A controlled document is a company procedure whose content is under revision control: every change goes through a draft and an approval before anybody on a vessel can see it. On the vessel you never see drafts — only the revision that has been approved and published.
Opening and searching a document
Go to SMS → Overview to see every controlled document on the vessel in the top section, or choose a specific controlled-document category under SMS. Each row shows the document's Name, its published Version (and Category on Overview), plus two buttons:
- View — opens the document. Click anywhere on the row to do the same thing.
- PDF — downloads the document as a PDF.
On the All tab you can search by document name or by text inside built-in-editor documents. When a search matches the body of a document, a snippet of the matching passage appears under its name, and opening the document from that search opens the in-document find bar pre-filled with your query.
Inside a document you get Back, Download PDF, and — for documents written in the built-in editor — a Find in document button (magnifying glass) to step through matches in the text. If the document includes a table of contents, scrolling past it reveals a floating Back to contents button. Documents kept as an uploaded file are shown in a file preview.
What appears in the list
A controlled document appears on your vessel only when all of these are true:
- it has been assigned to your vessel by the company office;
- it has an approved, published revision;
- it has not been archived.
If a document was never approved, or was archived, it simply disappears from the vessel list. There is no way to see an unpublished revision from the vessel.
You also only see categories your permissions cover. Crew members see the categories their controlled-document view permission names; captains, viewers and company users see all of them.
Always the current revision
The list and the document page always resolve to the document's current published revision. When the office approves a newer revision, everyone on the vessel sees the new text the next time they open the document — there is nothing to refresh or re-download, and no way to open a superseded revision from the vessel.
If you follow a link to a document that is not assigned to your vessel, the page tells you the document is not available on this vessel.
Required reading
The office can make a controlled document required reading for selected ranks or departments on the vessel. Each person in those ranks then has to confirm that they have read the current published revision.
Open the document and read it. Below the Back and Download PDF buttons, click I have read this revision. Its status changes to Confirmed with the date and time. Opening or downloading the document does not count as a confirmation, and you can only confirm for yourself. A password-protected document has to be unlocked first.
A status is one of:
- Not read — you have never confirmed this document.
- New revision — you confirmed an earlier revision, and the office has since published a newer one. Read it and confirm again.
- Confirmed — you have confirmed the current revision.
What changed
When a controlled document written in the built-in editor has had a previous published revision, a What changed button (Hide changes to close) appears beside the reading bar. It shows the previous published revision against the current one in a single column: added text in green, removed text struck through in red, with unchanged sections folded away until you expand them. You do not have to open it before confirming. Uploaded files and a document's first publication have nothing to compare, so the button does not appear.
Who has read it
Both SMS → Overview (in its top Documents section) and each controlled-document category page have three tabs:
- All — the controlled documents list.
- Confirmed Reads — required-reading obligations that have been confirmed for the current revision.
- Missing Reads — required-reading obligations that are still Not read or New revision.
The reading tables list the Document, Category (on Overview), Person, Rank, Status and Confirmed date and time; clicking a row opens the document.
The Captain, viewers and company users see everyone's status. A crew member always sees their own, and sees colleagues' only in categories where they hold the View reading status permission. When you can see anyone besides yourself, the bottom of a document's page also shows a Required reading table listing everyone who must read that document and their status.
Alerts
While readings are outstanding, the dashboard shows Documents to Read with the total, and one Unread row per category, for example Unread Emergency Procedures. Documents to Read opens SMS → Overview on Missing Reads; a category row opens that category's Missing Reads tab. On your Notifications & Alerts page the same rows count only your own unconfirmed documents.
Asking the AI assistant
The AI assistant can search the same controlled documents — the ones on your vessel that you are allowed to see — and answer questions from their published text, for example what the SMS says about a particular drill. It cannot open password-protected documents; those you unlock and read yourself.