Overview

The Overview is the Desk's Home: the handover desk you sit down at before a duty and come back to after one. It answers one question - what changed since you last looked? - and every panel on it names its source and carries the same short framing as the iOS app: "Reference only - verify officially." on weather, "May be incomplete - verify officially." on NOTAMs, "Personal planning only." on duty figures. The Overview is a reading of your own records and the reports it fetched, never a clearance.

Find your way around

The Overview is one scrolling page of bands, top to bottom:

The header above it all holds the Search airports, pages and actions field (Cmd+K, or Ctrl+K on Windows), the notification bell with its unread count, the theme toggle, help, and the Zulu clock.

How to choose desk stations

The board watches your home base and, by default, seeds itself from your pinned, favourite and most-flown stations. Hand-picking replaces that seeding with your own list.

1. In the Station board header, click the Choose desk stations button (the pencil icon beside the refresh button). The same dialog opens from Choose stations in the masthead when nothing is watched, and from Settings > General > Desk stations.
2. In the Desk stations dialog, your home base sits at the top with a Home chip: it is always watched and cannot be removed.
3. Under Add a station, type into Search airport - e.g. EGLL, London and click Add on the airport you want. A station already listed reads On the list; at four the button reads List full.
4. The meter counts "N of 4 chosen". Seeded stations that your list replaced stay visible below with a Keep or Add button, so you can pull them back one at a time.
5. Click Use automatic to clear your picks and let the desk seed itself again, or close the dialog to keep them.

How to read the station board

1. Read the header first: "4 watched · EGLL home + 3 chosen" says what is on the board and why. The refresh button re-fetches every row; Open Weather jumps to the Weather workbench.
2. Read across a row: Cat is the flight category chip (VFR, MVFR, IFR, LIFR), Wind and Vis come straight from the METAR, Ceil is the ceiling, TAF 6h is the worst category in the next six hours ("VFR steady", or "IFR from 01Z ~" where the tilde marks a TEMPO or PROB change), Age is how old the observation is, and NOTAMs is the active count with the number new to this browser.
3. A row with no report prints "No data available for EGTB · 22:43Z" in place of figures, with the time it was checked. Absence is stated, never shown as a blank, and it is not a clear report.
4. Click a row to open its bed under the table. The bed carries Briefing, History, Compare and NOTAMs buttons for that station, the Raw METAR with its issue time, decoded WIND, VIS, WX, CLOUD, TEMP / DEW and QNH tiles ("Decoded fields supplement the raw report, never replace it."), and a Forecast outlook track over a 30 hour window with a Raw TAF button and a "Worst in window" line.
5. Click Pop out on the bed to send that station to its own window for a second monitor. Click the same row again to close the bed.

Every board footer names the source and fetch time and ends with "Reference only - verify officially."

How to work the NOTAM wall

1. Read the PRIORITY lens in the NOTAM alerts header: one chip per tier with its count - CRIT, HIGH, MED, LOW. Click a chip to hide that tier's rows; click it again to show them. When the lens hides everything, the wall says so and offers Show every priority.
2. Use the WATCHING strip to focus: All shows every watched station, and each station chip shows only that station. A chip carries its own read - the active count, or "could not be loaded".
3. Scroll the wall. Rows are grouped per watched station in watch order, home first, under a sticky header that names the ICAO, its role (HOME or route), the airport name, the worst tiers in words and the active count. Click the chevron to fold a block; a folded block keeps its counts.
4. Read a row: the worded tier chip, the decoded headline in plain language ("Runway - RWY 09L/27R ... CLSD"), a NEW tag for anything not yet read on this browser, then the NOTAM's own id and validity. Click the row to open that NOTAM in the NOTAMs workbench, raw text and all.
5. Click the refresh button to re-fetch, or Open NOTAMs to read the whole watch there.

A station that returned nothing prints "None reported for EGTB - does not confirm none exist. Verify with official NOTAM sources." A station that failed prints "could not be loaded", and the footer states that the list is incomplete. The wall's own footer is "May be incomplete - verify officially." The absence of a NOTAM here is never an all-clear.

