Analysis

Besides stock and consumption, the Lube Oil module handles the whole life of an oil analysis: requesting a sample, sending it to the laboratory, recording the result, checking it on board and approving it in the office.

Where to find it

Open the Lube Oil Reports module. In the tree on the left, below Overview, you will find the entry Analysis with seven folders underneath:

Folder	What is in it
requested	The sample has been created but not yet sent to the laboratory.
sent	The request has gone out, the result is still outstanding.
received / not checked	The result has arrived and is waiting to be checked on board.
waiting for approval	Checked on board, waiting for the decision of the office.
checked / failed	Checked as failed.
closed	Approved - the analysis is complete.
rejected	The office sent the analysis back, or the laboratory rejected the sample.

Selecting an analysis shows it on the right. The buttons for all the steps below sit on the ribbon tab Analysis, which appears while you are working in this part of the tree.

The workflow at a glance

Step	Who does it	Button	Result
Request the analysis	Vessel	Request	Appears under requested
Send it to the laboratory	Vessel	Send	Moves to sent
Record the result	Vessel	Receive (manually) or Receive (online)	Moves to received / not checked
Check the result	Vessel only	Confirm Analysis	Moves to waiting for approval
Approve or reject	Office only	Approve/Reject Analysis (Office)	Moves to closed - or back to the vessel

Two rules decide which buttons you can see:

Checking happens on board. Confirm Analysis is not shown in the office.
Approval happens in the office. Approve/Reject Analysis (Office) is not shown on board.

The exception are standalone vessels, which act as vessel and office at the same time. There both buttons are shown, and the four-eyes principle is achieved through the rights instead.

If a button is missing

Every button also depends on the status of the selected analysis. Confirm Analysis only appears while the result has been received but not yet checked; Approve/Reject Analysis (Office) only while the analysis has been checked and is still waiting. If a button is missing, check the folder the analysis sits in - and the rights listed at the bottom of this page.

Requesting an analysis

Open Lube Oil Reports and select Analysis in the tree.
On the ribbon tab Analysis, click Request and choose the vessel.
The analysis appears in the folder requested.

To correct the details afterwards, select the analysis and click Edit.

Requesting from a maintenance job

If a maintenance job requires an oil sample (the job code has Sampling switched on), you do not have to open the Lube Oil module. When you execute the job, the Job Report dialog shows an additional tab Sample Request - click Create Sample Request there, and the analysis is created and appears under requested. If you try to finish the job report without creating the sample request, a warning reminds you.

An analysis requested this way is linked to the job, and the job is only released once the analysis has passed both the check on board and the office approval. If a job seems to be waiting for no reason, check whether its analysis is still awaiting approval.

Adding an older analysis report

Analysis reports that exist only as a file can be added to the system afterwards. On the ribbon tab Analysis, click Upload Legacy Analysis and assign the file to a vessel and a date.

Sending the request to the laboratory

Select the analysis in the folder requested and click Send. This sends an e-mail to the laboratory.

Two safeguards make sure the status always reflects what really happened:

A sample only counts as sent when the e-mail actually went out. If sending fails or you cancel it, the analysis keeps its previous status and you can simply click Send again.
If no e-mail account is set up on the computer, you get a message telling you so. Set up the e-mail account, or ask your administrator to, then send the request again.

Recording the result

Select the analysis in the folder sent and choose one of:

Receive (manually) - enter the result by hand.
Receive (online) - fetch the result directly from the laboratory. This requires a laboratory connection.
Receive (online, all sent) - under More Actions, fetches the results for all sent samples at once and reports afterwards how many were retrieved.

For customers with a laboratory connection, the online interface also supports heavy fuel oil and cylinder oil samples in addition to lube oil.

The analysis then sits in received / not checked.

Checking an analysis on board

Select the analysis in the folder received / not checked.
Click Confirm Analysis.
Enter the date, the person who checked the sample, and the result: Passed or Failed. For a failed result please add a remark - this is what the office reads when deciding.
Confirm with OK.

