Document appearence for time limited documents
Web Manuals offers the function to publish documents in a certain time frame. In other words it is selectable when a document becomes visible/ gets published and at what date it will again be unpublished( will expire which is called the time limited availability of documents. This is an excellent function for documents such as insurance certificates for example which might have a yearly expiry date. We have experienced the follwowing problem though:
Example:
An old insurance certificate expires on 31.12.2022. The new insurance certificate is available already beginning od December. A new revision will be created on the old Insurance Certificate, the new one uploaded and under time limited availability the 01.01.2023 til 31.12.2023 set.
This means the new Insurance Certificate will become available on the 01.01.2023.
Problem: For some planning reasons, e.g. OCC/ Dispatch reasons for flights taking place in January the new Insurance Certificate needs to be available for OCC already before the 01.01.2023. Unfortunately Web Manuals does not have a functions where I could define that some documents might be already visible before the actual replacement date. This would be necessary though for planing reasons.
Suggestion: A function in which Web Manuals can display the Old and the New Revision of a document when time limited availability is selected in a by the user defined time span.
Comments
I fully support this suggestion. In our case for instance, per procedure we publish a new OM revision one week before the effective date, to allow the crews some time to go through and digest the new content.
The only possibility for me Web Manuals is to publish a PDF of the new revision in the same category where manual is, then publish the web version on the date and finally remove the PDF.
Thumbs up!
Hello Kruschat, Alexander and Bruno Quadros Rodrigues,
It is already possible to view a new revision before its effective date (only for Web Documents)
Click on Settings in the top right corner of your document --> Revision Archive --> tick "allow Reader to view this Revision before "from" date.
However, this functionality isn't available for File documents is it what you are referring to?
Hi Virginie, thanks or info, however I believe this solution needs some fine tuning to make it really useful, or perhaps I haven't understood the whole thing. My points is as follows:
When using the option to allow readers to view a revision before the "from" date, there is no indication that the future revision is available. It is only if the reader, by chance, opens the document that he will see an indication at the top of the page, as shown below:
From a human factors point of view, and specially form crews on the EFB app, the system should be more active in drawing the readers' attention when a future revision is available. A few ideas would be to:
In addition:
The indication below should be more visible. As there is a space limitation in that location, an idea would be the text presented with yellow background.
The indication below seems fine, however I would suggest that, when the future revision is selected, an indication is also added to the pages. For example, in the form of a lateral watermark with red text. This solution would minimise the risk of a pilot using the future revision during operation, which can have major safety implications.
Let me know your thoughts.
Hello everyone,
Today a colleague reached out to me because of some questions he had regarding the time limited revisions.
Since I couldn't answer them I was searching for some information in the Help center and came across this forgotten discussion here.
I'd like it to reopen and ask if there was a solution found and communicated and also place the questions my colleague came up with.
a) When (according which time zone) do the documents become available and unavailable:
eg. Starting date selected: 01.March, Ending date: 28. February
Is it correct that a manual would become available on 01st Mar at 00:00 UTC and unavailable on 28th Feb at 24:00 UTC?
b) This question is mainly in regards to File Documents:
Is it correct that once a time limited revision reaches it expiry date, the old revision becomes available again?
However, what if the first version was limited as well?
We are looking forward to a discussion that leads to an improved function and hopefully answers to my colleagues questions.
Best Regards
Michel
Hi Michel Sidler,
a) The manual will be available and unavailable at server time which is UTC+1/CET
b) If the previous revision was time-limited as well, then it rolls back to the latest that is still effective. - In case there is no revision still in effect, the document stops being visible for readers. Since we actively told the system that none of the data in the document should be in effect after a specific date.
I hope this helped!
Hello,
We’ve started using this feature, and it’s very convenient.
Would it also be possible to have it available in the Web Manuals application?
We are planning major updates with many notifications, and the pilots would like to have the option on their iPads to:
Stay on the current version for operational needs
Switch to the upcoming revision to review upcoming procedure changes
Thank you for your assistance.
Best regards,
Charles
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