skybook 1.34.0 Release Notes
Here is the March 2023 release notes update to skybook, with exciting features to take a glance at. If you would like to take a closer look at what is new, get in touch.
Overview
This release sees an innovative UI combination of the Flight Dispatch & Ops Board modules.
Enhancements have been made to the visual information within flight charts and flight briefing packs, and the character limit has been increased in the Notices module.
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Dispatch & Ops Board UI Update
The existing Ops board and Flight Dispatch modules have been combined. Involving a number of UI changes, making the features more user friendly.
The Dispatch module has received a visual overhaul and has been combined with the Ops Board module to streamline and improve the user experience.
All previous functionality remains but has been restyled to a more user friendly format.
The initial phase of UI improvements to the Dispatch Module are as follows:
- Time picker
- Upload OFP
- OFP Status
- Dispatch / Ops Board Toggle button
Note: These features are only available to subscribed users of the Ops Board module. - Zoom In/Out, Filter and Settings - Only available when using the Ops Board module
- Refresh Sectors - The info auto-refreshes every 5 minutes. Or use this icon for a manual refresh.
- Allow Grid Editing
- Sector Status
Flight Chart Improvements
A number of enhancements have been made to the information shown on vertical profile charts, and certain users are able to view 3% ERA airfields on charts.
Turbulence data
It is now possible for customers who utilise as their weather source to have turbulence data displayed on vertical profile charts.
Turbulence is shown as colour-coded rectangles with the key at the bottom of the chart denoting the level of severity.
There are two new operator settings which control whether turbulence data is displayed on vertical profile charts.
You can see whether turbulence data is turned on for vertical profile charts within the Charts section of the Default Settings tab of the Settings module.
Displaying additional wind & temp data
By default, wind and temp data is shown for each waypoint displayed on the vertical profile chart with gaps inbetween the waypoints.
In this release, it is now possible to to configure the vertical profile chart to display a set number of points along the route for which wind and temp data is displayed.
The example shows a vertical profile chart where the number of fixed points has been set to 20.
A number of UI changes have been made to the vertical profile charts to improve the visual representation:
- Flight number, route and aircraft registration have been repositioned;
- Departure and arrival details are positioned on the chart at the relevant points;
- Turbulence, tropopause, wind speed, temperature and magnetic/true bearing is moved to the footer area;
- Waypoint labels have been repositioned;
- Magnetic heading symbol has been repositioned.
Display 3% ERA airfield information
skybook is now able to extract the 3% contingency enroute alternate (ERA) airfield from a DP002 message and display this on route plot charts:
Note: This feature is only available to certain customers. Settings may be visible to all but will have no functionality.
You can turn this feature on or off within the Charts section of the Default Settings tab of the Settings module:
You can also further configure the settings associated with the 3% ERA within the ROUTE PLOT SPECIFIC CHART SETTINGS section of the Chart Defaults tab of the Settings module.
The 3% ERA is also included in the enroute alternate section of the briefing pack.
Briefing Pack updates
Planning and Release information from DP002 messages can now be added to Briefing Packs, and additional formatting options are now available.
Planning Information & Release Notes
You can now create text documents containing the Planning and Release Notes information contained within the DP002 message for a sector.
These documents are added to a sector and can be viewed within Sector Attachments.
If a document is updated it will replace any existing document and be moved to the archive. The archive can then be viewed by accessing the archive tab.
It is also included within the Briefing Pack as attachments and both documents are stored in the Record Vault in the same way as any other sector attachment types.
OFP pagination formats
The way in which the OFP is displayed within the Briefing Pack can be configured to accommodate customer-specific format requirements. This release sees a number of new customer-specific formatting options added:
- Page breaks at each WAYPOINT PAGE
- Page breaks at the AWY string for each waypoint page
Notices update
Notices - Increase in free text box characters
Previously, the text entry box in the Details section of the Admin Notices tab within the Notices module had a limit of 5000 characters. The character limit has been increased to 10,000 in this release.
What's new - skybook EFB
The time window for sectors displayed on the Choose Voyage screen can now be configured.
This new feature to the electronic flight bag's Select Sector screen will allow users to configure their required time window to view flights.
Previously, the Choose Voyage screen showed a set list of 50 flights. The system will now default to a time window of 6 hours in the past and 18 hours in the future to view flights, however users can configure their desired time window in the Settings module of the skybook Ground Portal.
Users will be able to view and select all their flights (single and multi-sector) within the default or desired time window.
Interface & Integrations
PPS Flight Plan integration - OFP update changes
It is now possible to retain the original ATC Filing History attachment from an original or previous OFP when an updated OFP is received.
Previously, if an updated OFP was received via a DP002 message that didn’t contain an ATC Filing History attachment in the S12 section, the updated sector would subsequently have no attachments.
When an updated plan is received, skybook will now retain the last ATC Filing History attachment as a sector attachment for that sector.
ADFS integration update
For users of the ADFS integration, changes have been made to ensure checks are made at each login to establish a user’s permissions and establish the access rights based on their assigned skybook user group role.
Previously, any changes to a particular user’s role following their initial setup would require manual intervention. The changes implemented in this release ensure that when a user’s role has changed, checks are made automatically and subsequently any associate permissions are dynamically changed according to the assigned user role defined in skybook.
