Editing
As described in the Introduction, there are 3 main user interface elements inside CFE. The bulk of your work will be done via the tree found in the Navigation tab and the and element editing display pane.
The tree has multiple root nodes, each dedicated to a specific portion of your sensor configuration. Expanding any node will expose the sub-components covered by that nodes area of focus. CFE also is one of the few portions of SCS where a context menu is implemented, right clicking on nodes and in various other locations yields many useful commands related to the element under the mouse.
The Physical Device node is where you manage the metadata covering all actual physical sensors you have on board your ship.
The Sensor Interfaces node is where you manage how and what SCS itself ingests from the above noted sensors.
The Calculated Interfaces node is where you create custom equations to post-process the incoming data into other useful streams for your mission.
The SAMOS node is a special implementation of Calculated Interfaces specifically for submission to SAMOS. For all intents and purposes it should be treated as read-only.
Via these various nodes you are able to add, remove and edit the vast majority of things covered by CFE. Once your configuration is completed and deployed chances are it will change very little over time. If you get a new sensor on board you would like to hook up, this would be the place to add it. If a sensor breaks and is no longer on board, this would be the place to remove it. Generally speaking these operations don't occur on a daily basis, once your system is setup you may not touch CFE again for a decent amount of time. However, since CFE is so critical and impactful to the efficient and accurate operation of the entire SCS suite it is advised you check in and refresh your situational awareness and competency in this tool frequently so when the time comes that you need to execute something with it you are ready to do so.
When editing elements inside CFE tree your main workflow would be to select (or create) an item in the tree, this will cause the detail pane on the right to load with it's information. You can edit the form in the details pane to be correct, then optionally save your changes and/or publish them for use.
Details Pane
The details pane usually breaks down into two tabs: Basic and Advanced. This was done to hide away things which are rarely used so as to make the interface more intuitive and less distracting.
- The Basic tab contains the most commonly edited attributes for the selected item
- The Advanced tab holds the less frequently used attributes. Though less commonly changed it is a good idea to review these attributes for accuracy as well.
Recommended Selections
Some attributes in the details pane will have drop down lists. Some common ones are attributes like units, manufacturers and models.
These lists will attempt to organize themselves in a manner which makes your most likely choices bold and at the top.
For instance, if you have a CTD device by Sea-Bird then SCS can guess the most likely model numbers that you would be working with. It will automatically move those to the top of the list and highlight them for your selection.
This is of course an educated guess. In the event the top items are not correct you can choose any other item in the drop down list including a special item named Other
Other Selections
There are many places in CFE where SCS presents a list of options to you to choose from. For obvious reasons many of these lists are subject to change and while they may seem complete at the time of this writing they may fall out of sync with reality over time. For this reason, and many others, SCS allows you as an administrator to manually code in your own values for some of these lists. To do this you must select the Other option.
When you choose Other you must supply a free-text value which you feel is the correct one for the item being entered. This value will later be evaluated by a shore-side quorum and either added to the master list and sent out to all SCS users as a new option or rejected and automatically changed.
This is done in an attempt to keep the SCS lists up to date via user feedback (crowd-sourcing of sorts) but also to prevent the user-base at large from creating lists of non-standard vocabularies (eg to prevent some folks using °C and others using degC and others using Celsius when all mean the same thing).