Offline Editing

A safety report can be taken off the system entirely and worked on without a database connection. The whole report — questions, pictures, observations, cover page — is exported as one HTML file that opens in any current browser, on a laptop, a tablet or a phone. Nothing has to be installed on that device.

This is what makes an inspection possible in a tank, in a port without a network, or on a vessel whose connection is unreliable.

The way round

1. Export the report from ZeeBORN as an HTML file.
2. Transfer it to the device — by mail, USB stick, cloud, network share, or a messenger.
3. Work on it in the browser, offline.
4. Save it.
5. Send it back to the office, usually the same way it went out.
6. Import it into ZeeBORN.

While a report is out, online editing is locked. The audit shows a banner saying so, and the fill-out button is replaced by the import. This is deliberate: it stops changes being made on the server that the returning file would overwrite.

Exporting

Select the report in the Safety Reports module and use Send to App. A save dialog offers the file as .html.

The file is typically between one and five megabytes, depending on how many pictures the report holds — small enough for mail in most cases.

Working in the browser

Opening the file — by double-click or from the mail app — loads the report straight into the browser; the data sits inside the file itself.

The cover page appears first, with vessel and audit data, all of it editable. On the left is the chapter tree, where a coloured dot per topic shows how it was assessed: grey not yet assessed, then green, yellow, orange and red for the grades from good to critical.

Clicking a topic opens it: status, remarks, the flags, pictures and observations. Observations are added with their title, description, category, responsible role, due date and consequences — and can be created straight from a picture, as in the program itself.

Pictures are added by drag and drop, by button, or with the camera on a phone or tablet. A picture can be rotated, captioned or deleted, and the rotation is kept on save.

One field is deliberately absent: the DPA comment belongs to the office review inside ZeeBORN and is not part of the work on board.

Changes are cached in the browser continuously. If the browser closes before anything was saved, the work reappears the next time the file is opened. That is a safety net, not a substitute for saving.

Saving and sending back

Save writes the finished file. On a laptop a save dialog appears and the file replaces the original; on a phone or tablet the sharing dialog opens, so it can go straight into a mail or a chat. Where the browser supports neither, the file lands in the downloads folder.

Back in the office, the audit's banner carries the import — in the Safety Reports module it is Receive from App. Select the file and confirm. ZeeBORN then checks that the file belongs to this report, reads the changes in, unlocks the report, shows a summary of what was changed, and deletes the file afterwards.

What to know before working this way

• A file can only go back into the report it came from. Selecting the wrong one aborts the import with a message — nothing is mixed up.
• Topics and observations deleted offline are gone after the import, permanently, and an administrator cannot bring them back. Deleting offline should therefore be as deliberate as deleting in the program.
• Pictures deleted offline are the exception: they survive the import and remain in ZeeBORN, so they have to be deleted there by hand.
• The file contains the complete report in plain text. It is an internal QHSE document and belongs treated as one — passed only to those who should see it, and deleted once it has been imported.

Browsers

Chrome and Edge are fully supported on desktop and mobile, Safari likewise, Firefox as well — on Firefox and on older browsers saving produces a download instead of a save dialog. The result is the same file either way.