editing the characteristics of an existing View and then saving it with a new name
4. In this case, “incoming” and “unread” are selected and then the vessel name inserted in the subject box.
5. Saving the selection as “Santa Maria”, toggling the View on and then saving the View list will result in this new View appearing in the list of Views as “Santa Maria”, being seen when the “Messages” button is selected from the toolbar

4    FILTERING VIEWS

1. Having clicked on a View, reviewed the message list and, wanting to narrow the selection of messages, typing a word (in this case “hellenic”) allows messages to be filtered using that word either in the message text, as a keyword, or in the from/too field. If a number is typed then a user can also search my message reference. To clear the filter, click on the “X”.

2. It is also possible to filter Views. To use this feature first click on a View. As above, then start to type – a filter then appears above the list of Views. In this case by typing the letters “my” all Views containing these two letters will be displayed underneath the filter box. Clicking on a View will then reveal the messages in that View in the message list. The filter applies to all Views, even those not included in the shortlist of the face if the message panel.

3. The filtered list of Views can be cleared by clicking on the “X”, returning to the user’s default list of Views.

5     MESSAGE VIEW – HORIZONTAL OR VERTICAL

1. The default view is for the screen to be split vertically as in 1 above. Using Messages/Settings this can be changed to a horizontally split screen

2. The size of the viewing screen can be adjusted by dragging the blue line up or down

3. Double clicking on a message opens that message in a new window

6    HORIZONTAL VIEW – TOGGLING MESSAGE DETAILS

1. When using the horizontal view, clicking on the “X” on the bar at the top of the message window toggles between the message details being shown or a list of messages in that View. Reverting back to the previous layout is achieved by clicking on a message

7    BROWSING MESSAGES QUICKLY

1. The “space” bar can be used to quickly browse messages

2. Using “space” will, by default move up the list of messages. To change this to down go to Settings, Messages, Browse and toggle the button to the right (“Yes”)

8    MESSAGE PREVIEWS

1. When a user is reviewing older messages, i.e. is not working at the top of the message list, and new messages are received, the number of new messages is shown at the top of the message list. In this example, three new messages have been received whilst the user is looking at messages from yesterday. If the message is ordinarily colour coded, a coloured circle will also appear next to the blue number

2. Hovering above the number allows the user to preview those new messages without moving away from the section of the message list on which they are currently working

3. Should any of these new messages need immediate action, the user can easily move to the top of the message list by clicking on the refresh icon

9     MESSAGE DESCRIPTIONS (OUTGOING MESSAGES)

1. Message descriptions can be added to outgoing messages whilst they are being composed (they can also be added to, or edited, after the message has been sent). This is particularly useful when needing to add some context to a message, or, for example, vessel details that need to be seen by a colleague but not by the recipient. Start to enter text by clicking on the word “Description” and then commence typing

2. As soon as typing starts, the words will appear underneath the message subject line. Whatever description is added will only be seen by those within the sender’s organisation. HOWEVER, see below when “Show Description Over Subject” in Settings is toggled to “Yes” – in this case the description replaces the original subject heading when forwarding messages

10    MESSAGE DESCRIPTIONS (ALL MESSAGES)

1. It can be sometimes be useful to replace the subject heading of a message with the user’s own description. In this example, a general Green4Sea circular contains information about the Stark Princess and IMO2020 and the user would rather see that than the reference to the “Green4Sea Noon Report”. This is achieved by typing the description required next to the inverted commas
2. Save the description either by clicking on the yellow arrow or pressing Enter on the keyboard

3. It is then possible to see in the message list the new description, rather than the original subject heading, by toggling to Yes “Show Description Over Subject” in Settings under the “Messages” section
4. The difference can be seen before,
5. …and after “Show Description Over Subject” has been selected
6. When “Show Description Over Subject” is selected and a message is forwarded, in this case the description replaces the original subject heading when forwarding messages

11    READING MODE

12    MESSAGES – THE MEANING OF NUMBERS IN BLUE BOXES

1. The number displayed in a blue box next to a message View represents the numbers of messages accumulated within that View since it was last opened by the user. (See 3 CREATING CUSTOM MESSAGE VIEWS for instructions on how the user defines the content of each View). It does not represent the number of unread messages

2. Unread messages are already easily visible as they are marked with a blue dot. Having the numbers in blue boxes as they are, serves to remind the user that there has been activity within a particular View that has not been reviewed since it was last opened

13    HMTL MESSAGES WITHOUT IMAGES

14    CONDENSED HEADERS

1. This feature has been removed from the latest version of CompassAir Messaging.

15    HIDING DUPLICATED MESSAGES

1. When defining message Views (see 3 CREATING CUSTOM MESSAGE VIEWS) it is possible to accumulate messages relating to a number of different addresses in that one View. For example, My Messages might include info@abc.com as well as admin@abc.com, with a supplier sending the same message to both addresses. By toggling “Hide Copies of Messages” to “Yes” under Messages Settings, when an identical message is sent to both addresses only one copy will be displayed in a particular message View

2. When a duplicated message has been read with “Hide Copies of Messages” turned on, all duplicates are also marked as read at the same time

16    CONVERSATIONS – MESSAGE THREADS

1. When a message is part of a conversation (i.e. one in a thread of messages), a grey triangle is displayed to the left of the message

2. Clicking on this triangle expands the conversation, the triangle becomes orange and any one of the messages in the conversation can be selected and will then be visible in the viewing pane

17    DISCUSSIONS

1. Discussions is a chat-like feature that enables users with access to a shared mailbox (in this example “Solutions”) to communicate between each other with respect to emails that appear in that inbox. Discussions are not applicable to emails sent from a single, or private email address – they only apply to shared emails. As an example, if a user were to send an email from their own address, copying it to a shared mailbox, only the email received into the shared mailbox can have discussions attached to it. To commence a discussion, view or add to an existing discussion, click on the speech balloon.

2. Emails with Discussions have a speech balloon icon displayed next to the message as it appears in the message list.

3. Inserting an “@” in a discussion reveals a drop down menu showing the names of users with access to the shared mailbox in which the email appears. Selecting a user will send an alert to that individual, notifying them that they have been mentioned in a Discussion.

4. The alert will appear at the top of the user’s message window in red, disappearing once the Discussion has been viewed or after 7 days.

1. As well as being attached to specific emails, discussions, or integrated chat, can take place amongst team members who have access to the same shared inbox, in the example aside the department is Operations. The format will be familiar and is similar to that used by WhatsApp. The feature is accessed from the “Discussions” tab on the side menu bar.
2. As with Discussions attached to emails, inserting an “@” in a discussion reveals a drop down menu showing the names of users with access to the same shared mailbox. Selecting a user will send an alert to that individual, notifying them that they have been mentioned in a Discussion. As before, the alert will appear at the top of the user’s message window in red.
3. In the final example, Tom Smith has been mentioned in a number of discussions and this is brought to his attention via the red alert at the top of the CompassAir home screen. As he has access to both the Chartering and Accounts shared mailboxes, he will also be alerted when these departments are mentioned in discussions. Clicking on a reminder opens that message, together with the associated discussion, in a separate tab.