I almost missed our newsletter as we have been in the thick of more development and testing. We’ve popped our heads up long enough to take a deep breath and send out a few words to you all.
January
January saw the beginning of our new version, 6.13, roll out. Probably a larger task than first anticipated (by me) but very rewarding at the same time. Spending time with our Clients to perform a demonstration of our improvements and upgrade to a new version raises a lot of questions and is an excellent growth opportunity for our team, it also helps our Developers to see how their hard work is received at the User/pointy end of the business.
Matt accompanied me to a couple of our Client sessions and had the opportunity to show off the improvements to our Logistics Manager. We always welcome feedback on our modules and it is particularly effective if we receive this while we are showing features as we can explore this further on the spot, sometimes what Users think is a simple question will end up sparking further development which is always exciting to us.
February
In February we continued to roll out our new version both locally and remotely to our valued Clients. Some demonstrations were happening via webex/screen sharing with people dialing in from all over Australia. And in the case of new business meetings, the world.
With the options we now have available to us, distance is certainly not a consideration or obstacle to expanding our business and is now, in fact, very commonplace. A true reflection of the changing face of business and how global we are now.
Our Super User interview for February was with Yelana Pritchard of Teekay – always a pleasure, never a chore. Yelana has been an end User of OPMS in a few different roles and now, as a Super User at Teekay, often suggests development ideas/improvements and is always thinking outside of the box.
As a company, we work in a very collaborative and inclusive fashion in terms of development and processes.
We have been lucky to have Stijn Prompers from Atlas Professionals, working in our Bassendean office (aka the centre of Perth) with Clayton and Colin. They are working together to improve the workflow between our two businesses spending many hours covering the whiteboard in flowcharts, unintelligible scribble to anyone that is not a computing savant.
We very much enjoy having our Clients join us in the office to hash out new and improved ideas for their businesses. Stijn and Clayton were in the trenches of their planning phase in this photo so technically, this is an action shot.
March
Tiiu and Miia made it safely to spend a month in Estonia. We had a few webex sessions with our GM during her holiday, with a slightly different backdrop to her normal Perth abode, a few feet of snow.
We have seen an increase in demonstration requests recently with our team heading out and about every other day, the tyres on the work bus have barely had time to cool. Remote presentations, face to face demonstrations, some weekend demonstrations by Colin, it is all happening. In between these meetings we are, as always, developing, testing and improving our product to keep ahead of the game and streamline our Clients workflow.
Onboarding of our newest Client, Argonaut Marine Group, is an excellent chance for us to perform a set up with our newest version. To read about our newest addition to the ever-growing OPMS tribe, you can read the press release on our website. https://opms.com.au/why-opms/opms-on-board-with-leading-maritime-group/
Matt Lazarakis, one of our Senior Software Developers for those of you that may not have met him yet, has been selected to join the Petroleum Club of Western Australia in their Mentoring programme for schools. Matt’s role in this will be presenting to schools in the next few months about his job with OPMS as a Senior Software Developer, his education, training and career path to date. This is invaluable to the young people he will be interacting with, and will no doubt inspire a new round of enrolments in Curtin’s Bachelor of Science – Software Engineering degree.
The Technip-Prelude ball was held at the Crown in March, I was lucky enough to attend with my team from my time on the project. An exceptional evening filled with beautiful food, short speeches, and excellent company. A wonderful event, thank you to Training and Logistics for including me, I had the best night.
April
The next version of OPMS will be implemented in April and throughout May, version 6.14. As with every new version, we hold off on rolling these out to Clients until we have substantial improvements bundled together, see below for what is coming in the next version:
Logistics Manager – Journey Planner
To assist companies managing journeys/multiple legs of travel that are recurring, we now have a tab within the Logistics Manager to handle this.
The Journeys tab gives the User the ability to create regular/recurring travel as a template that is ongoing or within a specific date range. Travel can be for any mode of transport and whatever pattern you require this for.
Emails
We continue to tidy up and improve the email function within OPMS, There are now two options for sending these out depending on what it is you want to do and who you want it to go to.
Normal mode will Bcc all recipients, particularly useful for generic emails going out to a group of people. Mergefield mode allocates all recipients in the ‘To’ field and gives the ability to use mergefields and templates within the body of the email, this is useful for emails going out related to crew changes, joining instructions for new employees, updates required from your teams e.g. NOK updates etc. As with all of our templates, these are customisable to your company, get in touch if you need help setting these up.
PDF Viewer
Your PDF Viewer has been upgraded, we have not changed the way this works, only the way it looks. There is an increase in functionality the changes in this area are mostly behind the scenes.
Report Selector – template based
The way you run your template based reports is changing. With the roll-out of version 6.13 we have shifted all reporting now to a single source, Reports in the menu tab from the rosters screen. Users now have the ability to build their own templates and include these in one spot, you will need to have the required access to save these into the correct location, see your Super User for assistance or contact OPMS Support. We can assist with mergefield and template queries.
Rosters – Displaying Position Names
Our Clients have given us feedback on the visual aspect of your roster screen and we are making changes to fit with these requests.
The most recent change that will be available to you within version 6.14 is the ability to display a person’s Position at Site across the worktypes rostered at the site you are working in. This is particularly helpful if you choose to display info other than Position in column three of your view e.g. Home Airport.
Tiiu returns to work
In very important news, our General Manager Tiiu has returned to work. She will be working in the Bassendean office on Mondays and Thursdays, we know you will all be excited to see her back in the fold. We are very happy to welcome her back.
May/June
For May and June we will be focusing on the roll-out of 6.14, we look forward to seeing everyone to discuss the new features and demonstrate the usability to your teams.
We welcome your feedback as always, and look forward to the new opportunities these improvements will create.
I had the opportunity to interview Chloe Perkins from Broadspectrum jv Trace at the beginning of this May, you can read it here:
Stacey is leaving on a jet plane
I will be heading back to my homeland, that’s New Zealand for those of you that were under the impression I am South African, finishing up at OPMS on Friday 14th of June.
Thank you for being patient with me while I performed interpretive dances during demos and meetings when I didn’t know all of the answers.
