Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques

Airline Telecommunications and Information Services

AIRCOM Server
User Guide

Version 6.8
AIRCOM Server User Guide

THIS IS AN EXTERNAL DOCUMENT AND DATA PROTECTION DOES APPLY.

SITA reserves the right to make changes to this document at any time without prior notice.

Last revision date: May 25, 2017

© SITA 2000

DATA PROTECTION STATEMENT

The information and data provided herein shall not be duplicated, disclosed or disseminated by the recipient in whole or in
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information and data is used in the performance of a contract such contract would include an appropriate condition governing
the extent to which the recipient may duplicate, disclose or disseminate the information and data provided. This restriction
does not limit the right of the recipient to use the information contained in the data if it is obtained from another source
without restriction.

All rights reserved

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 SCOPE .............................................................................................................................................................................. 7
1.1 IDENTIFICATION .............................................................................................................................................................. 7
1.2 SYSTEM OVERVIEW......................................................................................................................................................... 7
1.3 DOCUMENT OVERVIEW ................................................................................................................................................... 7
1.4 TERMS AND ACRONYMS.................................................................................................................................................. 8
1.5 APPLICABLE DOCUMENTS ............................................................................................................................................... 9
1.5.1 SITA Documents .................................................................................................................................................. 9
1.5.2 Non-SITA Documents .......................................................................................................................................... 9
2 MAIN WINDOWS ......................................................................................................................................................... 10
2.1 LOGIN WINDOW............................................................................................................................................................ 10
2.2 MAIN CLIENT WINDOW ................................................................................................................................................ 12
2.2.1 Status Bar .......................................................................................................................................................... 16
2.2.2 Change Password .............................................................................................................................................. 18
2.3 DESKS........................................................................................................................................................................... 18
2.4 USER PREFERENCES ...................................................................................................................................................... 19
2.4.1 Aircraft Display ................................................................................................................................................. 20
2.4.2 Airports Display ................................................................................................................................................ 20
2.4.3 Startup Window ................................................................................................................................................. 20
2.4.4 Startup Sizes ...................................................................................................................................................... 20
2.4.5 Deprecated and Moved Settings ........................................................................................................................ 21
3 OPERATION REFERENCE........................................................................................................................................ 22
3.1 USER MAILBOX WINDOW.............................................................................................................................................. 22
3.1.1 Toolbar and Context Menus .............................................................................................................................. 23
3.1.2 Mailbox Data ..................................................................................................................................................... 26
3.1.3 Folders ............................................................................................................................................................... 28
3.1.4 Filters ................................................................................................................................................................. 29
3.1.5 Preferences......................................................................................................................................................... 35
3.1.6 Quick Filter ........................................................................................................................................................ 40
3.1.7 Find .................................................................................................................................................................... 41
3.1.8 Print and Print Preview ..................................................................................................................................... 42
3.1.9 Message View..................................................................................................................................................... 42
3.1.10 Status Bar ...................................................................................................................................................... 44
3.2 NEW MESSAGE WINDOW .............................................................................................................................................. 45
3.2.1 New Uplink Message.......................................................................................................................................... 45
3.2.2 New Ground Message ........................................................................................................................................ 52
3.2.3 New Message Accessibility ................................................................................................................................ 54
3.2.4 Configuration Impacts on Type B Message Header .......................................................................................... 54
3.3 FORWARD WINDOW...................................................................................................................................................... 56
3.4 REPROCESS WINDOW.................................................................................................................................................... 58
3.4.1 Toolbar .............................................................................................................................................................. 59
3.4.2 Data and controls .............................................................................................................................................. 59
3.5 MY FLIGHTS ................................................................................................................................................................. 61
4 AIRCRAFT TRACKING AND FLIGHTTRACKER MAP...................................................................................... 63
4.1 AIRCRAFT TRACKING WINDOW ..................................................................................................................................... 63
4.2 FLIGHTTRACKER MAP .................................................................................................................................................. 63
4.3 SATCOM .................................................................................................................................................................... 63
4.4 FE INTERFACE .............................................................................................................................................................. 64

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4.4.1 Starting the FE client ......................................................................................................................................... 64

4.4.2 Additional Functions from AIRCOM Server ..................................................................................................... 64
5 LOGS & REPORTS VIEWING................................................................................................................................... 66
5.1 TRAFFIC LOG VIEWER WINDOW .................................................................................................................................... 66
5.1.1 Function Description ......................................................................................................................................... 68
5.1.2 Data Description ............................................................................................................................................... 70
5.2 EVENT LOG VIEWER WINDOW ...................................................................................................................................... 73
5.2.1 Function Description ......................................................................................................................................... 74
5.2.2 Data Description ............................................................................................................................................... 74
5.2.3 Event Log Operations Audit .............................................................................................................................. 76
5.3 REPORTS & REPORT VIEWER WINDOWS ....................................................................................................................... 76
5.3.1 Reports Window ................................................................................................................................................. 76
5.3.2 Report Viewer Window ...................................................................................................................................... 79
6 MISCELLANEOUS ...................................................................................................................................................... 81
6.1 LOGS FILTER WINDOWS ................................................................................................................................................ 81
6.2 REFERENCE ADMINISTRATION DATA ............................................................................................................................ 87

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List of Figures
Figure 2-1: Login Window......................................................................................................................................................... 10
Figure 2-2: Main Client Window (for an operator user) ............................................................................................................ 13
Figure 2-3: Change Password Window...................................................................................................................................... 18
Figure 2-4: Preferences Window – General Panel ..................................................................................................................... 19
Figure 3-1: User Mailbox Window ............................................................................................................................................ 22
Figure 3-2: Mailbox Context Menus ......................................................................................................................................... 23
Figure 3-3: Mailbox Folders ...................................................................................................................................................... 28
Figure 3-4: Mailbox Filters List ................................................................................................................................................ 29
Figure 3-5: Mailbox Filter Panel ............................................................................................................................................... 30
Figure 3-6: Mailbox Filters Manage Area.................................................................................................................................. 31
Figure 3-7: Mailbox Filters – Locked Profile ............................................................................................................................ 31
Figure 3-8: Mailbox Manage Filters .......................................................................................................................................... 32
Figure 3-9: Mailbox Filter Criteria ............................................................................................................................................ 33
Figure 3-10: Mailbox Preferences............................................................................................................................................. 35
Figure 3-11: Message Display Preferences ................................................................................................................................ 36
Figure 3-12: Mailbox Message List Preferences ........................................................................................................................ 37
Figure 3-13: Mailbox Notifications Preferences ........................................................................................................................ 37
Figure 3-14: Mailbox Notification Dialog ................................................................................................................................. 38
Figure 3-15: New Message Notification Desktop Alert ............................................................................................................. 39
Figure 3-16: Mailbox Quick Filter ............................................................................................................................................ 40
Figure 3-17: Find Function ........................................................................................................................................................ 41
Figure 3-18: Mailbox Print Options .......................................................................................................................................... 42
Figure 3-19: Mailbox Message View......................................................................................................................................... 42
Figure 3-20: Raw with Fields view with both "Wrap text" and "Show Control Chars" ............................................................. 43
Figure 3-21: Mailbox Status Bar ............................................................................................................................................... 44
Figure 3-22: New Uplink Message Window .............................................................................................................................. 45
Figure 3-23: Advanced Options Dialog ..................................................................................................................................... 50
Figure 3-24: Message Preview Errors and Multi-Parts Message................................................................................................ 52
Figure 3-25: New Ground Message Window ............................................................................................................................. 54
Figure 3-26: Forward Window – Single Message...................................................................................................................... 56
Figure 3-27: Forward Window – Multi-Messages ..................................................................................................................... 57
Figure 3-28: Reprocess Window – 4 Messages Selected ........................................................................................................... 58
Figure 3-29: My Flights Window .............................................................................................................................................. 61
Figure 5-1: Traffic Log Viewer Window.................................................................................................................................... 67
Figure 5-2: Traffic Log Viewer – Hex View .............................................................................................................................. 70
Figure 5-3: Event Log Viewer Window ..................................................................................................................................... 73
Figure 5-4: Reports Window – Local Access............................................................................................................................. 76
Figure 5-5: Reports Window – Remote Access ......................................................................................................................... 77
Figure 5-6: Report Viewer Window – Traffic Log Report ......................................................................................................... 79
Figure 6-1: Event Log Filter Window ........................................................................................................................................ 81
Figure 6-2: Traffic Log Filter Window ...................................................................................................................................... 82
Figure 6-3: Message Type Filter Value ...................................................................................................................................... 85

List of Tables
Table 1-1: AIRCOM Server Client User Roles ............................................................................................................................ 7
Table 1-2: Terms and Acronyms .................................................................................................................................................. 8
Table 2-1: Login Window Functions ......................................................................................................................................... 11
Table 2-2: Login Window Information ...................................................................................................................................... 11
Table 2-3: Menu Functions ........................................................................................................................................................ 14
Table 2-4: Operations Menu Functions ..................................................................................................................................... 15

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Table 2-5: Change Password Functions ..................................................................................................................................... 18

Table 2-6: Change Password Window Information.................................................................................................................... 18
Table 3-1: User Mailbox Functions ........................................................................................................................................... 25
Table 3-2: Mailbox Message Available Information .................................................................................................................. 28
Table 3-3: New Uplink Message Data ....................................................................................................................................... 50
Table 3-4: New Uplink Message Functions ............................................................................................................................... 51
Table 5-1: Traffic Log Viewer Functions ................................................................................................................................... 69
Table 5-2: Traffic Log Viewer Data ........................................................................................................................................... 72
Table 5-3: Event Log Viewer Functions .................................................................................................................................... 74
Table 5-4: Event Log Viewer Data ............................................................................................................................................. 76
Table 5-5: Reports Window Functions ...................................................................................................................................... 78
Table 5-6: Report Viewer Window Functions ........................................................................................................................... 80
Table 6-1: Filter – Viewing Mode & Use of the '%' Character .................................................................................................. 83
Table 6-2: Filter Window Functions .......................................................................................................................................... 85

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1 Scope

1.1 Identification

This document is the AIRCOM Server User Guide. It contains all information needed by users to operate
and understand the functions available to them in this software package.

1.2 System Overview

The AIRCOM Server software (the client interface) allows the user to interact with the system’s database to
view his/her messages received from aircraft, send and track uplink messages to aircraft as well as viewing
the current tracking information for all active aircraft. Many more functions will be discussed later in this
document.

The AIRCOM Server is still evolving to add and enhance such functions as system supervision as well as
many small function enhancements making the AIRCOM Server an ideal ACARS message processing
system.

The AIRCOM Server Client provides two major user profiles

Operator User Profile This profile allows an operator user to view and send messages, view certain configuration
items as well as aircraft tracking information. This document describes the features
available to this profile.
System Administrator Profile This profile includes all the functionality available in the Operator User profile plus all
configuration items maintenance, system monitoring and supervision functions available to
the system administrator users. Administration usage is described in the “AIRCOM Server
Administrator Guide”.
Table 1-1: AIRCOM Server Client User Roles

1.3 Document Overview

This guide is divided in the following sections:

 Scope: This section; general introduction of the document.
 Main Windows: Description of the Login, Main and Preferences windows.
 Operation Reference: Information and detailed procedures to execute and understand the AIRCOM
Server software from an operator user’s point of view.
 Aircraft & Flight Tracking: Descriptions of the windows that provide the live tracking data of the
aircraft and their geographical situation on a world map. The FlightTracker and FE Interface are the 2
different AIRCOM Server's options to do so.
 Logs & Reports Viewing: Windows providing access to AIRCOM Server logs and the ability to
generate reports on that data.
 Miscellaneous: Other general-purpose windows.

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1.4 Terms and Acronyms

ACARS Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System

ADLT AIRCOM Data link Traffic Handling applications that encompass the following elements: XASP,
CAAS, DHP and VMMS.
AFDAS ACARS Fault Detection and Alerting System
AIRCOM SITA VHF and Satellite Air-Ground Communication Service
ASD Aircraft Situation Display: deprecated, now called "FlightTracker"
ASP AIRCOM Service Processor
BATAP Type B Application to Application Protocol handling CSCI
CMC Central Maintenance Computer
CSCI Computer Software Configuration Item
DFM Dynamic Frequency Management
DHP Direct Host Processor
DM Downlink Model
DSP Data link Service Provider
ETA Estimated time of arrival
ETD Estimated time of departure
FCM Fuel Conservation Monitoring
FDE Flight Deck Event
FE Flight Explorer
FI Flight number, also known as Flight Identifier
FlightTracker New flight following & map display tool, successor of the ASD and FlightMonitor
GES Ground Earth Station
GSP Ground Service Processor
GUI Graphical User Interface
LDAP Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
LOGE Event Log
LOGT Traffic Log
MSN Message Sequence Number
MSS SITA’s Message Storage System
MU Management Unit
ODBC Open Database Connectivity
RGS Remote Ground Station
SITA Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques
SMI Standard Message Identifier
SMT Standard Message Text
UTC Universal Time Coordinated
VDL VHF (Very High Frequency) Digital Link
VHF Very High Frequency
XASP Extended AIRCOM Service Processor
Table 1-2: Terms and Acronyms

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1.5 Applicable Documents

1.5.1 SITA Documents

[S1] AIRCOM Server Hardware and Software Prerequisites Installation Guide

2001VLLYSUM134

[S2] AIRCOM Server Installation and Configuration Guide

2001VLLYSUM132

[S3] AIRCOM Server Monitoring Guide

2000VLLYSUM01081

[S4a] (This document)

[S4b] AIRCOM Server FlightTracker User Guide

[S4c] AIRCOM Server FlightPlanner User Guide

[S5] AIRCOM Server Administrator Guide

2001VLLYSUM138

[S6] AIRCOM Server Disaster Recovery and Mirroring Guide

2010VLLYSUM693

[S7] SITA AIRCOM System Specification for the MIAM Connectivity

1.5.2 Non-SITA Documents

[E1] Air-Ground Character-Oriented Protocol Specification,

AEEC specification 618-4

[E2] Data Link Ground Systems, Standard and Interface Specification (DGSS/IS)
AEEC Specification 620-4

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2 Main Windows

2.1 Login Window

When a user starts the AIRCOM Server Client (the user interface), the Login window first appears (Figure
2-1). This window allows identifying the user to the system by supplying an AIRCOM Server user name
and password that has been assigned by the AS administrator or by providing your company’s directory
service account credentials. Your administrator will tell you which of the two to use, because AIRCOM
Server can be configured for any of the two authentication methods.

Once the user has been identified, the users’ access rights and privileges are set to determine the allowed
actions and available functions.

Figure 2-1: Login Window

However, before validating user credentials, the login sequence checks the validity of the license key as
specified in the database being accessed. The following may occur:

 If the license key is invalid, a dialog advises the user and login is not allowed.
 If the license key is valid but expired, login is still allowed1.

Note that when a license key is expired or invalid, the Server component of the system is disabled. Also,
each database holds its own copy of the license key, so if ever accessing a backup or replicated database,
even though the key is old and expired, it is still possible to login and browse through archived data.

Due to user credentials validation and security configuration, it is possible to get security-related messages
such as previous failed login attempts, or to be asked to change the current password (see section 2.2.2).
Also, if archiving is active, connection to the archive data source (in addition to the online data source)
occurs at login. If ever the data source is temporarily unavailable, it may display a progress bar while trying
to connect.

Function Description

1
Provided the user identification is valid.

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Function Description
OK The user must press this button or press the Enter key in order to log into the AIRCOM
Server. The user name and password text boxes must be filled in before pressing this button;
otherwise a failed login message is displayed.
Cancel Quits the application without logging in. Once pressed, the application terminates.
Edit Opens the Client Configuration tool to configure database connections. After the Client
Configuration tool is closed, the list of available connections is automatically refreshed.
F5 key press Refreshes the list of database connections. Hence, it is possible to leave the login window
opened, launch the AIRCOM Server Client Configuration utility, add or change connections
(optionally close the utility), return to the login window and press ‘F5’ to refresh the list of
connections.
Table 2-1: Login Window Functions

Data Description
User name & password AIRCOM Server authentication
To enter the AS Client account's user name and password that was assigned by the AS
administrator for the database server selected in the “desired database connection” list. Please
note that these are case insensitive, i.e. the user name and password may be entered in either
uppercase or lowercase, or a mix of the two. The user can change his password any time after
login.
Directory service authentication
The user name and password must be those of your directory service account and they follow
the directory service validation rules. No password change can be done within AIRCOM
Server; it rather has to be done directly to your directory service account. This means there is
no “Change Password” option under the File menu.
Desired database List of all available database server connections as defined by the AS administrator. The
connection initial selection is considered the default database server, and when logging off from the
Client, it is always this default connection that is pre-selected.
If the selected connection corresponds to a database for which the access has been deemed
read-only for all users, the user is prompted with a dialog advising that the database access will
be read-only and that no changes will be possible in the system.
Table 2-2: Login Window Information

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2.2 Main Client Window

Once the user has successfully been identified by the system, the following window (Figure 2-2) is
displayed. This is the main application window from which an operator user accesses all AIRCOM Server
functionality. Closing this window, either by clicking the Exit button or by using the built-in close button
[X], and confirming the intention to exit the application terminates the current session.

