Controlled documents are created and maintained in the company office, under Database → Controlled Documents — leave the vessel with Back to Fleet to get there. The left-hand panel lists the categories your company has defined; pick one to see and manage the documents inside it. A switch at the top of the page also lets you jump between Documents (Controlled Documents) and Forms (Form Templates).
Creating a document
With a category selected, click Add Document. The New Controlled Document window asks for:
- Name and an optional Description.
- Password protected — tick this if crew should have to re-enter their account password before the document opens on a vessel.
- Content type — choose one, because it cannot be changed afterwards:
- Built-in editor — you author the document in a rich-text editor, with versioned history.
- Uploaded file — you upload the document file for each revision. The uploader takes PDFs.
Create also starts revision 1.0.0 as a draft and opens the document page, so you can begin
writing straight away.
Editing the details
The Details tab of a document holds its name, description and the Password protected setting, with Save changes. These are properties of the document as a whole, so changing them does not create a new revision and does not need approval. An archived document cannot be edited.
The list and its statuses
Each row in the document list shows the name, the content type, the last update, the currently published revision number, and a status:
- Draft — nothing published yet, so the crew cannot see it on a vessel.
- In review — a revision is waiting for approval.
- Published — live and up to date.
- Pending draft — live, with a newer draft in progress on top of it.
- Archived — withdrawn from use.
You can search by name or content, use Filter to narrow by content type, status and vessel (including Not assigned to any vessel), and switch between the active and the archived list with the archive button.
Duplicate, move, archive, restore, remove
- Duplicate copies a document into a new one: you give it a New document name and a
Category. The copy takes the published content (or the current draft if nothing is
published yet) and starts over as draft
1.0.0— it needs its own review and approval, and vessel assignments and history are not carried over. It is unavailable until the document has at least one revision. - Move puts the document in another category. It is blocked while the document is assigned to any vessel — unassign it everywhere first.
- Archive withdraws the document from every vessel it is assigned to; it can no longer be edited or moved. A document that is part of a vessel profile cannot be archived — remove it from those profiles in Database → Vessel Profiles first.
- Restore brings an archived document back, and it reappears on the vessels it was assigned to.
- Remove deletes a document permanently, along with all of its revisions, files and vessel assignments. Only an archived document can be removed, and only a company administrator sees the button.
Read-only company accounts see a View button instead of the editing actions.
Getting a document onto a vessel and setting required reading
Publishing a revision is not enough on its own — the document also has to be assigned to the vessel. You can do that from either side:
- From the document in the company office — open the document in Database → Controlled Documents and switch to its Vessels tab. Use the Assigned? switch on each vessel row (vessels without the full ISM module show No ISM licence and cannot be assigned).
- From a vessel's settings — open the yacht, click the gear icon in the header to reach Vessel Settings, and choose Controlled Documents. Pick a category on the left, then use the Assigned? switch on each document row.
Only documents that are unarchived and have a published revision can be assigned. Assigning requires permission to edit vessel settings and a company account that is not read-only.
Once a document is assigned to a vessel, click Manage policies on that row (in either place) and use Add Policy to make it required reading for All ranks or for selected ranks and departments on that vessel. On the document's Vessels tab, Copy policies to other vessels lets you preview and copy a vessel's required-reading policies to other assigned vessels.
A yacht added from a vessel profile starts with that profile's controlled documents and required-reading policies already applied — those for documents that have a published revision at that moment. A profile can include documents that are still drafts; those are skipped and have to be assigned by hand once published. That happens once, when the yacht is created; later changes to the profile do not touch it.