Configurator – An overview

Aircraft may be essentially used for hauling logs and firefighting applications in remote locations like forest area. These remote locations are generally referred to as offline areas where connectivity is intermittent or connectivity does not exist. Offline Area is a virtual area, which can accommodate work centers and aircraft. An Offline Area can be a Geographical Area or Aircraft number as per business requirements. Generally, operating and controlling aircraft in these offline areas becomes troubles some. This is facilitated by the Offline Field System which enables users in remote locations to perform required transactions without any necessity to connect with the main system. This Offline System will allow the user to perform transactions in asynchronous mode in Offline Field base or Main base without affecting data integrity. The transactional data can be transported between the offline and the main systems through any data transfer media such as email, flash drive, CD or DVD.

Configure offline parameters:

Definition of controllable attributes for handling specific offline functions in main base and offline base is necessary in the offline filed system. These attributes or parameters categorized under different sections, can be set to appropriate values according to user preferences except the parameters ‘Usage Mode’ and ‘Offline Area #’. These are system-defined parameters defined under the category “Offline Configurator Options”.

Manage offline area:

Assignment Type must be defined depending on the offline operation performed. If aircraft moves in various geographical areas, Assignment type can be defined as “Aircraft” and Offline Area will be Aircraft number. Heli logging is a typical case for such A/C assignments. If different aircraft are used to perform offline operation in same geographical area, then Assignment type can be defined as “Work Center” and Offline Area will be geographical area. For example, in case of mining operations aircraft are assigned to the same geographical area.

The Offline Field System allows you to create offline area and associate work centers to the offline area to operate the aircraft. You can modify the offline area and activate / inactivate the offline area from the main base. Multiple work centers can be mapped to a single offline area, but the same work center cannot be mapped to different offline areas. You can also view the warehouses associated to the offline area / offline work center.

Manage offline operations:

You can classify various offline operations as follows:

1. Evaluation: Evaluation is done for verifying Open transactions and completion of master data setup before performing release and return of aircraft and work centers. On successful evaluation, you can view the list of pending transactions available in “Open” status for the aircraft or the work center.

2. Initialization of offline area: Offline Area needs to be initialized for each field operation from the Main base, only after addressing the impacted transactions. Once all the “Action Required” validations available in "Impacted Transaction List' page are cleared, the user can invoke the “Initiate Field Ops” button. This will create “Initialization Request #” and the system will start processing the request.

3. Release of additional Aircraft and Work Centers to Offline Area: Once Offline Area is operational, based up on the business requirement, the user can release additional aircraft and work centers to the Field base from Main base.

4. Return of Aircraft and Work Centers: In an offline Field base, once field operations are complete, the user can return the aircraft and work center to the Main base. Return can only be done from a Field base.

5. Termination of Offline Area: In the Main base, once all aircraft and work center(s) released to Field have been received back, user can terminate the Field Operation. The termination of field operation can only be done from the Main base. If the aircraft is visiting the Main base for heavy check, the offline area may not be terminated.

6. Force Termination of Offline Area: In case of scenario like damaged laptop, the user can Force Terminate the Offline Field Operation. Force Termination of field operation can only be done from the Main base.

Transfer Data:

This process allows transfer of transaction data from main base to offline base and from offline base to Main Base. If the Usage Mode is “Online”, individual data packages are created for each Offline Area # from the main base and transferred to the offline base for loading. If the Usage Mode is “Offline”, individual data packages are created from the offline area transferred to the main base for loading. You can view latest extraction details and the data transfer history.

Getting familiar with the pages inside