All functions allowed for the logged user are accessible from the menu. The day-to-day operation functions
are accessible both from the toolbar buttons and the Operations menu. When a toolbar button has more
than one function associated, a dropdown arrow is displayed next to it. In such a case, the first function is
called directly (the default function) if the button is clicked on its face, while the other functions are
accessible by clicking on the dropdown arrow.

The status bar at the bottom of the window shows the online and archive data sources connection state,
logged-in user display name, and the current UTC date/time taken from the Server computer. Note that
all time references and manipulations use the Server time. Each panel has a useful tooltip including
additional information such as the name of the online database connection.

If the AIRCOM Server administrator has configured the appropriate account policies, it is possible for all
users to consult their last successful login date and time and/or the last failed login attempts (if any). The
information is displayed for a short period of time immediately after login via a tooltip, and then it is
available anytime by positioning the mouse over the 3rd panel that displays the currently logged user name.

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Figure 2-2 shows the window for an operator user having all operator privileges.

Figure 2-2: Main Client Window (for an operator user)

Menu Functions Description

File menu Gives access to the system’s basic tasks:
 Close: Closes the current window.
 User Preferences: Allow customizing options for each user.
 Change Password: Allows the user to change its current login password (not available
for LDAP (directory service) authentication).
 Log Off: Close all opened windows and restart the application at the login prompt as to
log on another database or with a different user.
 Exit: Close the application and all opened windows.
Operations menu Gives access to all operational functions, same as from the Main toolbar described below.
Window menu The AIRCOM Server Client being a Multiple Document Interface, the Window menu
provides functions to organize the application windows within the Main application
window. It also lists the opened windows within the application environment allowing a
switch between already opened windows (the active one is identified with a checkmark).

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Menu Functions Description

Help menu Gives access to the help information on the AIRCOM Server system:
 User Guide: This guide in PDF format.
 Administrator Guide: The Administrator Guide in PDF format.
 Release Notes: What’s new and fixes for the current release, as well as setup guidelines,
important release announcements and known problems and limitations.
 About: Indicate the software version number, the exact build number of the Client
application and copyright information.
Table 2-3: Menu Functions

Clicking on any dropdown toolbar button automatically drops down the menu to present the available
options. There is no default menu option fired on the button click. Below are the operation related
windows. Some menu options and windows are not shown here because they are reserved to AIRCOM
Server administrators. These are described in the document [S5].

Function Description
Mailbox button Launches the User Mailbox window to view and manage all user messages as well as to
reply or acknowledge aircraft messages. The User Mailbox is described in section 3.
Your user account must “own a mailbox” to have this menu available.
Messages button Dropdown accessing to the new message windows to send uplink messages to aircraft or
ground messages to other users. The functions available are the following.
New Uplink Allows the user to send uplink messages to any aircraft configured in the system’s fleet
configuration. The New Uplink window is described in section 3.2.1.
This function is available to users having the right "Send uplink messages".
New Ground Allows the user to send ground-to-ground messages to users configured in the system and
to dynamic Type B destinations. The New Ground window is described in section 3.2.2.
This function is available to users having the right "Send ground messages".
Tracking button Dropdown accessing tracking-related windows. The list varies according to license options.
FlightTracker Map Launches the FlightTracker Map window, which lets the user view all active aircraft
positioned over the world map, with their cumulated positioning data, flight phase (Out,
Off, On, In,…), flight plan data and other tracking data. It can also display weather layers
and information provided the related license option is set (requires an account with
Schneider Electric weather provider) and it can get additional position feeds such as radar
and ADS-B to complement or replace ACARS positions, especially useful for non-ACARS
equipped aircraft (requires an account with FlightAware data provider).
This function is available to users having the right "View FlightTracker", if the
FlightTracker Map license option is set and the FlightTracker option installed on the
machine.
Aircraft Tracking Brings up the Aircraft Tracking window to let the user view the current state of all active
aircraft, the pending uplink messages (i.e. being processed), active and monitored aircraft
faults, the dynamic frequency management status and any sequences status.
This function is available to users having the right “View aircraft tracking”.

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Function Description
My Flights Launches the My Flights window to view and manage all dynamic flight assignments
assigned to you or that you have to supervise. The My Flights window is meant to support
flight dispatchers and is described in section 3.4.
This window is available to users that are part of at least one desk, no matter if signed-into
a desk at the moment or not.
FE 3 menus may exist for FE:
 FE: The FE button calls the FE client (powered by Flight Explorer) which provides flight
following capabilities combining the feeds from many sources (radar, voice reported,
ACARS) and flight plans to track aircraft over the world.
 FE Playback: Launches the FE Client in playback mode allowing replaying a flight
recording previously performed within the FE Client.
 FE Offline: Launches the FE Client in offline mode. This is useful when the FE data
feed is down. This option is available only on demand. If not available, contact your AS
administrator for more details.
If you do not have the FE Interface license option, if the option is not installed, or if you do
not have the right to “Interface to FE”, these menus will not be visible.
FlightPlanner button Dropdown accessing the FlightPlanner windows.
FlightPlanner windows are described in document [S4c].
FlightPlanner Launches the main FlightPlanner window hosting the core of the flight planning related
modules. This window and sub-windows it is hosting are described in document [S4c].
This function is available if the FlightPlanner license option is set.
FlightPlanner Map Launches the FlightPlanner Map window. This window is very similar to the FlightTracker
Map window, but rather than tracking flights, it is used to represent flight plans, routes and
tracks over the world map in order to prepare FlightPlanner flight plans. It is described in
document [S4c].
This function is available to users having the right "View FlightTracker", if the
FlightPlanner and FlightPlanner Map license options are set and the FlightTracker option
installed on the machine.
Logs button Dropdown accessing the system’s event and traffic logs and the reports browser.
The Logs and Reports windows are described in section Error! Reference source not
found..
Event Log Launches the Event Log Viewer window presenting the events logged by the server and the
clients about everything with the system such as communications, traffic, configuration
changes and security.
This function is available to users having the right "View logs"
Traffic Log Launches the Traffic Log Viewer window presenting all messages sent and received by
AIRCOM Server.
This function is available to users having the right "View logs"
Reports Launches the Reports window allowing browsing for reports to view with the available
report viewer.
This function is available to users having the right "View reports"
Exit button Closes the AIRCOM Server Client, FlightTracker and FlightPlanner.
Table 2-4: Operations Menu Functions

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2.2.1 Status Bar

Three status indicators at the bottom left of the status bar indicate the following:

First indicator: Shows the online database connection status.

This indicator is green when successfully connected, and would turn red critical ( ) if ever the connection
to the database would be lost.

A connection loss is typically detected by an operation requiring access to the database, like opening a
window or saving changes. When this occurs, a dialog appears stating the application is trying to reconnect,
and two things can happen: either it will be able to reconnect after some time, or the user decides to cancel
that dialog and exit the application.

Second indicator: Shows the archive database connection status.

This indicator is gray when the archive is not configured. When configured and connected, it is green, and
red critical when disconnected ( ). When the archive is disconnected, you may click the status indicator to
refresh the connection state – i.e. try to reconnected to the archive database.

Having an archive configured but not connected is not a blocking situation. It may be due, for example, to
maintenance operations, It does not prevent the user to operate. All that is temporarily missing are the
messages and logs that have been archived. However, if you notice the archive is configured and has been
disconnected for a very long time, you may ask your system administrator to verify if the situation is
expected or not.

Third indicator: Shows the base service connection status.

The AIRCOM Server base service is a new component in AS version 6.0. This service is required to
operate the new Aircraft Tracking and Sequencer windows. With time, the Client session will eventually
exclusively connect to this service to operate.

The Client session automatically connects to the service after login. A green indicator shows the service is
connected and the user is properly authenticated. A red indicator shows the service is not connected.

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Since the service login is asynchronous after the user logged in the Client, it may occur that the service
shows as red at startup, but then it will connect just a few seconds later. Whaterver the condition that
prevents the Client to connect to the service, or if ever the service connection would be lost during a session,
the Client will always automatically try to reconnect every 15 seconds. To get more details on connection
problems or disconnection reasons, you may always refer to the Windows Event Application Log – look for
AIRCOM Server Client.

Other status indicator colors exist, such as orange which means trying to connect, and yellow which means
connected and logging in (i.e. authenticating the user); these two states are very short in time (especially the
yellow status) and you should not expect to see them except for very quick transitions. The other status that
may occur is red critical ( ) which occurs when the communication is lost with the service. This state is
also transitory and will change to the disconnected – connecting – logging in – connected sequence
afterwards.

The status indicators are followed by two other panels:

Logged user display name:

Current date and time expressed in UTC:

Any other panels after the date and time would show only when a window is opened and they depend on the
currently active window. They show information about that specific window.

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2.2.2 Change Password

The change password dialog may pop up at login if ever the security configuration requires changing
password at login, or it is obtained anytime from the main window File menu (Ctrl-W keyboard shortcut).
Not available if using directory service authentication to login.

Figure 2-3: Change Password Window

Function Description
OK button (Enter key) Checks that the Old password is valid and then, if New and Confirm passwords match. If
applicable password rules are respected, the password is successfully changed and the user
gets a confirmation dialog. If the Old password or the New and Confirm passwords do not
match, or the password rules are not respected, the user is prompted to retry.
Specific messages may pop up due to password rules enforced by security configuration. In
any case, follow the instructions to correctly set a new password.
Cancel button (Esc key) Cancels the change password operation; and the user gets a notification dialog stating that
the password was not changed.
Table 2-5: Change Password Functions

Data Description
Old Password Currently valid password for the logged user (case insensitive).
New Password New password (case insensitive).
Confirm Password The same password as entered in the new password box, for confirmation purposes (case
insensitive).
Table 2-6: Change Password Window Information

2.3 Desks

The file menu will show a Desk submenu when the user is member of one or more desks. A desk is meant
to represent an airline’s operation dispatcher’s desk. In AIRCOM Sever it is a special user type that allows
grouping users who may work for a desk (refer to document [S5], sections Users Administration, User
Types for more on desk configuration).

When a user logs in the Client, he may use the file menu Desk submenu to sign in a desk by checking the
desk he wants to sign into. Similarly, he may sign out of a desk by unchecking that same desk from the
menu. In the case where a user is member of only one desk, the system will automatically sign in to that
desk upon login to the Client session. The user will know to which desk he is signed in (if any) from the

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status bar in the panel located between the logged in user display name and the date. That panel is shown
only when signed in a desk.

Signing in a desk has the following effects:

 Mailbox: When opened, the mailbox will list messages from that desk, and a Desk column in the
messages list allows identifying these messages as belonging to the desk.
 Send a message as the desk: When sending a new message (uplink or ground), the user has the
option to send that message as the desk, i.e. in the name of the desk. This will make that message
belong to the “outbox” of the desk’s mailbox and any other user signed in that desk will also see that
message from its mailbox.
 My Flights: Opening this window will automatically filter the flight assignments display to show
only the desk’s assignments. It is also possible to sign in or out of a desk from the My Flights
window.
 FlightTracker and Aircraft Tracking: Opening any of these two windows will automatically
apply the My Flights filter, which will list only the flights for the signed in desk.

2.4 User Preferences

The user preferences are customizable options for each user to adjust, as they like. These options are set via
the User Preferences window available through the Main window’s File menu (Ctrl-P). Figure 2-4 below
illustrate the User Preferences window. The description of each available option follows.

Figure 2-4: Preferences Window – General Panel

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2.4.1 Aircraft Display

An aircraft can be represented everywhere in the AIRCOM Server Client using either its short or long
registration identification. Short is also sometimes referred to as nose number while long is also referred to
as aircraft registration or tail number. For an aircraft, the registration configuration is mandatory while the
nose number is optional. Therefore, if displaying aircraft using their short registration and one aircraft does
not have a nose number defined; it will be displayed using its long registration between parentheses. Only at
a few locations like in the FlightTracker data panel or in the New Message window, both the long and short
registrations are displayed; otherwise any ‘Aircraft’ field refers to the aircraft according to the “aircraft
display” user preference.

The mailbox and log viewers display historically stored information. This means that the registration and
nose number information relating to a message or a log entry represent the configuration of the aircraft at
the moment the message or log entry was created. In other words, if an aircraft did not have a nose number
defined one month ago, the nose number information for messages received one month ago will show the
long registration between parentheses (assuming aircraft display is set to short) even though a short
registration has been configured since then.

2.4.1.1 AIRCOM Server vs FlightPlanner Settings

A separate set of settings exists for FlightPlanner and these are used only within the FlightPlanner set of
windows (requires the FlightPlanner license) – replacing the AIRCOM Server settings. It presents slightly
different formats for the options available essentially due to specific needs of the flight planning world. The
AIRCOM Server settings are used everywhere else in the system.

2.4.2 Airports Display

An airport can be represented everywhere in the AIRCOM Server Client using either its ICAO 4-letters
code (e.g. CYUL) or its IATA 3-letters code (e.g. YUL).

2.4.3 Startup Window

The startup setting allows picking up a window among the list of supported windows that will launch
automatically when starting the Client application. The list of available windows may vary from one user to
another depending on the user rights of each user account and also on the license options. The full list of
supported windows is: User Mailbox, Aircraft Tracking, FlightTracker, FlightPlanner, Event Log, and
Traffic Log.

The following startup size and start maximized settings apply for Client applications ran locally. When the
Client is run remotely via the browser, the remote session settings supersede the user preferences. When the
Client is accessed remotely, it is preferable to set the startup size preferences to fit the remote session
resolution (see the Client Web Access tool on the AS Server computer or ask a system administrator).

2.4.4 Startup Sizes

All AIRCOM Server Client windows open with a certain size and these reflect automatically saved
preferences on exit of the application.

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There are two sets of settings, those for “main” windows and those for “child” windows. The main windows
are the Client Main, the FlightTracker and the FlightPlanner windows. The others are all the windows that
open within the AS Main or FlightPlanner windows.

The settings that are automatically saved are the startup size of the window and whether it opens already
maximized or not.

These settings are stored each time a window is resized or maximized / de-maximized and they are
automatically saved when exiting the AIRCOM Server Client.

When launching a new client session, the Main window will open as last stored and any further window
opening (child or not) will follow the last stored setting (even if not saved yet).

As an example scenario, let’s say the last saved settings are to start main windows not maximized but child
ones maximized. When launching a new client session, the Main window will show not maximized (sized
as per the last saved size), then open a few child windows and they will open as maximized within the Main
window. Then maximize the Main window and open FlightTracker, it will open as maximized. De-
maximize the child windows within the Main window and then open another child window, it will open not
maximized. Now exit the client and restart, the Main will show as maximized, and when opening child
windows they will not be maximized.

2.4.5 Deprecated and Moved Settings

The new message notification settings have been moved to the User Mailbox preferences panel starting with
version 6.4.

The print font and color settings have been abandoned and do not exist anymore starting with version 6.4.

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3 Operation Reference

3.1 User Mailbox Window

The User Mailbox window is available through the Main window via the Mailbox button and via the
Operations menu. The below figure illustrates the Mailbox window within the Client environment.

Figure 3-1: User Mailbox Window

The mailbox window is divided in a few areas as follows.

 The top toolbar provides all the key functions available in the mailbox.
 The left side shows the folders and filters selection section. This is also where the filters and
preferences configuration panels will appear when desired.
 To the top right there is the list of messages for the currently selected folder.
 The bottom right shows the message view panel which can be docked, meaning it can be moved
around, either out of the mailbox window or docked elsewhere within the window.
 At the bottom, the mailbox status bar presents all sorts of information relative to the content and
events that occur in the mailbox.

Each of these areas is described further in the following sections.

Some preferences, including the layout of the window and the notifications, along with some filters may be
given to users through a "Profile" for which they have been made members. Profiles allow groups of related

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users to share the same default preferences and the same set of filters, defined with the said profile by the
profile administrator. Such profile can allow users to modify their personal preferences and filters or can
prevent them.

3.1.1 Toolbar and Context Menus

The following table presents the functions available in the toolbar and context menus.