The analysis now carries the status waiting for approval and moves into the folder of the same name. It is not finished yet.

Approving in the office

Select the analysis in the folder waiting for approval.
Click Approve/Reject Analysis (Office).
Choose Approve and confirm with OK.

The analysis moves to closed and is complete. If it belongs to a maintenance job, that job is released automatically at this moment - not earlier.

Rejecting an analysis

Choose Reject instead of Approve. A reason is mandatory; without it nothing is saved.

After a rejection:

the analysis goes back to received / not checked,
the previous checker and check date are cleared,
the vessel can check the analysis again with Confirm Analysis,
the rejection stays visible in the status history, together with the reason.

This can be repeated as often as necessary. Every round remains documented.

The status history

Every analysis has a Status History table in its detail view on the right. Each step is one line with date, user and comment:

requested - sent - received - waiting for approval - closed

The newest entry is at the top. A rejection appears as its own line including the reason and the person who rejected it. If the result was received through the laboratory interface, the entry says so.

Receipt and check details are kept as lines in this history. As a visible consequence, the Analysis Received tick box in the edit window is display-only - to record a receipt, use Receive (manually) or Receive (online).

Status colours

The status label uses the same colours everywhere in the module, so the workflow stage is recognisable at first sight:

Status	Colour	Meaning
requested	light grey	Created, not yet sent to the laboratory
sent	blue	Sent to the laboratory, result outstanding
received / not checked	orange	Result arrived, waiting for the check on board
waiting for approval	violet	Checked on board, waiting for the office decision
closed	green	Approved - the workflow is complete
failed	red	Checked as failed on board and confirmed by the office - see the remark
rejected	dark grey	A rejection by the office, shown as a line in the status history - or a rejection of the sample itself, for example by the laboratory

Comments, reminders and documents

You can attach comments and reminders directly to an analysis - useful when a result needs to be followed up later, or when you want a colleague to look at it. The buttons are on the ribbon tab Analysis, in the group Comments & Reminder.

Reminders appear in the reminder overview of the module, and in the User Dashboard. For the dashboard, open it, go to Configure and switch on the entry Show Reminder (Lube Oil) - like every dashboard entry, this has to be activated once per user. Each reminder line shows two columns telling you what it belongs to:

Column	What it shows
Site	The vessel the analysis belongs to.
Subject	The analysis reference and its title.

Clicking a reminder opens the analysis on the right, including its status history.

Attaching a document is a different right

Attaching a document to an analysis is not covered by the Comments/Reminder right. It stays with Request/Edit Analysis. If a user should be able to attach analysis documents, that is the right to check.

The office dashboard tile

The tile Lube Oil Analysis received, not checked shows the office what the vessels still have to do. It deliberately has no Review button - checking is done on board.

If you do not see the tile: open the User Dashboard, click Configure, enable Lube Oil Analysis received, not checked in the Analysis category and save. Like every dashboard entry, this has to be switched on once per user.

Clicking an entry in the tile opens the analysis directly. The tile also has an Attachments column: if a laboratory report is attached, you can open it right there with one click.

Optional: approval only for failed analyses

If the second approval step is too much for everyday operation, it can be limited to results that failed.

Lube Oil Reports → ribbon tab General → Configuration → Configuration General → "Office approval only required for failed analyses"

Setting	Effect
Off (default)	Every analysis needs office approval.
On	Only analyses with the result Failed need approval. A Passed analysis goes straight to closed, and a linked maintenance job is released immediately.

This setting is separate from the equivalent one in Bunker Reports, so both modules can be configured independently.

Rights you need

The rights must be assigned to the relevant roles. After a change of rights, users have to log off and log on again - otherwise the new buttons will not appear.

Right	What it allows
Request/Edit Analysis	Requesting, editing, sending, receiving and checking an analysis - and attaching analysis documents.
Approve Analysis (Office)	Approving or rejecting an analysis in the office. Deliberately separate from the right to check an analysis, so that the two steps can be done by different people.
Comments/Reminder	Adding comments and reminders directly to an analysis.