The Database uses categories in two different ways, and they behave differently.
Free-text categories
On Crew Documents and Vessel Documents, the category is simply a field on the entry. You either pick a category already in use in your company or type a new one, and it exists from that moment. There is no separate screen for managing them: a category disappears once no entry uses it, and it is "renamed" by editing each entry that uses it.
These categories are matched to a yacht's own categories by name. Capitalisation is ignored when crew documents are offered or copied to a yacht and when a vessel profile is applied; the Assign Required Documents window in Vessel Settings → Vessel Documents needs the category spelled exactly the same.
Managed category panel
Form Templates and Controlled Documents have a category panel down the left-hand side, and these categories are real records you create, rename, reorder and delete.
The panel is organised as fixed top-level groups with your company's own categories underneath:
- Form Templates has three groups: Crew, SMS and Operations. The group a category sits in decides what kind of form it holds.
- Controlled Documents has one group: SMS.
Underneath each group the structure is one level deep — categories, not sub-folders of categories. The groups themselves are part of the app: you cannot add, rename or remove them.
The categories your company has under each group are its own: they were seeded when the company was created and have been shaped by your office since, so they will not match another company's.
Working with categories
- Add — the + button on a group's header opens a small text box. Type the name (up to 42 characters) and confirm it with the tick, or cancel with the cross.
- Rename — the pencil button on a category row turns the name into an editable box, again confirmed with the tick.
- Reorder — drag a category by its handle to a new position. On Form Templates you can also drop it into another group, which moves the category, templates and all, to that group.
- Delete — the bin button on the category row. Only a Management Admin can delete a category. It is refused while the category still holds any templates or documents, archived ones included, and the button is then normally disabled with a tooltip saying so. Move the contents to another category first (archived ones must be unarchived before they can be moved), or delete the archived ones.
Selecting a category is also how you see anything at all in the right-hand list — until you pick one, the page asks you to select a category.
A Management Viewer sees the panel without the add, rename and delete buttons, and cannot drag categories.
Categories and permissions
Form and controlled document categories are not just filing. The permission matrix — the one on a crew rank's default permissions and on a yacht invitation — has a row per category (on a yacht invitation, only categories with templates or documents assigned to that yacht), so somebody can be given access to one category of forms or procedures and not another. A new category therefore adds something new that permissions can be granted on; nobody's existing permissions are extended to it automatically.