Figure 3-2: Mailbox Context Menus

Function Description
Refresh (F5) Allows getting any new messages matching the currently applied filter and, if the user is
member of a profile, it also allows refreshing preferences and filters obtained from the profile.
Note that messages are automatically refreshed as soon as new ones arrive, so the refresh
function really needs to be used only for profile preferences and filters update, if applicable.
Find (Ctrl-F) This is a toggle button that alternately opens or closes a panel just above the messages list (top
right area) allowing preforming search operations through the messages list, as shown and
described in section 3.1.6.
Filter (F7) Allows filtering messages using various search criteria. This is a toggle button that alternately
opens or closes the filter panel that appears to the left of the folders panel.
If the Filter panel is opened while no filter is applied, the panel opens with a temporary
"New Filter" with Online 15 minutes and no criteria, ready to be changed to something else.
For more details about mailbox filters, refer to section 3.1.4.
Clear Filter Returns to “(no filter)” applied, which corresponds to an online filter with a 15 minutes time
period (the time has to be limited even for no filter) and no other criteria. Clear Filter is the
quickest way to remove any filtering, including the quick filter line at the top of the Messages
list.
For more details about filters, please refer to section 3.1.2.

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Function Description
Preferences (F8) Toggle button that alternately opens or closes the preferences panel that appears to the left of
the folders panel.
This function is not available to users members of a profile for which saving preferences has
been prevented by the administrator (preferences have been locked).
For more details about mailbox preferences, refer to section 3.1.5.
Uplink (Ctrl-U) Opens the New Uplink window allowing sending uplink messages to aircraft. It is the same as
(with privilege) the ‘Messages – New uplink…’ menu from the Main window.
This function is available to users having the right "Send uplink messages".
Ground (Ctrl-G) Opens the New Uplink window allowing sending ground messages to users. It is the same as
(with privilege) the ‘Messages – New ground…’ menu from the Main window.
This function is available to users having the right "Send ground messages".
Reply Applies to downlink message selections only. Opens the New Uplink window to generate an
(with privilege) uplink ONLY to the aircraft that sent the currently selected message. The aircraft is
preselected and it cannot be changed.
Note that an uplink message cannot be sent to an aircraft that has not been defined by a system
administrator.
This function is available to users having the right "Send uplink messages".
Ack Applies to downlink message selections only. It is active for messages that require the
(with privilege) logged user to acknowledge them. The icon in the View status column of the messages
list identifies messages requiring acknowledgment by the user. It is similar to the Reply
function except that the ‘Ack’ allows the user to select only templates or guides of category
‘User-Ack to Downlink’. These are usually templates with few data to enter, typically sent
only to acknowledge the reception and reading of a message.
Note that if no acknowledgement template has been defined for an aircraft, it is not possible to
acknowledge a message. If that is the case, ask your system administrator to make sure such
acknowledgement templates are defined for each aircraft configured in the system.
This function is available to users having the right "Send uplink messages".
Forward Opens the forward window described in section 3.3 that allows selecting users and groups
(with privilege) defined in the system as well as additional non-configured Type B addresses and forwarding
the selected messages to them.
This function is available to users having the right "Send ground messages".
Print (Ctrl-P) Allows printing selected messages, or print preview them.
Before printing, you can choose to include the formatted and/or raw messages and to show or
not the control characters (e.g. [CR][LF] in the message). See section 3.1.8 for more details.
Trash (Del) Moves the selected messages to the Trash. The trash is available from the Trash folder to the
left of the window. Once messages have been trashed, they can only be restored, either using
Restore from the messages list context menu or using Restore all from the Trash folder context
menu.
Trashed messages are never permanently deleted by the user. They will be purged
automatically by the system according to the purge settings in System Parameters.
Close (Ctrl-L) Closes the User Mailbox window.
Keyboard Home / End Navigate directly to the first and last row of the messages list.

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Function Description
Mark as read (F9) / The messages list context menu presents 2 options to mark messages as read or unread. The
Mark as unread F9 shortcut is associated to the Mark as read action. It is also possible to click on the button
located to the right of the message view panel (see below) to toggle the state of the current
message only. If multiple messages are selected, only the current one, the one viewed in the
message view panel, will have its read state changed.
Indicates an unread message (same icon found in the View status column of the
message list). Clicking on the button when in this state will mark it as read.

Indicates a read message (same icon found in the View status column of the message
list). Clicking on the button when in this state will mark it as unread.
Clear selected These context menu options are available only when selecting the Notifications folder. “Clear
notifications / Clear all selected notifications” is available when selecting messages in the messages list, while “Clear
notifications all notifications” is available over the Notifications folder itself. These remove the selected
messages (or all messages) from the Notifications folder’s view, but it does not trash the
messages.
Splitters Explore the 2 splitters available in the mailbox window: vertically between the folders and the
right side of the window, and horizontally between the messages list and the message view
panel.
View in … The messages list context menu presents 3 “View in” options: View in FlightTracker window,
View in Tracking window, and View traffic logs. These 3 options open the corresponding
window. For the Tracking and FlightTracker windows, the aircraft of the selected message
will be preselected, and for the traffic logs, a 2 hours online filter on the selected message’s
aircraft is automatically applied.
Note that the FlightTracker and Traffic Logs options are available only if the user has the
corresponding view privileges.
Table 3-1: User Mailbox Functions

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3.1.2 Mailbox Data

The available columns are described in the following table. To show or hide these columns, refer to the
preferences in section 3.1.5.2.

Column Description
P(riority) Priority of a message set for the template matched. The possible values are: Normal, Low,
Medium, High, and Critical.
When moving the mouse over a priority icon in the message list, a tooltip displays the view
status name.

(View status) This column has no header in the message list, but it is easily identifiable due to the icons it
displays to identify the different statuses of messages such as:
Unread
To ack (takes precedence over read)
Read
Trashed
When moving the mouse over a view status icon in the message list, a tooltip displays the view
status name.

Date The date and time up to the seconds at which the message was received.

Status Indicates the message status, such as DN: Inbox, GND: Forwarded, UP: On Hold…
There is a list of 34 possible statuses in which DN means Downlink direction, GND means
ground and UP means uplink:
 DN: Forwarded Downlink forwarded to the current user by another
 DN: Inbox Downlink distributed to the current user
 UP: Cancelled Uplink cancelled by an administrator
 UP: Copied Uplink send to an aircraft and copied to the current user
 UP: Dropped Uplink trashed on specific conditions (typically replaced by a
more recent one)
 UP: Expired Uplink not delivered within its validity period
 UP: Forwarded Uplink forwarded to the current user
 UP: In Progress Uplink sent for which an acknowledgement is expected
 UP: On Hold Uplink kept on-hold until certain configured conditions are
met
 UP: Outbox Uplink to be processed and sent by the Server
 UP: Queued Uplink in the queue to be sent to an aircraft
 UP: Requested Uplink that has been requested by a downlink
 UP: Requested by sequencer Uplink that has been requested by a sequence
 UP: Retransmit Uplink retransmitted (same as “In Progress”)
 UP: Success (MAS-X) Uplink for which a MAS-X has been received
 UP: Successful Uplink for which a MAS-S has been received
 UP: SVC Error Uplink for which a MAS-F has been received but considered
delivered anyway
 UP: Trashed Uplink trashed

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Column Description
 UP: Unparsable Uplink that cannot be parsed by the Server
 UP: Untransmittable Uplink that cannot be sent due to a failed link condition
 UP: Waiting for aircraft Uplink waiting for aircraft to begin a particular flight
 UP: Waiting for condition Uplink waiting for a specific condition (time, flight stage, …)
 UP: Waiting for request Uplink waiting for a downlink request in order to be sent
 UP: Waiting for route Uplink waiting for a valid transmission route to the aircraft
 UP: Waiting for VHF/HF Uplink waiting for VHF or HF coverage before sending
 UP: Waiting to retransmit Uplink waiting to be retransmitted following a failed attempt
 GND: Forwarded Ground message forwarded to the current user
 GND: Inbox Ground message distributed to the current user
 GND: Outbox Ground message to be processed and sent by the Server
 GND: Sent Ground message successfully processed and sent
 GND: Untransmittable Ground that cannot be sent due to a failed link condition
 Event Notification Event notification message
 Fault Notification Fault notification message

Message type Customizable text that identifies a message. It is customizable at the template level and may
contain information from fields such as the aircraft registration, the departure and arrival airport
codes, as well as the template and/or model name that were used to process and format the
message.

SMI Standard Message Identifier, the key element that allows a message to match a template in the
system and that is the primary identifier of a message.

Aircraft Displays either the long or short registration of the aircraft (as per global user preferences) from
which the message comes or to which it was sent. If the aircraft display is set to the short
registration and the aircraft does not have one configured, the aircraft's long registration is
displayed instead, within parenthesis.
When filtering on an aircraft, one must specify one of the two aircraft criteria explicitly, aircraft
registration or nose number. The filtering will be done on that criterion consistently no matter
the display preference used.

Aircraft type Aircraft type as configured for the aircraft, including the configured "type" and "sub-type".
The column is not listed by default but can be selected from the preferences panel.

Flight The flight identifier flown by the aircraft at that moment (IATA code + 4-digit flight number).

Dep(arture airport) The code of airport from which the aircraft that sent or received a message left from (ICAO or
IATA as per global user preferences).
When filtering on a departure airport, one must specify one of the two departure airport criteria
explicitly, IATA or ICAO. The filtering will be done on that criterion consistently no matter the
display preference used.

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Column Description
Arr(ival airport) The code of airport to which the aircraft that sent or received a message is going to (ICAO or
IATA as per global user preferences).
When filtering on an arrival airport, one must specify one of the two arrival airport criteria
explicitly, IATA or ICAO. The filtering will be done on that criterion consistently no matter the
display preference used.

Template The name of the template that the message matched when entering the system or that was used to
generate an outgoing message.

Model The template’s model that was used to reformat the message.

Desk The desk to which the message belongs. A desk will be displayed for the messages belonging to
the desk a user is signed in (see section 2.3). It identifies the messages that are from the desk’s
mailbox and that are shown along the user’s own messages because the user is signed in that
desk.

Error An SVC error code that is extracted from SVC messages received in response to an uplink
message, such as 231: UP INTERCEPT NO STATION TO or 311: NO ACK.

Message identifier A unique numeric identifier of every message in the system. This may be helpful if needing to
uniquely identify a message and when contacting AIRCOM support.
Table 3-2: Mailbox Message Available Information

3.1.3 Folders

The mailbox presents 5 fixed folders as described below:

Inbox: All messages received by the user and desk if the user is signed in a
desk (downlink or ground messages).

Outbox: All messages sent by the user, uplink or ground messages.

Figure 3-3: Mailbox Folders
Trash: All messages that have trashed by the user. Messages in the trash folder can be restored, but not
permanently deleted. The permanent deletion of messages is performed by the system purge mechanism; it
purges messages older than a certain period of time, no matter in which folder these were located.

All Messages: The sum of all inbox, outbox and trashed messages.

Notifications: This is a separate folder not related to filters. It contains only messages for which a
notification was raised since the client session started; therefore it a view of the full list of messages for
which the user has received notifications. The messages listed here are the same that could be found in the
inbox folder.

From this folder there is one more specific type of action that can be performed on messages: clear. Clearing
a message is just removing it from the notifications view, it is not trashed. However, the user may still send

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a message to trash from the notifications view, and in this case, the message is really trashed; if it was listed
in the inbox folder (as per the filter applied), it would also disappear from the inbox.

As stated above, the content of the notifications folder does not follow the applied filter; this is why the
filters list and filter buttons get disabled when the notifications folder is selected.

Folders are displayed in bold with a number between parentheses when there are unread messages in the
folder; the number indicates the number of unread messages in that particular folder.

3.1.4 Filters

Filters allow the user to get messages that match specified criteria from the server to its mailbox.
Essentially, it reduces the listed messages to a meaningful set matching well defined criteria.

Filters can be saved so the user may define a set of often used filters that can be
readily applied just by selecting the proper filter from the list of filters presented
to the left of the window, below the folders area. Among the list, if there is a
default filter it will be identified with a star ( * ) to the right of its name and it will
be applied when opening the window. If no default filter is defined, the window
will open with “(no filter)”, which is equivalent to an online 15 minutes filter.

Some filters may be obtained from the profile to which the user is a member. In Figure 3-4: Mailbox
such case, the profile filters will be first in the list and displayed in bold. Personal Filters List
filters will be listed after if the user is allowed to save personal filters as per the
profile configuration.

In the toolbar, the Filter button alternates between opening and closing the Filter panel. Once opened, it
looks as follows.

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Figure 3-5: Mailbox Filter Panel

It is divided in 3 main areas: the management part at the top, the time criteria just below and the data
criteria at the bottom.

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3.1.4.1 Management

In the management area, the list of filters is available to select from.

The selected filter’s details are shown below the management area
and it is that same filter that can be saved or saved as another new
filter.

Figure 3-6: Mailbox Filters Manage Area

If the user is part of a profile, different rules apply for profile filters.
Refer to section 3.1.4.4 for more details. However it is important to
note that if the profile the user belongs to has been configured to
lock the mailbox filters, the user is not allowed to have personal
filters, thus the save and manage buttons will not be available and
any new filter or changes to existing profile filters will be lost.
Figure 3-7: Mailbox Filters – Locked Profile

The New button creates a blank new filter named “New filter”. A “blank” filter is online 15 minutes, no
data criteria.

Such a new filter, if it does not get modified, will vanish if selecting another filter or if closing the window,
without even asking to be saved (see Preferences). However, as soon as a filter is modified, it will appear
with the suffix “(modified)” (except for “New filter” which not saved yet anyway) and when trying to select
another filter or to close the window, the user will either be asked if he wants to save or not the filter or
simply loose the changes without being asked, depending on the preference “Warn if unsaved filter or
preferences”. In other words, there can only be one modified filter at any time – the current one.

Apply is enabled when the current filter differs from the applied one, either because it got modified since last
applied, or if the selected filter in the filter panel is not the same as the applied one. The selection at the top
of the filter panel is not always the same as the applied filter, but as soon as the Apply button is hit, it
becomes the applied filter, and the filter selected in the Filters list below the folders area is then synchronized
with this selection.

The OK button does apply the selected filter if it needs to (if the Apply button is enabled) and closes the
filter panel, as opposed to the Apply which does not close the filter panel.

Save, Save As and Manage are available to the user if the administrator has allowed it to save personal
filters. If the user is a member of a profile and this profile does not allow its users to save personal filters,
the buttons will not be visible. In that situation, the users are still able to create new filters or modify profile
filters but not to save them.

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If available, the Save button just saves the modifications made to the current filter without changing its
name. If the user is saving a profile filter, it will be asked to save it as a personal filter as profile filters
cannot be overwritten except by a profile administrator.

Save As creates a copy of the current filter into a new filter, asking for a new name. Save As allows profile
filters to be modified and saved as personal filters if a distinct variation should be saved.

The Manage button opens the following dialog to manage some settings of the list of filters, such as
renaming existing filters, setting the default filter, deleting and adding personal filters. However, filters
shown in bold are profile filters (if the user is member of a profile) and these cannot be delete nor renamed,
but they can be selected as default filter. For more details about profiles, refer to section 3.1.4.4.

Figure 3-8: Mailbox Manage Filters

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3.1.4.2 Live and Historical Filters

As shown in Figure 3-5: Mailbox Filter Panel, there are two sets of time criteria, live and historical. A live
filter is specified by a period and time units (e.g. 15 minutes, 24 hours, 3 days). When an live filter is
applied it gets data for that period from the server and anytime data gets refreshed, the new messages are
shown and the ones older than the specified period are filtered out – in other words it is a sliding window
filter.

An historical filter is rather specified by two sets of date and time, from and to. Messages are filtered
according to these dates and times, and unless the ‘To’ date is in the future, no new messages will get
displayed when refreshed.

An important element to know is that no matter if a live or historical filter is applied, if the time span of
that filter exceeds the one of the “online” database (see ‘Archive after’ setting in System Parameters), the
filter will always get data from the “archive” database if it needs to. The filter will always reflect all data
that matches it, no matter if it comes from the online or archive database; this is totally transparent.

3.1.4.3 Data Criteria

Figure 3-9: Mailbox Filter Criteria

The data criteria area is a list of all data items a filter can use. Clicking on any section alternates between
opening and closing that section. When values are defined for a data item, the name shows as bold and the
number of values entered is shown. A delete button also appears allowing the clear all values for that
section at once.

When a data item section is first opened, it shows an empty row allowing typing in or selecting a value,
depending on the type of data. As shown in Figure 3-9: Mailbox Filter Criteria, it could be a dropdown of
predefined values, a dropdown allowing to type in partial values, or a text field. Note for example that for

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aircraft type, the user can type in characters and it will perform an auto filter in the list of configured aircraft
types to present only those that could be applicable.

Once a criterion value has been entered, there is always a new row automatically added allowing to enter
another value. This row, if left empty is ignored when applied. Then the choice of comparison operator
is located to the left of each value. The list adapts to the type of data, such as includes / excludes for a
dropdown selection, or contains or not, equals or not, is empty or not, and starts or ends with for
alphanumeric values. Each value row also has its own delete button allowing clearing just a specific value.

3.1.4.4 Profile vs Personal Filters

Personal filters are private to each user and these users can manage them as they want. These are the only
possible filters when a user is not part of a profile. However, when the user is member of a profile, different
rules start to apply.