How to end a duty

While a duty runs, the Today & next band swaps to the Active duty panel: the remaining-FDP ring, REPORT, MAX FDP, ELAPSED, NEXT SECTOR, PLANNED END and FDP LATEST, a progress bar, and the line "2:47 elapsed - 6:15 remaining - as of 22:47Z". The ledger above becomes the engine strip.

1. In the Active duty panel, click End duty now.
2. Read the confirmation, End duty now? - it sets the duty's end to the current minute and counts rest from there.
3. Confirm. The panel moves into the rest window and shows how much of the minimum rest is served; the Today timeline draws the rest lane.
4. Click Open duty on the panel to go to Duty & FTL for the full console.

When no duty is running, the panel's place is taken by the compact ruler: a 00-24Z track with the amber current-time cursor, and one stamped row - "No duty logged today · nothing recorded ahead · as recorded in the app" - with Add a duty, Import roster and Plan a flight links. Open Today view opens the full timeline. "An empty day here means no duty has been logged - not that you were off."

How to act on action items

1. Read the Action items header: "N ranked" and the stamp of when the queue was built. Click a tier chip to show one band only; Show every band clears the lens.
2. Read each row: a worded tier, a title such as "EGLL TAF: worst IFR from 22:00", a meta line naming the source, and one action button - Brief, Open, Review, Retry, Sync. Click the button, or select the row and press Enter.
3. Click Hide to hide a row on this browser, for a day or until its band changes; the header then offers Undo, and "N hidden · Show" lists what you hid with a Restore on each and Show all. A row that is an error cannot be hidden until it clears.
4. Expand Housekeeping to reach the logbook-health nudge - "N logbook findings to look at" with Review - along with possible duplicates, pending or failed sync, and unread alerts.
5. Use the keys: J and K move, Enter runs the action, H hides, U restores the last hidden row, and B switches between the queue and the station board. The Shortcuts button opens the desk's sheet ("?" works too).

When nothing ranks, the queue prints one stamped row: "No ranked items from the records on this browser at 12:30Z - watching 4 stations. Not a statement that nothing needs attention."

The records band

Preflight lists the next flight folder's checks as rows - Brief ("3 of 6 inputs"), Weather, NOTAMs, Review, Snapshots, Notes, Runways, Alternates - with Open folder and All flights; with no folder it offers Import roster and Plan a flight, and your most-flown routes as one-click briefs. Currency & documents counts "N current", "N expiring" and "N expired" over your rules and credentials, with Open currency and Add credential; its footer is the credentials line, "Personal record - verify against official records." Quick tools holds the calculators you pin (Customize), keyed 1 to 9. Finish setup appears while items like "Choose your duty rules" or "Add your medical & licence" remain; Don't show again dismisses it.

Coming back

Click the brand mark at the top of the sidebar ("Pilot EFB Desk, go to Overview") from any page to return here. The Overview rail row does the same.

On iPhone and iPad

The phone's Home is a single scrolling dashboard with the same cards - the Flight hours card, the active duty ring, the weather and NOTAM cards - and its own logbook health nudge. Desk stations are a web-only preference: the phone keeps its pins in Weather and does not read the desk's chosen list.

Troubleshooting

The masthead says "Watching nothing". No home base, pins or chosen stations are set, so nothing is fetched. Set a home base in Settings or click Choose stations.

A station shows "No data available". The source returned no report for that field at the stated time. Click the row's retry button, and check the field publishes a METAR at all.

"N stations not watched (fetch cap)". The board fetches a capped number of stations; home, route and your chosen stations come first. Trim the chosen list to bring a dropped station back.

The NOTAM wall reads "could not be loaded" for one station. That station's fetch failed and the list is incomplete. Refresh, then open NOTAMs to retry there.

The ledger says "not synced on this device". This browser has not completed a Cloud Sync. Open Settings & sync and run a sync; pending changes are counted beside it.

Since last look shows "first open on this browser". The desk stamps each visit per browser, so a new browser has nothing to compare against until your next look.

Where next

• Duty & FTL - the full Duty console behind the Active duty panel and the ledger.
• Weather - the workbench the station board's Briefing, History and Compare buttons open.
• NOTAMs - the workbench behind the NOTAM wall.
• Keyboard & command deck - Cmd+K and the desk's shortcut sheet.