As soon as a user is part of a profile, that profile’s filters will be listed in bold in the filters list and in the
manage filters dialog.

If the profile the user belongs to has been configured to lock the mailbox filters, the user will not see any
filter other than the profile’s ones; no personal filters are allowed. This means there is no save and no
manager buttons available.

If the profile filters have not been locked, the user can have both personal and profile filters. The profile
ones are shown in bold to distinguish them from the personal ones. Any new filter a user creates will be a
personal filter and if the user changes a profile filter, when saving that filter, it will save it as a personal
filter, asking for a new filter name.

3.1.4.5 Usability, Tips and Maximum Rows

The system parameters define a setting called “Maximum number of rows” which drives how many
messages maximum can be listed in the mailbox, the sum of the combined inbox, outbox and trash folders.
Changing folder selection does not reapply the filter; messages for all folders have been initially obtained
when the filter was applied.

When applying a filter, the server will feed the mailbox with blocks of messages continuously either until
the maximum number of rows is reached or until there is no more data to return for that filter. During that
period, the mailbox window is not locked, the user may navigate, however performance will not be optimal
until the filter apply is complete. The reason is that the mailbox client receives blocks of messages
continuously and these get added continuously to the message list which grows in size. The higher the
maximum number of rows is, the more the message list may contain and the lower the performance will be
while applying a new filter.

As soon as the filter has been fully applied, the new messages (just a few messages) come in regularly and
automatically which has a much smaller impact on message display and navigation.

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Note that when the maximum number of messages have been displayed, whenever new messages come in
(e.g. due to a live filter), the oldest ones are systematically removed to keep the maximum number of
messages listed at all times.

As a tip for better user experience, we recommend not to have a maximum number of rows set too high.
Values of 10,000 or less provide a very good user experience. With higher values, performance will
gradually degrade causing message list refreshes to take a little longer, impacting more the navigation
through folders and messages.

3.1.5 Preferences
The mailbox preferences panel lists the preference items of the Mailbox
window that each user can modify to its liking.

Preferences may be left to each user to define or given to users by their profile
as a default set of preferences. When defined through a profile, the profile
administrator may have chosen to leave those preferences editable to each user Figure 3-10:
(in which case users can overwrite the profile preferences with their own) or Mailbox Preferences
may have locked them (when locked, the preferences button and panel are not
available).

The Preferences panel opens at the left of the Mailbox window and is composed of a manage section where
the preferences can be saved and restored with 3 sections for the settings.
 Save is quite obvious, it saves the current preferences.
 Restore saved restores all preferences that is all configurable ones and the layout of the messages
list and of the window docking, positions and sizes.
 Restore default restored the default set of preferences delivered with the product, including layout.
This does not automatically save the restored preferences so you will have to if you want to preserve
them.

Among all preferences, one of them does not appear in the panel, it is called the docking layout. Essentially
it corresponds to the position of the splitters and the position and size of the message view panel which can
be docked. Any changes performed to these positions and sizes are saved or restored when the appropriate
action is performed.

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3.1.5.1 Message Display

This section includes various individual settings that affect general behaviors of
the mailbox, as follows:

Always keep selection into view: Defines the Mailbox auto-scroll behavior:
 When checked: when the selected message is part of the current view in
the messages' list, it will remain into view when new messages are
received no matter if the view is at the top of the list or anywhere else.
 When unchecked (default): if the view is at the top of the list while the
sorting is by descending date (default sort), the top of the list always
remains into view so that new messages are always visible on the top of
the list, but the selection may move out of view. If the view does not
include the message at the top of the list, the selection is kept in view.
Figure 3-11: Message
Mark as read delay: A period between 0 and 60 seconds after which, if a Display Preferences
message is viewed for that period (without changing message selection), it
automatically turns to read state. 0 means there is no automatic mark as read; it will have to be done
manually.

Display ack reminder: When checked and a message requiring acknowledgement is selected (with view
status icon ), then a message box asks the user if he wants to ack the message immediately before
changing message selection. The user may accept or refuse, but then anytime he will select that message
again while it has not been acknowledged, he will get the same message again. Thus when unchecked, there
is no such reminder when selecting messages requiring ack.

Wrap message text: In the message view area, there is a “Wrap text” option. This setting decides what the
default will be for that option, which allows wrapping the message text in the message display text box and
avoid horizontal scrolling to see long message lines.

Warn if unsaved filter or preferences: When checked, if a filter with changes is not saved and either
another one is about to be selected or when closing the mailbox, the user will be asked if he wants to save it
or lose the changes. The same occurs for unsaved changes to preferences when closing the mailbox. If not
checked, unsaved changes are lost without warning.

Restore default layout: Restores only the layout part of the preferences, which is the positioning, sizes and
docking of the window elements and the messages list layout (column order, width, visibility). This is
useful to reset the visual aspect of the window without losing other general or notification related preference
customizations.

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3.1.5.2 Message List

This section presents all message list columns that are available for display and
it allows deciding which ones will be displayed or hidden by checking or
unchecking each of them.

The columns are described in section 3.1.2

Figure 3-12: Mailbox

Message List Preferences

3.1.5.3 New Message Notifications

This section presents the settings that drive the way the user will be advised of
new incoming downlink messages. Basically, all notifications are priority
driven, that is different notifications can be configured for each existing
message priority. The message priority is decided by the template the message
matched when it came in the system.

It is, for evident reasons, advisable to carefully choose what type of notification
to receive according to the number of messages typically received for a certain
priority. For example, playing a sound or showing the dialog box for messages
of normal or low priority would most probably be intrusive and disruptive for
most users.

Once configured, any incoming downlink message for which a notification

must occur is added to the mailbox window notifications folder (even if the
mailbox is not opened), in addition to all notification mechanisms that will be
executed according to the configuration. It is important to understand that the Figure 3-13: Mailbox
Notifications Preferences
notifications are performed on all downlink messages received for a user, no
matter if that message is displayed in the inbox folder and independently of the currently applied filter – the
notifications folder is never filtered (except for local quick filters).

However, notifications start only when launching a Client session and accumulate in the mailbox folder
until the latter is cleared or the Client session is terminated, no matter if the mailbox window is opened or
not. Thus, it is also important to realize that the notifications folder does not cumulate notifications when
the Client is not running, and that it is reset when exiting and restarting the Client.

Priority selection: The first step in configuring the message notification is to select a message priority
among the five priorities: Normal, Low, Medium, High and Critical. These priorities are set when

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configuring downlink templates, hence a priority is associated to downlink messages matching such and
such template. Any other messages coming into the system, like ground messages including forwarded
messages, have no priority. One set of notification options is configurable for each priority level.

For each priority, the types of notifications that can be configured are:

Audio: When this option is checked (for any priority), upon reception of new messages of the configured
priorities, the sound of the highest priority among the received messages is played according to the following
settings:
 Number of iterations: The number of times the sound will be repeated. The duration of one sound’s
iteration varies from one sound to the other.
 Iteration delay: The time to wait in seconds (0 to 60) before playing the next sound iteration.

The sound to play is identified by the following naming convention: “AS Notification [priority level] –
[priority name]”. These sounds are configurable via the Windows Control Panel ‘Sounds and Audio
Devices’, under the Sounds tab, looking for AIRCOM Server in the Program events list. Browsing for a
new sound for each priority level changes the sounds for all user accounts of the computer where the
AIRCOM Server Client is installed.

Dialog box: When this option is checked (for any priority), upon reception of new messages of the
configured priorities, a dialog box shows up a listing the messages of the priorities having the option
configured. The dialog offers to acknowledge and continue working using the ‘No’ button, and it also
offers the option to immediately open the user’s mailbox window using the ‘Yes’ button. Both of these
actions terminate any notification (dialog closed and audio stopped).

Figure 3-14: Mailbox Notification Dialog

If the dialog is still opened when a new notification fires, any new messages that shall be displayed will be
added to the already existing ones, and this occurs until the dialog is closed. Once closed and reopened due
to new notifications, the dialog only shows new messages since the dialog last opened; previous ones were
cleared when closed.

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The dialog can never get hidden under other windows as it always pops up top most, meaning you will not
miss it even if working in another application, and it does not steal the focus to other applications you might
be working in.

Flash window: When this option is checked (for any priority), upon reception of new messages of the
configured priorities, the application’s task bar icon flashes continuously when the Client application does
not have the focus, and the title bar flashes once when the Client application already has the focus.

Desktop alert: When this option is checked (for any priority), upon reception of new messages of the
configured priorities, a desktop alert shows up in the Windows tray area and displays how many messages
of the notified priority has been received. One note per priority is displayed and a few ones may pile up for
a few seconds such that the user has time to look at these. Remark that when the computer is left
unattended, these notifications, as well as audio ones, may go unnoticed if the user is not actively
monitoring its computer.

Figure 3-15: New Message Notification Desktop Alert

Speech: When this option is checked (for any priority), upon reception of new messages of the configured
priorities, a synthetic voice will read the same message as what is displayed in the desktop alert.

Use the ‘Esc’ (escape) key to manually terminate any ongoing notification: If combined with dialog
box notification, selecting either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ from the dialog terminates any parallel audio notification. If
the mailbox window is opened or gets the focus while audio notification is in action, it stops the sound play
momentarily, until a new notification kicks in. Ultimately, hitting the Esc key while the application has the
focus also stops the audio notification.

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3.1.5.4 Profile vs Personal Preferences

Personal preferences are private to each user and these users can manage them as they want. These are the
only possible preferences when a user is not part of a profile. However, when the user is member of a
profile, different rules start to apply.

If the profile the user belongs to has been configured to lock the mailbox preferences, the user cannot even
open the preferences panel; the profile preferences are systematically applied.

If the profile preferences have not been locked, the user has access to the preferences panel and he can save
its preferences. For a new user that never saved personal preferences before, the initial set of preferences
would be those of the profile, but upon saving, it would create a personal set of preferences that overrides
the profile’s ones.

When restoring preferences to default, a user not member of a profile will revert to the factory preferences,
while a user member of a profile will revert to its profile’s preferences.

3.1.6 Quick Filter

The quick filter, as opposed to the filter, is applied temporarily on the listed messages by typing (or
selecting) a value in the first row of the message list for one or more columns. The filter always uses the
“contains” operator and only one value per column can be set at any time, and filtering is performed
instantly as values are entered. This filter is temporary and cannot be saved. As soon as the quick filter
values are cleared, the original list of messages as per the applied filter are restored, without any request to
the server; the quick filter is all applied locally on the data already retrieved from the server.

Figure 3-16: Mailbox Quick Filter

The quick filter and the find (see section 3.1.7) functions are exclusive, that is when one is used the other
cannot be used at the same time.

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3.1.7 Find

Figure 3-17: Find Function

Once the find panel is opened, all there is to do is select the column on which to perform the search, the
operator to use for the search (e.g. Equals, Contains…) and type in or select a value (if a dropdown is
available like for a date or a value list). The result of the search will be highlighted in green and using Next
and Previous you can easily navigate through the results. The Previous function can be triggered using the
keyboard shortcut Shift-F3 and Next using F3.

A colored LED turns green or red depending if results are found or not and the number of found messages
matching the search against the total number of available messages is shown next to the LED.

The search is performed on the data being displayed that is the data matching the currently applied filter.
All search results are cleared when either deleting the search value or when closing the find panel.

Selecting another folder while the find panel is opened will reapply the search on the newly displayed data
and present the new results.

The find and the quick filter (see section 3.1.6) functions are exclusive, that is when one is used the other
cannot be used at the same time.

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3.1.8 Print and Print Preview

Messages can be printed – one or multiple ones at once. When Print is clicked, the following dialog shows
up allowing to select basic print options, which are the message format to print and if the control characters
should be printed or not (like [STX], [LF]).

Of course, at least one of the two possible formats must be selected, and sometimes the raw format may not
be available if there is no raw format for the selected message(s).

Figure 3-18: Mailbox Print Options

Print will bring the standard print dialog where the printer can be selected. Print preview opens the below
print preview viewer. From the viewer, the messages can be printed, but also the print setup dialog may be
opened to customize the print settings. Some viewing (zoom, page fit…) and navigation options are also
available to explore the messages to be printed.

3.1.9 Message View

The message view panel is located by default at the bottom, below the message list, but it can be docked,
that is moved around the window or event outside the mailbox window. It can also be unpinned, which will
make the panel hide itself automatically at the bottom, and then to show the panel you simply have to move
the mouse over the bottom of the window.

Figure 3-19: Mailbox Message View

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The panel is composed of a message header and the message view itself.

The header shows the direction of the message (downlink, uplink, ground) followed by the message type,
which defines the message much like the subject for a regular email.

Then the sender of the message can be an aircraft (for a downlink) identified by the aircraft registration, the
flight number and the departure and arrival airport codes, or a user identified by its display name.

The distribution list of the message is again either the aircraft to which it was sent (for an uplink) of the list
of users that it was sent to. For uplink messages, there can also be a list of cc users that received a copy of
the uplink.

The date and time at the right is the timestamp of the message when received by AIRCOM Server.

Navigation buttons move through the displayed messages in the message list,
in order: first message, previous, currently selected, next and last.
The envelope icon is showing the current read state of the message (read or unread),
and, when clicked, toggles the read state for the currently viewed message.

The view part is composed of one or two tabs (when allowed):

 Message: Shows the message formatted for the user.
 Raw with Fields: Visible when a raw message is available and the user has the right to "View raw
messages". Shows the raw version of the message, that is: the native message as received by
AIRCOM Server (e.g. a downlink AEEC 620 message as-is) before being reformatted.

Raw messages are the ones matching templates and in which template fields are identified, typically to end
up reformatting the message using models and transform the message into a more readable format.
However, it is sometimes useful to be able to view that raw message and see how and where template fields
were identified and were they are located in the message. This is the key feature of this message view,
presenting the list of fields to the right of the panel, and highlighting all fields present in the message. When
selecting a field in the list, it also identifies that specific field among all fields in the message. This can be
used, for example, to find back the original value of a field, or to diagnose a possible template field
identification problem.

Figure 3-20: Raw with Fields view with both "Wrap text" and "Show Control Chars"

In both tabs, two options can change how the messages are displayed:

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 Wrap text: Wraps long lines to the width of the panel.

 Show control chars: Displays the non-printable characters that are present in a message using the
ASCII character names. This is useful to identify such non visible characters sometimes present in
messages generated by avionics or external systems.

3.1.10 Status Bar

The left-most panel of the status bar shows the name of the currently applied filter, with the filter icon. A
star ( * ) next to the name means the applied filter is the default one. If no filter is defined, that panel will
show “(no filter)”, the same as when the Clear filter button is clicked.

The second panel shows the time configuration of the applied filter, which can be either a period in some
time unit or a range of from and to times. Even the “(no filter)” entry has a time period; it is 15 minutes by
default.

The third panel shows, as indicated, the total number of messages in the mailbox; this combines all folders
except notifications (sum of inbox, outbox and trash – or – count of messages in all messages).

The fourth panel shows the currently selected folder and the number of messages present in that folder.

The right-most part of the status bar will show intermittently a progress bar and a cancel button only when
messages are obtained from the server. This typically occurs when applying a filter, when most often a
larger amount of messages is obtained at once. Once a filter has been applied, subsequent auto-refresh
operations are very quick and will rarely allow seeing these controls.

When the cancel button is visible and clicked, the current apply operation is cancelled. Although refreshes
are as non-intrusive as possible – the user can continue working while they occur, there is always a small
impact (click delay) especially when a filter is first applied and that the message list gets large. This way,
cancelling allows freeing the system resources, and sometimes enough messages may already have been
listed for the needs of the user.

Figure 3-21: Mailbox Status Bar

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3.2 New Message Window

To generate uplink messages to aircraft and ground messages to other users, use the ‘New Message’
window. The uplink and ground contexts are very similar and they are presented in next two sections.

3.2.1 New Uplink Message

The ‘New Uplink’ window allows a local user to generate uplinks quickly without being concerned with the
formatting of the message. Once the uplink templates have been properly configured, generating an uplink
is only a matter of entering the wanted values and text for the message, the system will take care of
formatting the data properly, limiting line lengths, text lengths and quote lengths as needed, based on the
model associated with each aircraft. Note that an uplink message can be sent only to aircraft defined in the
system.

Figure 3-22: New Uplink Message Window

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The ‘New Uplink Message’ window can be called in three different methods:
 New Uplink: The first method is to create a new unsolicited uplink message by clicking the ‘New
Uplink’ item under any ‘New’ button available from many windows. From the Main, Mailbox and
Traffic Log windows, the ‘New Uplink’ window opens up empty and can be used to send uplinks to one
or many aircraft using any template allowed for the logged user. From the Aircraft Tracking and
FlightTracker windows, the ‘New Uplink’ window opens with a pre-selected list of aircraft based on the
items selected when pressing the “Send uplink message” button or context menu option.
 Reply: The second method is to reply to a downlink message from the Mailbox or Traffic Log window
(‘Reply’ buttons). This brings up the ‘New Uplink’ window with only that aircraft selected. All
templates allowed for the user can be used to generate the uplink.
 Ack: The third method to send uplinks is to acknowledge a downlink message using the ‘Ack’ button in
the Mailbox window for any downlink that needs acknowledgement by the logged user. The ‘New
Uplink’ opens with only the destination aircraft selected and a list of ‘user-ack’ templates allowed for
the user.

Once in the ‘New Uplink Message’ window, prepare the uplink by doing the following:
 Select the “Send As” setting.
 ‘(private)’ means send the message as yourself, i.e. as a standalone user.
 A group mean sending as one of the groups that the logged user is part of.
For groups to be listed they must have the right to perform uplinks and the templates listed for
them depends on the group’s permissions (see Uplinks User Permissions).
Choosing to send an uplink as a group has two impacts: (1) all members of the group will get a
copy of all generated messages, and (2) the logged user has access to templates allowed by the
group’s privileges which most certainly differ from the individual privileges (see uplink template
permissions).
 Select the destination aircraft (one or many) and the users (and groups) that should receive a copy of the
uplink. Dynamic Type B addresses can also be added in the copy list. Note that in the destination list
(ground) or ‘Copy To’ list (uplink), users displayed as gray text are not active for distribution; this is
why they cannot be selected as message destination or copy destinations.
You can find a specific aircraft with the “Search” field. Select “reg.” for registration number, “flight” or
“nose” to search by the selected criterion. Type a part or the complete identification and as soon as an
aircraft will match it will be shown in the field and selected in the list. While you type, the search field
auto-completes what you type to the first match in the list of aircraft. You can select the currently
highlighted aircraft by pressing the “Enter” key or unselect it by pressing “Enter” again, all without
leaving the search field. It is also possible to browse the list with the key up and key down while the
focus is on the search field.

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 Select the template to be used for the uplink.

The list of templates represents all templates for which the user has the permission to use and that are
configured for distribution for the checked destination aircraft. This means that changing the
distribution list of aircraft can dynamically influence the list of available templates depending on the
uplink distribution configuration. This also means that once a template is available, you are sure that a
model has been configured to format the uplink message to each of the destination aircraft.
 Fill in the required fields.
Required fields have a light yellow background. Similarly, the destinations list, the additional Type B
addresses (only in ground context), the template list, and the model list (for ground messages only) have
a light yellow background when nothing is selected. This indicates that the data is required to be able to
preview messages.
 Enter the wanted user text to complete the message.
 Optionally, you can specify a Flight Identifier (when there is only one aircraft destination), a ground
location, and advanced options (see Figure 3-23), but the system will provide appropriate values in most
cases.
 Click ‘Preview’ and validate that all messages are properly formatted. Switch back to the ‘Edit’ tab if
modifications are needed and preview again. When done, click ‘Send’ to transmit the uplink.
 For new uplink messages, one message per aircraft is previewed, and users are copied as per the ‘Copy
To’ selections and ‘Additional Type B addresses to copy’ list.
 For new ground messages, one message per user is previewed, including those listed as ‘Additional Type
B addresses to copy’. When groups are selected, they are uniquely resolved into individual users for
previewing and sending.

The following tables describe each data field and the functions associated with the toolbar buttons.

Data Description
Send As list The send as selection determines two behaviors: (1) When sending as a group, the users part of
the group (including the logged user) get a copy of each sent message while when sending as
(private), no copies are sent*. (2) The available templates depend on the template permissions
of the sender (logged user or group).

If the same group as the send as selection is selected as a destination of the message, each user
of the group will get only one copy of the message.

* This excludes the Copy To and additional Type B addresses.

Destination list The list of aircraft to which the uplink will be transmitted, as selected by the user or pre-
selected by the system, depending on how the window was opened.

Note that the ‘Nose’ column is only visible if there is at least one aircraft in the fleet
configuration having a nose number configured.

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Data Description
Copy To list The list of users and user groups that will receive copy of each uplink sent: if an uplink is
sent to three different aircraft, each user in copy will receive three messages, each formatted as
it needs to be for its destination aircraft.

Groups are resolved into individual users and each listed user always receives only one copy of
each message (possible user duplications are handled).
Grayed out user names indicate that they cannot receive messages at the moment, hence they
cannot be selected as destinations.
Additional Type B A list of Type B addresses not configured as normal users that needs to be copied on the
Addresses To Copy field uplink messages sent. The addresses entered must be separated by spaces, semi-colons or line
breaks. As for the copied users, each Type B destination will receive one copy of each uplink
sent.

If it happens that a Type B address entered here matches the Type B address of a configured
user, the additional Type B address is replaced by the configured user in the subsequent
message processing. In other words, the user configuration settings are taken into account.
Template Selection Lists all allowed templates for the context of the generated message (new uplink,
dropdown acknowledgement or ground template). The selected aircraft (uplink) do affect the listed
templates to present only those templates that are configured for the selected aircraft and
having a configured model for each selected aircraft.

Whenever a template is available, the first one is selected. Only when no templates match the
list of selected destinations and the distribution configuration, the template list says ‘(no
template available)’.

Also, once a template has been selected and field values entered, if a new destination is
selected that has the current template configured, the template stays selected and field values
are not lost.
Message Fields list The list of input fields that are needed to generate the uplink based on the selected message
template. These fields are either a list of selectable predefined values or an input text box that
requires a user input, with possible length and character limitations. If the input area is yellow,
the field is mandatory and cannot be left empty. If the field is a list of predefined items, it
shows as a dropdown list if there are 20 items or less in the list, while it requires using the
Value Lookup window for longer lists.

Special note on value lookup list: The listed values are those from the ‘Value’ column in the
selected lookup table for the listed template field (refer to document [S5], Template – From
Local User section for more details). Using a value list to pick up a predefined value does not
mean the value will get converted after preview. To get a value conversion, it does not need to
be a value list field and a lookup table needs to be specified for the field in the model used to
perform the preview formatting (again, refer to document [S5], Template – From Local User
section for details).

The field order is decided based on the template fields’ order setting (see document [S5],
Template Fields Panel section for details).

If there is no visible field list, it is because the current template and destination selections
require no field inputs to be able to generate the uplink message(s).

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Data Description
User Text box Free text section to enter any desired text, in addition to the predefined data from the template.
This text will be included in the final uplink as configured in each model definition, or not at
all if one model doesn’t make use of the field.
Wrap Text option The wrap text option allows forcing the content of the User Text box to wrap or not. The
default value is wrapping, i.e. no horizontal scrolling required. An equivalent option exists in
the preview panel controlling the preview message display and both edit and preview options
are synchronized. Therefore, changing one option affects the other such that text wraps or does
not wrap in both edit and preview panels.
Ground Location or To specify a specific Ground Location (RGS/GES) or the Airport location for the uplink
Airport field message (GL or AP text element item (TEI) in the uplink TE line). This field is only used for
aircraft that are not actively tracked by the system as the Ground Locations are normally taken
from the internal aircraft tracking data.
Flight Identifier field To specify a specific flight identifier (FI) for an uplink message sent to one aircraft. This field
is not editable in the case where multiple aircraft are selected as destinations or when a single
aircraft between the INIT and IN stages is selected. This field is used to specify an FI no
matter if the aircraft is actively tracked or not by the system. If the aircraft is tracked and an FI
is already known, the one specified here overrides the one from the tracking data. Be careful as
this FI would then replace the one from the tracking data.
Advanced options The advanced options are configurable via the ‘Advanced uplink send options’ dialog opened
using the ‘Advanced…’ button. The currently configured and applicable options are always
visible in the New Message window, next to the ‘Advanced…’ button. When performing a
preview operation, the displayed settings are used to generate the messages.
Send uplink advanced Three options are available here: “on reception/creation” of the uplink message (as soon as the
option Send button is pressed), “on flight stage”, or “on or after flight stage”. This determines when
the uplink should be sent, and you can optionally add a time delay after that event occurred, in
minutes (e.g. it could be on reception/creation + 10 minutes).

When set to any flight stage options, you have to specify the flight stage and upon send, the
message(s) are stored (“UP: On-Hold” status). See the help tooltip next to these settings for an
explanation of each option.

The default value is the one from the configuration of selected template. You may also refer to
document [S5], template configuration advanced tab for more details.
Override maximum wait Checking the option allows overriding the default value for the current message(s). The default
time advanced option value either comes from the selected template advanced options, or if the template does not
specify a value, it comes from the System Parameters.

The on-hold timeout tells the system how long an uplink can stay in the “UP: On-Hold” status
before being reactivated. If the on-hold timeout expires, the system will process it as an
expired message, and send the appropriate notification back to the originating user.

Default value when unchecked: from the selected template configuration.

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Data Description
Override validity Checking the option allows overriding the default value for the current message(s). The default
advanced option value either comes from the selected template advanced options, or if the template does not
specify a value, it comes from the System Parameters.

The validity time tells the system for how long an uplink is considered valid and should be
retried if an aircraft is unreachable for a long period of time. If the validity time is exceeded
and the uplink has not been successfully delivered, the system considers the message as
expired and stops trying sending it. An appropriate notification will be sent back to the
originating user if its configuration requires so.

Default value when unchecked: from the selected template configuration.

Table 3-3: New Uplink Message Data

Figure 3-23: Advanced Options Dialog

To change an option, check it and edit its value. Removing the check of an option resets the option’s value
to its default. The first two options default value is blank, i.e. when unchecked the option is ignored.
Checking them allows changing those preset defaults to a custom value applying just for the current uplink
message(s) being generated.

The ‘OK’ button confirms the option changes for as long as the New Uplink Message window is opened
with the same template selected. The options are preloaded from the corresponding advanced options of
selected template. No matter whether the ‘To’ and ‘Copy To’ destinations or other new message data are
changed, or whether many edit and preview iterations have been done, as long as the template selection is
unchanged, any advanced options stay available. The ‘Cancel’ button cancels any changes made only since
the dialog was last opened.

Functions Description
Preview button or tab A required step before being able to send messages, the ‘Preview’ function displays the
generated messages for verification before they are transmitted to the aircraft. If anything
needs to be corrected, it is always possible to switch back to the ‘Edit’ tab and make the
appropriate changes. The ‘Preview’ also validates that the user has entered all required
information to complete the uplink sequence.

Once in preview, the left-hand side lists of destinations are automatically set in selected-only
mode to better see what the selected destinations are. When back in edit mode, the selected-
only settings are flipped back to their state before the preview operation.

More details on preview below this table.

Send button Enabled only after the generated messages have been previewed, the ‘Send’ function stores the

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Functions Description
messages in the user “Outbox” for the server to send them to each aircraft. From this point, the
user can follow the status of the generated uplinks by monitoring their status in its “Outbox”
folder.
Chk Only button Allows the user to see only the selected aircraft and copy to users.
Print button Prints the generated messages to the selected printer via the Print window (section 3.1.8).
Close button Closes the Uplink Generation window.
Advanced button Opens the ‘Advanced Options’ (with edit pane only) dialog allowing completing options
setting.
Table 3-4: New Uplink Message Functions

Depending on the template configuration, different results can be obtained after clicking ‘Preview’. When
everything is configured as planned, each uplink can be formatted with its proper model and the preview is
just a formality. All the messages generated (one per aircraft) can be browsed by the ‘Previous’ / ‘Next’ and
‘First’ / ‘Last’ buttons at the bottom of the preview panel. One page is generated per uplink with the
formatting specific to each aircraft. Messages to copied users are not previewed; each copied user receives a
copy of each uplink message sent. If everything is correct, click ‘Send’ and the uplinks will be queued for
the server to transmit them.

However, if ever a configuration is missing for an aircraft or the system cannot format one or many
messages for any reason, an error (red) message is given to the user just above the previewed message text
for each message having a problem and the preview panel shows the first message in error (see Figure 3-24).
In some circumstances, such as due to model properties constraints, messages can be formatted, but a
warning (yellow) message is given to the user indicating that something has affected the message
formatting.

Messages with warnings can be sent, although it is recommended to review them before, while messages
with errors cannot be sent because the formatting completely failed. If all messages get errors, then nothing
can be sent. If both errors and warnings or only errors exist, the first message in error is displayed, while if
only warnings exist, the first message with a warning is displayed. The bottom right corner of the preview
display shows the errors and warnings count as soon as there is at least one.

In addition to the error/warning display per message, a warning dialog shows up immediately on preview to
tell about the presence of errors and/or warnings and suggests reviewing these messages. These dialogs can
be set to “do not display next time”, which is preserved for the full current Client session. Only a serious
preview error could cause the preview to be aborted and in this case, the dialog specifies the reason and it
cannot be set to “do not display next time”.

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Figure 3-24: Message Preview Errors and Multi-Parts Message

Summarizing, a warning associated to a message does not prevent the message to be sent. A message with
error cannot be sent, but it does not prevent other messages that could be generated to be sent. Clicking
‘Send’ at this point will therefore send the messages that could be formatted and will leave aside the
messages in error. You can confirm that by looking at the messages in the mailbox “Outbox” folder,
looking at the messages queued for the aircraft.

Long messages can be split using the model properties split option (similar as for ground messages) and be
sent in separate messages. When the message generated using the model associated to the selected aircraft is
longer than the model’s maximum length (a single uplink message free text cannot exceed 3520 characters),
the message is split by AIRCOM Server and each part is sent sequentially. Each part is sent when the
previous part has been successfully sent. Previewing a message that has been split looks like above: one
message previewed with each part separated by a red line. Each part is a fully formed uplink message and
the uplink message is successfully sent only when all parts have been successfully sent.

3.2.2 New Ground Message

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The ‘New Ground Message’ window is based on the same window as the ‘New Uplink Message’ and so its
usage is very similar. Among the differences is the destination list that contains only users and groups and
the fields specific to uplink messages that are not present at the bottom of the window. The rest works
almost the same way so, for any details on how to send ground messages, refer to the previous section “New
Uplink Message” and simply consider that the destinations are not aircraft but users.

Choosing to send a ground message as a group has three impacts: (1) all members of the group will get a
copy of the generated message, (2) the logged user has access to templates allowed by the group’s privileges
which most certainly differ from the individual privileges (see ground template permissions), and (3) the
originator (if the message is of Type B format) will be the group’s Type B address if the destination user
configuration allows to regenerate the message’s Type B header.

The only other noticeable difference with uplinks is related to model selection. For uplink messages, each
aircraft is pre-configured with the proper model for each available template (via uplink distribution
configuration). Hence by selecting an aircraft and a template, the uplink gets formatted properly using the
appropriate model for each aircraft. For ground messages, there is no user distribution configuration for
templates “from local user” (i.e. the templates used in the New Ground window). Therefore, the process
consists of (1) selecting the destination users, (2) selecting a template and (3) selecting a model. All users
will then receive the message reformatted using a single model.

When previewing generated ground messages, one message per user that will receive the message is
previewed. Groups have been resolved into individual users and duplications avoided. The number of
previewed messages represents the real number of messages that would be sent, except if some messages are
split in parts. Split messages appear with red lines separating each part of the message. Each separated part
is sent as an individual message to the intended destination. A split message is always associated to a
corresponding warning to alert the user about the split condition.

In general, previewed ground messages can have associated warnings or simply display an error exactly as
for uplink messages.

Because there is no distribution configuration, all templates allowed for the “Send As” selection (either the
logged user or a group to which it belongs) are always available, no matter the selection of destination users.

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Figure 3-25: New Ground Message Window

3.2.3 New Message Accessibility

The new message window allowing writing new uplink and ground messages, as well as allowing to reply to
and acknowledge downlink messages is accessible according to specific user rights.

New uplink, reply and acknowledgement all fall under the uplink context user rights while new ground fall
under ground context user rights. To have access to the window in any of the contexts and from any of the
access points (e.g. main window, user mailbox), at least one among the logged user and the groups it
belongs to shall have the send uplink messages or send ground messages user right.

Once the new message window is opened in the corresponding context, the “Send as” list contains only these
entries that have the proper user right. In other words, the ‘(private)’ entry is available only if the logged
user has the proper user right, while each group the logged user belongs to is listed if it has the same user
right.

3.2.4 Configuration Impacts on Type B Message Header

When sending a new message, the generated message can end up in different formats due to message
reformatting (see templates and models). An uplink being sent to aircraft has to be of AEEC 620 format,
and therefore uplink copies to ground users are of the same format. Ground messages can be Type B
messages or plain text depending on the configured format.

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The final format also depends on the following items:

 The model used for reformatting.
 The destination user “Do not regenerate Type B header” setting.
 The New Message window “Send as” selection.
 The sender user “Send ground Type B messages as” setting.

The ground models allow specifying a hard coded Type B header, or a dynamic one that can use the
AIRCOM Server and/or user Type B address as the originator and destination. The uplink models are
always regenerated by the Server to set the destination as the DSP Type B address and the originator as
AIRCOM Server’s address.

Then, the destination user “Do not regenerate Type B header” setting (the default is regenerate Type B
header) tells whether the model’s header is kept unchanged or is regenerated. For uplinks, headers of
messages to aircraft are never regenerated, only the uplink copies sent to ground users can be.

By default, a regenerated Type B header includes the user’s Type B address as destination and the
originator depends on the sender’s user settings. If the message is sent as ‘(private)’, it is the logged user
“Send ground Type B messages as” setting that is considered, while if sent as a group, it is the group’s
setting. This setting indicates whether to set the originator as AIRCOM Server’s address or the user’s (or
group) own Type B address. It is worth noticing that uplink copies are considered ground messages and
therefore the “Send ground Type B messages as” of the sender applies.

An exception to the above is if the destination user is a Type B user. In this case, the Type B header has to
be regenerated for the message to be properly routed to the end user; the “Do not regenerate Type B header”
setting does not exist for Type B users.

When the message is sent from an external user rather than from the Client New Message window, the
configuration settings that apply are:
 The model used for reformatting (if a model is used).
 The destination user “Do not regenerate Type B header” setting.
 The sender user “Send ground Type B messages as” setting.

The model effect is the same as if the message were generated from a local user.

The destination user “Do not regenerate Type B header” setting also has the same effect as if the message
were generated from a local user.

The sender “Send ground Type B messages as” setting also has the same effect as if the message were
generated from a local user. However, it is worth knowing that only Type B users have the option to send
as themselves; all other types of external users are forced to send as AIRCOM Server when the Type B
header is regenerated.

Type B users also have an extra option to their “Send ground Type B messages as” setting: normally, all
messages from external users are addressed to AIRCOM Server, but Type B users may be allowed to
address messages directly to an end destination different from AIRCOM Server (called direct addressing).
Direct addressing must be authorized per user via a specific user right, hence Type B users may be

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configured to “Send ground Type B messages as” themselves (originator) only when doing direct addressing
and send as AIRCOM Server otherwise.

3.3 Forward Window

The forward function available from the mailbox and traffic log opens the window presented below.

When forwarding a single message, it is possible to edit the message before sending it. A standard forward
header has been automatically generated for user. It is always possible to forward the original message
without any changes by checking the “Forward selected message(s) without change”. If this option is
selected, there is no user text and no forward header anymore.

Selecting destinations is the same as for a New Ground message. It is possible to forward to any configured
AS users and groups, and to additional non-configured Type B addresses.

Figure 3-26: Forward Window – Single Message

When forwarding more than one message, it is not possible to edit the messages; they will all be forwarded
without changes. The selected messages to forward are presented sequentially and separated by red lines for
reference. However, each message is forwarded separately to each user. If so many messages are selected
that they cannot all fit into the user text field, the note “(more messages not shown here)” is appended at the
end. In any case, the tab caption shows the number of selected messages.

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Figure 3-27: Forward Window – Multi-Messages

If the selected messages have been reformatted, external users will get the reformatted message only while
local users will get both the raw and reformatted messages (if applicable).

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3.4 Reprocess Window

The reprocess function available from the traffic log opens the window presented below.

The Reprocess window allows a user to re-inject incoming messages back into the system using some
reprocessing options to decide how the reprocessed messages affect the live tracking data and how they
should be distributed.

Figure 3-28: Reprocess Window – 4 Messages Selected

Reprocessing can be useful if a message was not processed the first time it was received (because a user,
template or something was not defined properly) and you want to process it properly after having made
configuration changes. It will be reprocessed according to the new configuration and can match a different
template if changes have been made there before reprocessing. Because of that, the reprocess can also help
testing new templates with a controlled distribution to validate that the right format is generated. The ability
to modify the contents of a message to reprocess helps testing different scenarios.

The 3 reprocessing options at the top of the window allow you to decide if the live tracking data should be
affected or if recipient users should receive a distribution of the messages. These options apply to the
reprocessing of all messages in the reprocessing batch. Message can then be modified separately, as needed.

The originator of a reprocessed message generally does not change; it is the same as for the original
message. The exception is for Type B messages which can match a different Type B originator if its

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originator address was modified before being reprocessed. Reprocessed messages are identifiable in the
Traffic Log by their direction which is "Re Down/Up/Gnd" instead of "In Down/Up/Gnd".

The distribution of a reprocessed message, if the "distribute" option is used, is always the one configured for
the template matching the reprocessed message as if the message had been received again from its original
user or application.

Be careful with the reprocessing of messages. These are reprocessed as if they were new incoming messages
from the network and, based on the options selected, can affect the live aircraft tracking data and be
distributed to users. Also, the reprocessing task is executed immediately after "Send" has been clicked and
ahead of the incoming traffic which will be queued up until the completion of the reprocessing task. Based
on the speed of the message processing, this might create visible delays in the normal processing of traffic.

3.4.1 Toolbar

Function Description
Send button Sends the selected messages for reprocessing with the options selected. The window will
remain open and a progress bar at the bottom of the window will indicate the progress of the
reprocess task until it finishes.
Cancel button Enabled only after the messages have been sent for reprocess, the ‘Cancel’ function can be
used to terminate the reprocessing task wherever it is at. This will not recall the messages
already reprocessed but will stop the upcoming ones from being reprocessed. The operation
may take some time to complete based on the number of messages to cancel.
Close button Closes the Reprocess window. If no reprocess task has started, no message will be sent for
reprocess. If the task has started, closing the window will not interrupt the reprocessing.

3.4.2 Data and controls

Data Description
Update Date Time Sets if the DTG of the type B header, if any, should keep its original value or be updated to the
Group (DTG) to now current date and time before being reprocessed.
checkbox
 When unchecked (default), the original DTG is preserved without change.
 When checked, the DTG takes the date and time of the moment when the message is
reprocessed, as if it had just been sent by the original user or application.
This however affects only the DTG in the Type B header and not the values within the DT line
of the 620 header or those inside the freetext of the message -- for that the message content
must be modified.

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Data Description
'Update aircraft Sets if the reprocessed messages should update the tracking data of the aircraft for which the
tracking data with messages are reprocessed.
values from the
message(s)'  When unchecked (default), the tracking data of the aircraft remains unchanged as if the
checkbox message had not been received. This is usually the wanted option since messages
containing old data should generally not update the live tracking of aircraft. Note however
that the values for predefined and custom fields used in the models will be taken from the
live tracking data for the related aircraft, most likely different from the time when the
original message was first received.
 When checked, the reprocessed messages will update the tracking data as if received once
again. This will therefore update the live tracking data of all aircraft for which messages
are reprocessed with the values obtained from the template matching the messages. This
option must be used carefully, usually with messages that are not too old.
Distribute to normal Sets if the reprocessed messages should be distributed normally or not at all
template recipients
 When checked (default), the reprocessed messages shall be distributed to their normal
checkbox
recipient users or aircraft according to the distribution rules configured for the selected
template. For downlink and ground messages, this means distributed to recipient users;
for uplink messages it means distributed to the destination aircraft.
 When unchecked, the reprocessed messages will not be distributed at all, not to users and
not the aircraft. If some event handling triggers notifications to users, these distributions
will be prevented also.
<Template name> from At the top of each reprocessed message is the name of the original template it matched with
<user type>: <address> user type and the address from which it was initially received. This is for reference only. The
heading template and originator user may change if the message text was modified of the configuration
affecting the reprocessed message.
Wrap Text option When checked, wraps the text of long lines so that no horizontal scrolling is needed. This is
just a display setting; it does not add actual line breaks to the reprocessed messages.
Message text box The text of the original message that can be modified as needed. In this case, a "Message was
modified" note appears at the bottom of the message with an 'undo' button allowing the
message to be reverted to its original form.
First, Previous, Next, The "VCR" buttons below the current message allow the browsing through the reprocessed
Last buttons message.
Undo button The "Undo" button is enabled only if the current message has been modified and allows you to
revert to the original message text. This affects only the current message; changes made in
other messages are preserved.

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3.5 My Flights

This window is available directly from the main menu next to the Messages menu when the logged user is
part of one or many desks responsible of flight assignments. The window is dedicated to flight dispatchers
to help them monitor their current flight assignations or to have an overview of all assignments.

Dynamic flight assignments are generated by sending messages to AIRCOM Server that match a ground
template of category “Dynamic Flight Assignments”. These messages create the assignments shown below
and AIRCOM Server attaches these flights to tracked aircraft based on the flight number, origin,
destination, and date of operation. So normally, no user action is required.

However, various events may require manual corrections or interventions, such as flights that may need to
be cancelled for a specific day because it will not be flown, or AIRCOM Server that would have attached
the wrong aircraft to a flight due to a delayed flight close to the day of operation cross over time (time at
which a day of operation starts, typically midnight UTC).

In any case, dispatchers can attach or detach an aircraft from the list of currently tracked aircraft to/from a
flight assignment and they can cancel a flight. Attaching and detaching aircraft may also be useful to
quickly switch a flight from one responsible desk to another.

The user sees in light yellow all assignments that have changed since he last opened or refreshed the
window. Also the window icon in the main menu changes from cyan & black to yellow & red to indicate
there are new changes to be seen.

Figure 3-29: My Flights Window

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Current flight assignments: The list of flight assignments received via dynamic flight assignment ground
messages. Only the status and aircraft columns are set by AIRCOM Server. The possible statuses are:
Scheduled: Status of a planned flight; this is the status when received from dynamic flight
assignment ground messages.
Delayed: The flight has been delayed. It occurs when an assignment has not been attached
Scheduled (R): Scheduled repeated, means the assignment does not exist for the current day so it
gets repeated from yesterday’s assignments automatically by AIRCOM Server (this
behavior is configurable).
Active: The flight is attached to an aircraft and is about to or is being flown.
Cancelled: The flight will not be flown for a specific day.
Completed: The flight has completed.
Completed?: The flight is assumed completed based on the flight tracking parameters, but an ON
or IN message was not received.
Detached: An aircraft has been detached from the flight (this is a manual operation).

Tracked aircraft not currently attached to a flight assignment: List of aircraft currently tracked by
AIRCOM Server that a not currently attached to a flight.

Signed-in desk: The desk into which the user is signed currently and for which it will receive messages in
addition of its own.

Desk filter: List of responsible desks configured in the Users window, plus two entries: "(all)" and "My
Flights". Selecting a desk displays its corresponding assignments. When opening the window, "My Flights"
is selected by default.

Refresh (F5): Reloads all assignments and available tracked aircraft. Any changes since the last refresh
will show up as light yellow and the main menu icon will turn back to regular display.

Lock Sel. (F6): The selection of the currently selected assignment and aircraft turn red and it means that on
refresh, these specific entries will stay selected (unless they do not exist anymore after refresh) and the
current sort order stays unchanged. This toolbar button is a toggle button, meaning it stays in when in
“Lock Sel.” mode, and out when not in “Lock Sel.” It may occur that one of the two (assignment and
aircraft) cannot be locked anymore but the other can; the “Lock Sel.” button stays in and only one of the
two items stays highlighted in red.

Attach aircraft: The aircraft is removed from the bottom list and attached to the selected assignment and
the status changes to “active”. Disabled when there are no aircraft or no assignments listed or when the
current assignment is already attached. It requires a confirmation when the assignment is in status
“completed”, “assumed completed”, or “cancelled”.

Detach aircraft: The aircraft attached to an assignment is removed from the assignment and put back into
the list of available tracked aircraft and the status changes to “detached”. Disabled when there are no
assignments listed, when there is no aircraft attached to the current assignment, or when the current

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assignment is in status “cancelled”. Requires a confirmation when the assignment is in status “completed”,
or “assumed completed”.

Cancel assignment: The status of the selected assignment(s) changes to “cancelled”, and if an aircraft were
attached, it gets automatically detached. Disabled when there are no assignments listed or when the current
assignment is in status “completed”, “assumed completed”, or “cancelled”. Always requires a confirmation.
When a multiple selection is performed, as soon as one of the selected assignments allows cancelling, the
cancel option is available.

Next change (F3): Allows navigating to the next change highlighted in light yellow in the list of flight
assignments. It is disabled if there are no changes listed.

Close (Esc or Ctrl-L): Closes the window.

4 Aircraft Tracking and FlightTracker Map

4.1 Aircraft Tracking Window

Refer to document [S4b] "FlightTracker User Guide".

4.2 FlightTracker Map

Refer to document [S4b] "FlightTracker User Guide".

4.3 SATCOM

Refer to document [S4b] "FlightTracker User Guide".

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4.4 FE Interface

The FE Interface increases the flight operations and flight following capabilities of AIRCOM Server.
AIRCOM Server and the FE Interface powered by FE integrate seamlessly to extend the AIRCOM Server’s
airline operations leadership with the rich interface and powerful geographic information systems (GIS)
capabilities of FE.

Using a back-end feed, the FE Interface gets aircraft positions and flight plans from AIRCOM Server and
adds it to its own tracking data feeds from radars, voice-reported positions and others. The lot provides a
complete tracking of aircraft all over the world, to which is added weather data, Nav data, airports and other
features provided by FE.

4.4.1 Starting the FE client

The FE Interface is a licensed option so you must have purchased it to access it. Your user must also have
the right to “View aircraft tracking, Aircraft Situation Display & FE Interface”, as configured by the system
administrator.

The FE Interface runs as a separate program that can be launched by itself or through AIRCOM Server by
using the “FE” item under the “Tracking” button from the main toolbar. If your AIRCOM Server user is
associated with a FE user (“Users” window, “Advanced” tab) the login into FE will be done automatically.
Otherwise, you will have to login manually using the FE user & password provided to you.

Once in FE Interface, you have access to all the functions from FE that you have contracted for. The
description & usage of those functions is very well described in Flight Explorer’s online help.

4.4.2 Additional Functions from AIRCOM Server

In addition from the back-end feed provided by the AIRCOM Server, the FE Interface provides other uplink
and interfacing functions from within the FE Client window (Overlays Menu). Those are available from the
contextual menu of a selected airplane or airport, as follows:

If you don’t see the added functions, then make sure you have started the FE Interface from the AIRCOM
Server client. Also make sure that you are using Flight Explorer Professional, version 8.1 or beyond.
Otherwise, contact your system administrator.

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AIRCOM Server Functions from the Plane Menu

View messages: Opens the AS user’s mailbox with a preset filter on the selected aircraft (ONLINE
view for 2 hours, Aircraft Registration set to the selected aircraft).

View traffic log: Opens the traffic log with a preset filter on the selected aircraft (ONLINE view for
2 hours, Aircraft Registration set to the selected aircraft).

Dial SATCOM: Refer to section Error! Reference source not found. for details.

Send uplink message: Opens the New Uplink window to prepare an uplink for the selected
aircraft. As for an uplink sent directly from the AS client, the templates displayed for the uplink are
only those configured for the selected aircraft and allowed to the user or selected group.

Request position: Automatically sends an uplink of type “Position Report Request” for the selected
aircraft which requests it to send its position via ACARS back to the ground. The resulting
message, once decoded by AS, will turn out as a position update in the FE Interface window. The
uplink is sent on behalf of the AS user, without actually presenting the user with the AS client
window. It’s equivalent to using the New Uplink window and sending an uplink with the
predefined uplink template “Position Report Request”.

AIRCOM Server Functions from the Airport Menu

Send ground message: open the New Ground window to prepare a ground-to-ground message for
a list of destinations related to the selected airport. The list is preset to the users and type B
addresses configured in the Airport Distribution window for the selected airport, if defined. In any
case, the user can add or remove ground destinations for message.

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To understand how operations are passed from one client to another –and to understand what’s missing in
the event of an error– it’s useful to know the general steps taken by the AS to process an operation initiated
from the FE client. For any of those operations, the same general steps are taken:
1. Check for a running client: the FE client looks for the AS client and determines it is already open.
If so, the wanted operation is executed right away on the account of the AS user already logged-in.
2. Open and login: if the AS client is not already started, the FE Interface will start it and will attempt
an automatic login on the default database configured using Client Configuration. The automatic
login is possible when the user logged in the FE Interface is associated with one AIRCOM Server
user, and only one. AS can then associate the FE user with the corresponding AS user and proceed
with an automatic login. If no AS user is configured with the FE user, or if more than one is
configured, the automatic login does not take place and the user must login in AS manually.
3. Check privileges: once the AS client is started and a user is logged in, the privileges of the logged
users are checked to make sure the operation is authorized. If it’s not the case, the operation is
refused and an appropriate message is displayed.
4. Convert airplane or airport code: Every operation called from FE Interface has the selected
airplane or airport code associated to in for AS to know what the operation applies to. The way the
FE Interface expresses each code is often different from AS and so a translation must take place
before the operation takes place.
In the case of airplanes, the FE Interface tracks the Flight Id (FI) or call sign of individual flights
whereas AS works with aircraft registrations (AN). The provided FI therefore has to be translated to
an AN known by AS and that is done using the tracking data displayed in the Aircraft Tracking
window. If no tracked aircraft uses the wanted FI, the operation is failed and an appropriate
message is displayed. Also note that the flights tracked by the FE Interface are expressed with
ICAO codes whereas those in AS use IATA codes. For the translation to work, both the ICAO and
IATA codes for the supported operators must be defined in the “Operator Codes” list, visible from
the System Parameters window.
In the case of airports, the FE Interface can use the IATA or ICAO code when calling AS to execute
a ground message operation. To make sure the matching airport distribution is found when calling
“Send ground message”, always have both the IATA and ICAO codes configured for all airports.
5. Execute the command: After all the checks have been performed, AIRCOM Server executes the
wanted operation. If no user interaction is required from the AS client, the command is confirmed
right away within the FE Interface (like requesting a position from the aircraft). Otherwise, the AS
client stays on top with the appropriate window opened.
6. Follow-up: If an uplink or ground message has been sent, it’s useful to check later if the message
has been properly delivered. This is available by looking at the status of the generated messages in
the “Outbox” folder of the user’s Mailbox.
5 Logs & Reports Viewing

5.1 Traffic Log Viewer Window

The Traffic Log Viewer window is available through the Main window Logs dropdown button, Traffic Log
option, and via the Operations menu. It allows any user with the right "View logs" to view the incoming
and outgoing messages that AIRCOM Server receives and sends. This window may also be used to identify

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downlink, uplink, or ground message types that have not been configured correctly or not defined at all to
allow the system administrators to fine-tune the system configuration.

Figure 5-1: Traffic Log Viewer Window

In online viewing mode, the log entries are retrieved only from the online database while they may be
retrieved from both the online and/or archive databases when in historical viewing (if archiving is active).
However, the source of the data is totally transparent to regular operations, except if archiving is active, the
archive data source is needed due to the data time span requested, but it is unavailable for some reason; then
it may incur a delay trying to connect to the archive and/or a dialog advising that archived data is
unavailable.

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5.1.1 Function Description

The following functions are available in the Traffic Log Viewer.

Function Description
Refresh (F5) Allows manually refreshing the displayed message list using the same filter criteria as the last time the
filter was applied using either the filter dialog Apply button or using the filter dropdown. The only
element changing during a refresh is the time span in online filtering; allowing getting any new log
entries that could have been created. Upon Refresh, the sort order is set to Date descending, i.e. always
the most recent messages fitting the filter criteria, unless the “Lock Sel” option is used, in which case the
sort order is preserved. There is no automatic refresh.
Lock Sel. Toggle button determining whether the selection is locked to the current message or not:
 When pushed out (default), no lock on the selected message is made and so, any refresh will
reposition the selection at the top of the grid (first row) on the most recent log entry (according to
the current filter), with the default sort order.
 When pushed in, the selected message highlight in the grid is red and the current message stays
selected on each refresh and keeps the current sort order, even when new messages are logged. This
prevents losing the cursor position at every refresh, when reading logs. This may however prevent
from noticing that newer logs arrived in the meantime.
Filter Allows filtering traffic log messages using various search criteria. This is a dropdown button. The first
item "Filter…" opens the filter window with the currently applied filter selected. The other items list all
available filters and selecting one of them applies it without having to open the filter window. The
default filter is identified by a star next to its name; any modified filter is also identified with the
keyword “(modified)”.

For the details on the use of the Filter window, refer to section 6.1.
Report Launches the report viewer with the traffic log report containing the data returned by the currently
applied traffic log filter.
Message: Brings up the New Uplink Message or New Ground Message window to send a message to any aircraft
New Uplink configured in the system’s fleet configuration (uplink) or to any configured user or non-configured Type
New Ground B address (ground).
Available to users with the applicable right, "Send uplink messages" or "Send ground messages".
Reply Brings up the New Uplink Message window to send a message as a reply to the aircraft that sent the
currently selected message provided that it is a downlink message.
Available to users with the right "Send uplink messages".
Forward Brings up the Forward window to forward the selected messages to any configured user or non-
configured Type B address as a new ground message.
Available to users with the right "Send ground messages".
Reprocess Brings up the Reprocess window to re-inject the selected incoming messages back into the system for
reprocessing as if they were incoming messages received again from the same originator. If a message
was not processed as wanted the first time it was received (because a user, template or something was not
defined properly) you can arrange the configuration and reprocess the same message once again. It will
be reprocessed according to the new configuration and distributed accordingly.
Available to users with the right "Reprocess messages from traffic log".

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Function Description
Template: Brings up the Downlink, Uplink or Ground Templates window, as selected, which presents the
Downlink information as follows:
Uplink
 If no message is selected in Traffic Log or if the message has ‘(none)’ in the Message Type column,
Ground
then the Downlink/Uplink/Ground Templates window shows up with a new template being defined if
the user is a Downlink/Uplink/Ground Templates administrator (with the message guide set to the
selected traffic log message) or shows up with no specific template selected for viewing if the user is
of operator profile (with log access).
 If a specific message is selected with a template already defined and that this template exists in the
system, then the Downlink/Uplink/Ground Templates window shows up with this template selected.
o If the Downlink/Uplink/Ground Templates window was not already opened or if it was but in
View mode (no ongoing editing), then the template of the message selected in the Traffic Log
window will be selected for viewing.
o If the Downlink/Uplink/Ground Templates window was already opened and in Edit mode, then
the message guide of the template being edited will be replaced by the message of the Traffic
Log if the user went to the Traffic Log window via the Template's browse button or it will
prompt the user to replace any existing message guide in any other case.
 If the Message Type one of the “(default …)” predefined templates, then the Templates window
shows up with a dialog asking the user whether to select the predefined template or create a new
template. This is done because if the default template is used, many non-configured templates will
default to this, but when it is time to use the feature to easily define new templates, one does not
necessarily want the default template to be systematically selected.
Available to users with the related rights "Manage downlink / uplink / ground templates".
Close (Ctrl-L) Closes the Traffic Log window.
Hex View When checked, this option displays the logged message in its hexadecimal representation (see Figure
5-2: Traffic Log Viewer – Hex View). This is especially useful to diagnose some problems and to
identify non-printable characters that may be present in a message.
Encrypted When checked, this option displays the encrypted version of the logged message. The check box is
available only with one of the possible encryption license options, and when available, it is enabled only
when an encrypted version of the logged message exists.
Outgoing messages are always logged as-is. That is if they were sent out in an encrypted version, they
will be seen as encrypted without having to select the Encrypted check box.
It is only incoming messages to be encrypted (uplinks) or to be decrypted (downlinks) that are logged
with both their encrypted and decrypted versions. In these cases, the user views by default the decrypted
version of the message and can alternately view its encrypted equivalent by selecting this check box.
The Encrypted and Hex view check boxes can be combined.
Splitter Explore the horizontal splitter available between the top grid and the bottom log entry details.
Table 5-1: Traffic Log Viewer Functions

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Figure 5-2: Traffic Log Viewer – Hex View

The user cannot modify, add or delete any messages from this log. The AIRCOM Server will automatically
clean it at the purge interval specified in the System Parameters window.

5.1.2 Data Description

The following information is available in the Traffic Log messages list.

Data Description
Date The time in UTC when the message transited in or out of the system.
Transac(tion) The transaction number is given to each Traffic Log message and can be used to trace back an
event to the actual message that caused it.
Status One of the following message status at the time of the log entry:
Normal: Downlink, uplink or ground message has been processed normally.
Reprocessed Normal: Message has been reprocessed by a user.
Up Sent: An uplink message has been sent.
Up Retransmitted: An uplink that has been sent but not delivered is retransmitted again.
Gnd Sent: A ground message has been sent (distributed).
Gnd Direct Addr: A ground message has been sent by direct addressing.
The below 3 statuses apply with an extra level of logging for Type B messages as an addition
(not a duplication) to the normal logging done for distributed messages and provides
information on the links used to send Type B messages and their retries, if any. This low-level
logging is characterized in the Traffic Log by small black arrows.
Routed: A Type B message has been routed on its primary link.
Re-routed: A Type B message has been re-routed on a backup link after the primary
one has been determined unavailable.
Recycled: A Type B message has been attempted on all available links without
success and has been recycled (stored in a “trash” queue) for a later retry.
DTG Outdated: The date/time group value in the Type B header of the message is passed
by more than the tolerance configured in the “System Parameters” window.
DTG Invalid: The date/time group value in the message cannot be decoded.
Duplicated: The same downlink has been received twice (or more) from the same aircraft
and the duplicated message has been received via the same service provider (DSP) as the
original message. The comparison looks at the SMI, FI, and sequence number, in
addition to the DSP.
Duplicated DSP: The same downlink has been received twice (or more) from the same
aircraft, but the duplicated message has been received via a different service provider
(DSP) than the original message. The comparison looks at the SMI, FI, and sequence
number, in addition to the DSP.
Warning: A message has been received and processed in part but not all expected
operations could be performed with it. Look at the bottom of the window to see the
events explaining the cause for the warning.
Trashed: The message received could not be processed or distributed as expected – in
most cases, there will be an event logged at the same time to explain why it was trashed
(look at the bottom of the window).
Processing: A message is under processing. This state is temporary and should change to

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Data Description
another state quite quickly. It should not be seen very often.
Failed: A message failed to be processed; either because it caused the AS Message
Processor to restart after an unexpected condition, or because the database became
unavailable during a message processing, the corresponding entry in the traffic log gets
failed status.
Abandoned: Message abandoned after reaching the maximum number of retries (3, by
default) meaning that it will not be processed again. Contact aircom.support@sita,aero.
For example, with the system configured to perform 3 retries, if a corrupted message
makes the AS Message Processor restart each time it is processed (or reprocessed), we
would end up having 3 log entries with a failed status and a 4th entry with the abandoned
status.
Looped Out: Message sent to a user of type loopback (see document [S5] for a
description of the loopback user type).
Looped In: Message received from user of type loopback.
Direction Indicates the direction relative to AIRCOM Server and the identified type of a message.
Direction:
 Incoming (In): Received from a user or application into AS;
 Reprocessed (Re): Re-injected as if received again like an incoming message;
 Outgoing (Out): Sent to a user or application by AS;
Type:
 Downlink (Down): Downlink message that came from an aircraft;
 Uplink (Up): Message that came from a user, application or AS (computer-generated)
and that is intended to be delivered to an aircraft.
 Ground (Gnd): Message that came from a user, application or AS (computer-generated)
and that is intended to be delivered to ground users or applications.
Message type Applies to any message direction and contains, when available, the matching message template
name. If this field is set to ‘(none)’, then there were either no corresponding message template
defined for this message or at least there were none when the message was logged.

In addition to the template name, extra information may be displayed such as the model name
used for a reformatted message, or specific message indications such as a “MAS-L (link ack)” or
“MAS-F (failed)”.
Aircraft The aircraft registration number for the aircraft that originated or is the intended recipient of the
currently selected message.
(Aircraft) Type The type of aircraft – if an aircraft has been logged. ‘(none)’ indicates that the aircraft has no
type defined (see Fleet Configuration in document [S5]) while empty means no aircraft is logged
for this traffic log entry.
Flight The flight number for the aircraft that originated or is the intended recipient of the currently
selected message.
Dep(arture airport) The code of airport from which the aircraft that sent or received a message left from (ICAO or
IATA as per global user preferences).
When filtering on a departure airport, one must specify one of the two departure airport criteria
explicitly, IATA or ICAO. The filtering will be done on that criterion consistently no matter the
display preference used.

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Data Description
Arr(ival airport) The code of airport to which the aircraft that sent or received a message is going to (ICAO or
IATA as per global user preferences).
When filtering on an arrival airport, one must specify one of the two arrival airport criteria
explicitly, IATA or ICAO. The filtering will be done on that criterion consistently no matter the
display preference used.
SMI The Standard Message Identifier extracted from the message header for AEEC 620 message
formats.
Medium When available, the medium used to deliver the message (RGS, GES). Additionally, the
associated city and country are added in standalone fields at the bottom left side of the window
for easier identification.
Application The internal component that received or sent the message (e.g. RELAY, NOTESCNX).
Source/destination Either a source (incoming messages) or destination (outgoing messages) address specific to the
Application that processed the message.
Machine The machine name of the computer where the process or program that wrote the log entry was
running. This is especially useful when running in cluster configuration to know from which
cluster node the log came from.
Length The length of the message from the first to last character, including the type B and 620 headers,
but excluding the Type B prefix (0D-0A-01) and suffix (0D-0A-03).
Message The complete text of the actual message to help the user identify invalid or incomplete messages.
Orig. DTG The date/time group value in the Type B header of messages; the message timestamp.
Attachments File attachments can be included with outgoing messages sent to e-mail users when pilot briefs
are generated from FlightPlanner in pdf format. The presence of attachments with the message is
indicated with a paperclip icon and their name when placing the mouse on top of the icon.
Attachments cannot be viewed from the Traffic Log, nor forwarded to another user once the
distribution has occurred. The attachment icon will also be lost once the messages are moved
into archive – this is by design to save space in the Archive database.
Related event(s) In the case where the traffic logged has a status different than normal, there are good chances that
events explaining the traffic log status exist. These related events are displayed at the bottom of
the window with proper color coding (trace, information, warning, alarm, and fatal). The single
and double arrows allow navigating through events when there is more than one.
Table 5-2: Traffic Log Viewer Data

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5.2 Event Log Viewer Window

The Event Log Viewer window is available through the Main window Logs dropdown button, Event
Log option, and via the Operations menu. This window allows any user with the log viewing right to view
the event messages contained in the AIRCOM Server Event Log. The latter contains all system and user
events happening throughout the AIRCOM Server application components. Refer to document [S3] for a
complete list of Server events and their descriptions.

Figure 5-3: Event Log Viewer Window

In online viewing mode, the log entries are retrieved only from the online database while they may be
retrieved from both the online and/or archive databases when in historical viewing (if archiving is active).
However, the source of the data is totally transparent to regular operations, except if archiving is active, the
archive data source is needed due to the data time span requested, but it is unavailable for some reason; then
it may incur a delay trying to connect to the archive and/or a dialog advising that archived data is
unavailable.

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5.2.1 Function Description

The following functions are available in the Event Log Viewer.

Function Description
Refresh (F5) Allows manually refreshing the displayed event list using the same filter criteria as the last time the filter
was applied using either the filter dialog Apply button or using the filter dropdown. The only element
changing during a refresh is the time span in online filtering; allowing getting any new events that could
have been created. Upon Refresh, the sort order is set to Date descending, i.e. always the most recent
messages fitting the filter criteria, unless the “Lock Sel” option is used, in which case the sort order is
preserved. There is no automatic refresh.
Lock Sel. Toggle button determining whether the selection is locked to the current event or not:
 When pushed out (default), no lock on the selected event is made and so, any refresh will reposition
the selection at the top of the grid (first row) on the most recent log entry (according to the current
filter), with the default sort order.
 When pushed in, the selected event highlight in the grid is red and the current event stays selected on
each refresh and keeps the current sort order, even when new events are logged. This prevents losing
the cursor position at every refresh, when reading logs. This may however prevent from noticing that
newer logs arrived in the meantime.
Filter Allows filtering event log messages using various search criteria. This is a dropdown button. The first
item "Filter…" opens the filter window with the currently applied filter selected. The other items list all
available filters and selecting one of them applies it without having to open the filter window. The
default filter is identified by a star next to its name; any modified filter is also identified with the
keyword “(modified)”.

For the details on the use of the Filter window, refer to section 6.1.
Report Launches the report viewer with the event log report containing the data returned by the currently applied
event log filter.
This function is available to users having the right "View Reports".
Hex View When checked, this option displays the associated traffic log message (if any) in its hexadecimal
representation (see Figure 5-2: Traffic Log Viewer – Hex View). This is especially useful to diagnose
some problems and to identify non-printable characters that may be present in a message.
Close (Ctrl-L) Closes the Event Log window.
Splitter Explore the horizontal splitter available between the top grid and the bottom log entry details.
Table 5-3: Event Log Viewer Functions

The user cannot modify, add or delete any events from this log. The AIRCOM Server will automatically
clean it up at the purge interval specified in the System Parameters window.

5.2.2 Data Description

The following information is available in the Event Log Viewer.

Data Description

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Data Description
Sv (Severity) The severity of the current event. The five severity levels are as follows:
[blank] Trace
Information
Warning
Alarm
Fatal
T The icon indicates that a transaction/traffic log message is associated to the current event.
Date The time in UTC when the event occurred in the system.
Source The source application component that has raised the event (e.g. Client).
Class The event class helps classify events into significant topics and allows filtering on those topics.
The possible event classes are:
Traffic Event related to the traffic processing such as invalid or outdated messages,
template errors, out-of-sequence OOOI, distribution events, etc. Most of the time
associated with a Traffic Log entry.
Comms Event regarding communications to other systems (connection/disconnection ...).
System Server starts and stops events and application error or unexpected conditions.
Config Additions, modifications, or deletions of system configuration.
Security Anything with an impact on the security of the system, such as login/logout, failed
login attempts, account policies, disabled accounts, passwords, and user rights
modifications.
Tracking Event related to flight and aircraft tracking such as Sequencer activities related
events or events that affect or relate to tracking data.
Machine The machine name of the computer where the process or program that wrote the log entry was
running. This is especially useful when running in cluster configuration to know from which
cluster node the log came from.
Event (Code) The event code number associated to the event. This code will be required if you call SITA
helpdesk for support with a problem discovered in this log. This code may be an error code or an
information event code.
OS Code The System error code number associated to the event (if any). This code will be required if you
call SITA helpdesk for support with a problem discovered in this log.
Event Message The complete text of the actual event message. To see multiple line event messages, enlarge the
grid row height or go to the Message text box at the bottom of the window. In addition, the
message text box displays a colored background in accordance with the event severity (e.g.
yellow background = WARNING).
Note that scrolling, when enabled, will reveal more details about the event. Using the splitter
may also allow viewing more of the event message without scrolling.
Related Message In the case where the logged event was generated by a message traceable to the traffic log, the
(Traffic Log Message) corresponding message stored in the traffic log is displayed here.
Transaction The transaction number, when available, that is associated to the traffic log message linked to the
current event. A transaction number is assigned to each traffic log message and can be used to
trace back the event to the actual transaction that caused it (if applicable) – a transaction may
group multiple traffic log messages.

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Table 5-4: Event Log Viewer Data

5.2.3 Event Log Operations Audit

All successfully saved New and Modify operations and all Delete operations on core data elements of the
system configuration are systematically logged as events in a uniform pattern. This provides a complete
trace or audit of any configuration changes in the system. Configuration events are logged as of class
"Config".

5.3 Reports & Report Viewer Windows

5.3.1 Reports Window

The Reports window is available through the Main window ‘Logs’ dropdown button, or its equivalent via
the Operations menu. It is available if the user has the right "View Reports". The Reports window provides
browsing capability to find reports (Crystal Reports format with ‘.rpt’ extension). Favorite locations can be
stored for each user as well as a user default location. The view operation allows viewing reports created in
order to present data from the AIRCOM Server databases.

Figure 5-4: Reports Window – Local Access

However, if the Client is accessed remotely (i.e. via browser) the path is fixed, no browsing can be
performed and no favorites can be saved. For security reasons, the report path of the remote Client
installation will have been set to a specific path where remote access is allowed, and only there will you be
able to find reports to view, if any.

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Figure 5-5: Reports Window – Remote Access

The following functions are available from the toolbar or keyboard.

Function Description
View Enabled only when a report is selected. Tries to view the selected report. If the report is valid, the
Report Viewer window opens, displaying the report. Otherwise, a dialog advises that the report is
invalid. For a report to be valid, it must have been designed for the AIRCOM Server database.

Special behavior for the “Event Log.rpt” and “Traffic Log.rpt” reports: When these are viewed,
the corresponding filter dialog shows up, allowing to specify the time period and some filter criteria
that will be applied to produce the report. Also, once OK is clicked on the filter dialog, the data is
queried with the same efficiency as if the filter were applied with the corresponding log viewer, and if
for any reason getting the data is very long, it can be cancelled and the partial results that were already
obtained will be produced into the report.
Default Saves the current path as the default reports path for the currently logged user. There are three possible
default paths that can be loaded when opening the window, with the following precedence: (1) the user
default, (2) the application default, and (3) the application installation path. The user default is set
using the Default button and an administrator using the Client Configuration tool can set the
application default.
Favorites Dropdown options. The default action when clicking the button is to add the current path to the
favorites list by popping up a favorite name selection dialog. The other dropdown options are to
remove a favorite or to select a favorite. Selecting a favorite automatically selects the corresponding
path. The maximum number of favorites that can be stored is 15 and favorites are user specific.
Close Closes the Reports window.
F5 Function Key Refreshes the current path display and the list of reports for the current path.

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Table 5-5: Reports Window Functions

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5.3.2 Report Viewer Window

The Report Viewer window provides report viewing, exporting and printing capability. The printing is the
Crystal Reports viewer built-in print function (does not use the Print window).

Figure 5-6: Report Viewer Window – Traffic Log Report

The following functions are available from the toolbar.

Function Description
Print’ button Brings up the print dialog, allowing printing the report. Please pay attention to the number
of pages of the report prior to print it; especially for log reports, the number of pages may be
very high.
Export’ button Brings up the Export dialog (see below) allowing the selection of the export format, such as
PDF, Excel, HTML, and comma delimited, and many more. Once the format is acknowledged,
follow the steps specific to the selected format and choose the filename and location.

However, when accessing the Client remotely (i.e. via browser), you will not be prompted for
the format specific parameters (the default ones will be applied) and the report name and
location are fixed. The location is then the \Data\Reports folder of the server machine running
the Client application and the filename is the report name followed by the timestamp of the
export operation (e.g. Traffic Log_041202_034226.rtf, i.e. [name]_[ ddmmyy_hhnnss]).
Group Tree’ button When a report has been defined with more than one group, each group would be listed in the
group tree displayed or hidden by this button.

Zoom Factor’ field Selects the report display zoom percentage.

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Function Description
Page Navigation’ bar Allows easy page navigation through the report.

Stop’ button Enabled only during a report load operation. It will be enabled longer when viewing longer
reports. When clicked, it stops report loading to where it was.

Search Expert’ button Wizard used to perform a search with query criteria on the data available in the report. The
available data depends on the report design and may vary from one report to another. The
result is the first matching item being highlighted with a frame in the existing report results
(see Figure 3-34).
Search’ button Allows searching text values in the report content. If data is found matching the text search, it
gets highlighted with a frame around the data element.

Popup Menus Explore popup menus over the report elements to discover, for example copy capabilities.
Close Use the built-in window close function in the title bar.

Table 5-6: Report Viewer Window Functions

Viewing a report is driven by different rules depending if the user is logged into a production database or an
offline database. To decide against which type of environment the Client is running, the software
determines if the database connection user (at the database server level, not the Client logged-in user) used
to connect has read-only or write privileges. Write privileges indicate a production environment while read-
only privileges indicate an offline or backup database environment. The Database Administrator sets these
privileges. Refer to documents [S2] and [S5] for more details.

To protect against AIRCOM Server Message Processor locking due to possible huge queries originating
from report viewing accessing data where the server needs to write frequently (e.g. the Traffic Log), any
report for which the result size, in terms of number of entries returned, exceeds the “Logs and Mailbox
Maximum Entries” defined in the System Parameters window (refer to document [S5] for more details) will
be topped at that configured number of entries. This applies to reports viewed via the report viewer. For
reports viewed via the log windows, the filter has already been applied to limit the number of entries and the
report returns what is displayed in the window, with the same filter.

For an offline environment, no constraints exist. Hence, any report can be run and results will be returned
even if the result size is huge.

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6 Miscellaneous

6.1 Logs Filter Windows

This filter window is a standard dialog used in Traffic Log and Event Log viewers to limit the amount of
data listed, based on relevant criteria for the window. The Mailbox window now includes a different filter
more integrated into the window – refer to section 3.1.2 for the mailbox filter.

This filter window displays all saved filters and all available criteria to allow data filtering for the
corresponding parent window it applies to.

Figure 6-1: Event Log Filter Window

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Figure 6-2: Traffic Log Filter Window

Multiple filters can be managed using the select filter dropdown list. This list shows all existing filters that
can be selected and managed. The rest of the display presents the currently selected filter.

The default filter is identified by a star at the end of its name. Also, as soon as a filter is changed relatively
to its last saved state, the keyword “(modified)” is added at the end of the name; and it gets removed when
saved. These keywords are also visible from the context window filter dropdown menu and status bar
showing the currently applied filter such that the user knows which filter is default, and which is modified,
and knows in what state is the currently applied filter.

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Each filter defines a viewing mode, the use of the '%' character and the individual data criteria to filter on.

Data Description
Online Viewing This option filters log entries and keeps only those for the period specified. For example, if the
online period is set to 15 minutes and the filter is applied at 10:00, then results from 9:45 to 10:00
are returned. Then the user refreshes at 10:20, results will include data from 9:05 to 10:20. Then
the user changes slightly the filter (but keeps the period to 15 minutes) and reapplies it at 10:30, the
results are from 10:15 to 10:30.

In online mode, an auto-refresh occurs at regular intervals configured as the “automatic refresh”
user preference (only for the Mailbox) and messages are retrieved only from the online data
source, no matter if archiving is active or not.

However, if archiving is active and the time span of the filter exceeds the “archive after” period
defined as a system parameter, a warning shows up when applying the filter advising that the time
span of the data returned will not exceed the archive period.
Cumulate data since When this is checked, in online viewing mode, it means that data is kept back up to the time the
applied filter was applied (Apply button as opposed to refresh) minus the online period. For example, if the
online period is set to 15 minutes and the filter is applied at 10:00, then results from 9:45 to 10:00
are returned. Then the user refreshes at 10:20, results will include data from 9:45 to 10:20. Then
the user changes slightly the filter (but keeps the period to 15 minutes) and reapplies it at 10:30, the
results are from 10:15 to 10:30.
Historical Viewing This option filters messages that were received between specific dates and times. If this option is
selected, the user must supply ‘From’ and ‘To’ date and time boundaries, limiting the listed
messages to that period only.

In historical mode, messages may be retrieved from both the online and archive data sources (if
archiving is active) transparently, as needed depending on the time span.

Note that when an historical filter is applied, a distinctive icon is added in the status bar to better
emphasize that on refresh, no online live data is obtained (unless the ‘To’ date and time would be in
the future).
Use % As The “Use % as Character” option means that when the % character is used in the value of a text
filter criterion, it is interpreted as the percent character. The matching results must include % as
specified. For example, a value of “100% APU” would search for all result including “100% APU”
somewhere in the text, like “… the aircraft was using 100% APU during the taxi phase…”.

The “Use % as Wildcard” option means that when the % character is used in the value of a text
filter criterion, it is interpreted as a wildcard. For example, a value of “100% APU” would search
for all results including “100” followed by “ APU” further down the text, all of that somewhere in
the text, like “… the aircraft was not using 100% of its APU during the taxi phase…”. This would
not match with “100% APU” with the “Use % as Character”.

Note that all text based criteria are already searched for using beginning and ending implicit
wildcards, such that, for example, searching for the value “air” would return anything containing
“aircraft”, “airplane”, “airline”, and so on.
Table 6-1: Filter – Viewing Mode & Use of the '%' Character

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The following window buttons are available in any Filter window.

Function Description
OK Applies all current filter criteria (only if they have changed) and closes the filter window. In other
words, if the Apply button is enabled, clicking OK applies the filter; otherwise it only closes the
window.
Apply Applies all current filter criteria. Enabled only if criteria have changed. The other way to apply a
filter is to select it from the mailbox window’s filter dropdown menu.
Close Close the filter window without applying the filter, but does not cancel changes since last applied
or saved. You can reopen the filter window and unsaved changes are still available and you can
still save them. This allows performing temporary changes based on your favorite filters without
being forced to save them. However, when the mailbox window is closed, any unsaved changes
are lost.
Clears all filter criteria to blank, and the viewing mode to online 15 minutes for the current filter.
(Ctrl-Spacebar)
Clear current filter
This button is enabled only when the current filter is the one that was last applied. It is used to
(Shift-Ctrl-A)
restore the filter as it was when it was last applied
Restore Applied Filter
Return the current filter, time and other criteria, to the last saved settings.
(Ctrl-Z)
Restore current filter
Same as Restore current filter, but restores all filters.
(Shift-Ctrl-Z)
Restore all filters
Save the changes to the current filter, except for the filter name and default setting which are
(Ctrl-S) handled by the Edit dialog (see below). The button is only enabled when there are changes to
Save current filter save; when the filter name is marked with the keyword “(modified)”.
Same as Save current filter, but saves all filters. The button is enabled as soon as any one of the
(Shift-Ctrl-S)
existing filters is modified.
Save all filters
Add a new filter. Use the Edit filter dialog to enter the filter name and decide if it shall be the
(Ctrl-N)
default filter. Once the dialog is closed using OK, the filter has been created and saved. It can be
Add new filter
renamed or made as default later on using the Edit button, or deleted using the Delete button.
Rename a filter and set it as default filter, which is the filter applied when opening the mailbox
(Ctrl-M) window. Once the dialog is closed using OK, the changes are immediately saved.
Edit name and default
Delete the current filter. This button is disabled for the default filter (the one with a star at the
(Ctrl-Del)
end of its name). To change the default filter, use the Edit dialog with another filter (select filter
Delete current filter
list) to set it as default. Then you may return to the filter ad delete it.
The plus sign button adds a new blank value for that filter parameter, while the minus sign button
removes the value for that row.
Add / remove value
When a row of the filter criteria grid is selected, the Delete key on the keyboard can be used to
remove a value (delete the row) if it were an added value (i.e. with the minus button at the right
end side). However, if the row is the only value for the parameter (i.e. with the plus button at the
right end side), then the Delete key will only clear the content of the row but not remove it.

Filter criteria are searched for with a logical AND operator between each different criteria, but

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Function Description
with logical OR operators between each value of a single criterion.
Table 6-2: Filter Window Functions
A system default built-in set of filter criteria is attributed to any new user (Online – 15 minutes with no
other specific criteria) as part of the user’s preferences. When entering a window with a Filter function, the
default filter for the logged user is applied.

Whenever a filter is applied resulting in a large result (e.g. large number of messages or events), a progress
bar is displayed indicating progression. If this number exceeds a maximum value configured by the system
administrator (the value may differ depending on the viewing mode – online or historical), a dialog tells the
user that the result set is going to be truncated to the configured maximum size.

Applied filtering criteria (even if unsaved) stay active until the filtered window is closed. When closing the
window, any changes to filters that were not saved are lost.

Each criterion corresponds to a piece of data available in the filtered window, even if not always displayed
directly (like the ‘Aircraft type’ that can be filtered on although not visible). When aircraft filtering is
available, both the aircraft registration and the nose number are available to filter although only one is
displayed in the window based on the “aircraft display” user preference.

Regarding the ‘Message Type’ criterion, it has to be set via the following dialog:

Figure 6-3: Message Type Filter Value

The dialog allows selecting a template name of any type available and/or type in a custom text. In other
words, the filter value is anything between a template name and a custom text.

For any criterion, if the ‘Exclude’ column is checked, it indicates to the application to perform a negative
search on the specific criterion (i.e. aircraft registration “123” with exclude would return all messages from
or to aircraft that do not have the sequence “123” in their registration). However, ‘Exclude’ is not allowed
on an empty criterion. Also, the ‘Exclude’ setting is forced to be the same for all values of a single filter
criterion.

The ‘No Value’ column allows filtering on items that explicitly have no value. This is required because a
blank criterion does not filter for entries with no value, it is rather ignored.

The ‘Exclude’ and ‘No Value’ columns do interact, such that if both are checked and you uncheck ‘No
Value’, ‘Exclude’ is automatically unchecked since we cannot exclude an empty criterion. Similarly,

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checking ‘No Value’ for a criterion that had a value defined will clear that value, and conversely, typing a
value for a criterion with the ‘No Value’ column checked will uncheck it automatically.

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6.2 Reference Administration Data

Additional administrative data is available to non-administrator users for viewing only. These are available
through the Main window Downlinks, Uplinks, Grounds and Aircraft dropdown buttons.

They provide the following information:

 The list of downlink message templates and their associated models used for reformatting.
 The downlink templates acknowledgement setup.
 The list of uplink message templates used for manual uplink assistance, automatic
acknowledgement and air-to-air dynamic routing, and for reformatting incoming messages to be sent
out as uplinks to aircraft.
 The list of ground message templates and their associated models used for manual ground to ground
assistance and for reformatting incoming messages to be distributed as ground messages.
 The downlink, uplink and ground distribution rules and permissions.
 Airport distribution lists used for airport dynamic routing.
 The list of configured aircraft (fleet configuration), aircraft types, and ACARS MU.
 Dynamic frequency management configuration (flight routes event handling, FE areas, frequency
sets).
 The aircraft fault monitoring configuration.
 Value lookup tables.
 The Sequencer.

This information is available as a reference for users to know what is available to them and possibly request
additions or modifications (e.g. missing templates or models) to their system administrator.

Window details for these functions are discussed in document [S5]. The same applies to log windows
(Traffic and Event) or report viewer window that may be available to a user having an operator profile with
the logs privilege, but they really are administrative windows and as such described in document [S5].

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