Watch Desk

Watch is the desk that keeps checking when you are not looking. You choose stations and routes, the server evaluates them against rules you set every few minutes, and every change it records lands on a timeline that you acknowledge once for every device you sign in on. The page states its own terms in the subtitle: "Server-recorded changes for your watched stations - NOTAM checks run about every 3 minutes, weather about every 5, and events are kept 30 days. Informational only - not dispatch monitoring." The ledger records only what the checks saw after a station was added; a fresh desk shows an empty ledger for hours, and a quiet timeline is never an all-clear.

Find your way around

Under the header - the mechanism line, then Watch wall, Keys and Guide - a tab strip splits the page into five views. Each tab prints its live figures, so a closed view still says what it holds:

On Changes, read top to bottom:

Every figure on the page is a total the server counts over the whole 30-day ledger, never a count of the rows the page happens to have loaded; a figure not read yet prints a dash, never a zero.

How to set up the desk

Until a station is on the desk, a setup card headed "Watch is not watching anything yet" stands in for the Changes view's summary. It offers two first moves, Watch an airport or FIR and Watch a saved flight, over three steps, and says in one line what the server already checks with no rule at all.

1. Open Watch in the sidebar (or press Cmd+K and type "Watch").
2. On Choose stations to watch, click Add stations. The station editor opens in place: search a station and click Add; a station already there reads On desk. The desk holds up to four. Click Done.
3. On Set what the server records, click Open rules. The status line already says "Critical and high NOTAM watch is on by default - add weather, wind and TAF rules if you want them". Writing a rule is the next section.
4. Pick the aircraft you answer for is optional: click Add a profile (or Manage profiles) and the profile editor opens on this page, keeping the desk's scroll and filters.
5. Once a station is on the desk, the summary strip, the scope chips and the timeline take the card's place.

How to write a rule

Every rule is built from pickers in a fixed vocabulary; the only free text is its name. What the editor prints after "This rule reads" is exactly what the server evaluates - if that sentence is wrong, the rule is wrong.

1. On the Monitoring view, scroll to the rules panel and click New rule (from the setup card, Open rules takes you there).
2. Pick what you want watched: Runway or airport closure, Weather crosses my limit, Forecast around arrival, Changes for this flight, or Custom rule for every family from a blank rule. The choice fills in the editor; editing a saved rule skips this step.
3. On 1 WHERE, set the Scope: STATIONS (up to ten, or none for every watched station) or ROUTE (the section below).
4. On 2 CONDITION, pick a Condition family: NOTAM, Weather, Forecast, Hazard advisory, TAF bust, Trend, Operation or Wind. The fields under it change with the family: a Subject group, Outcome and Schedule gate for a NOTAM; a Metric, Direction (BELOW or ABOVE), Your number and Unit for weather; Look ahead hours and Worst category at or below for a forecast window; a Source for a hazard advisory.
5. On 3 DELIVERY + REVIEW, give it a Rule name - it is how fired events cite the rule - and choose its channels (the next section). Advanced holds the NOTAM Tier floor, Active windows (UTC) if the rule should only count at certain hours (up to four, and a window may wrap midnight) and the Event severity: INFO, HIGH or CRITICAL.
6. Read the "This rule reads" line in the editor's footer - it stays in view on every step, beside Save rule - then click Preview last 7 days here. The preview replays the draft through the same evaluator over this browser's METAR archive and NOTAM history and prints each match with its stamp, the size of the bed it searched, rows it could not decode, and matches the rule's UTC windows would have held. Forecast, TAF bust, trend and hazard rules are declined by name because there is no on-device bed for them, and an empty bed says there was nothing to check, never that the rule would not fire.
7. Click Save rule. Save refuses with the reason when something is missing - a threshold you have not typed ("Enter your own threshold number - the app never suggests one"), a route not picked, or a combination outside the vocabulary.

Weather and wind thresholds are always your own numbers: the desk seeds none. Wind rules read the crosswind, gust or tailwind limit from the active aircraft profile and compare only the runway ends you select.

The rules panel also holds three shortcuts around the editor:

Each saved rule shows its severity word, its restatement, an on/off switch, Edit and a two-step Delete. The panel header says the rest: rules add rows and never quiet the baseline critical and high watch.

How to route a rule's deliveries

A new rule is timeline-only until you route it. Every recorded event reaches Notifications in the app regardless; the channels add to that.

1. In the rule editor, open 3 DELIVERY + REVIEW and find Also deliver to.
2. Tick any of In-app alerts, Phone push, Browser push, Email (batched, up to 15 min) and Daily digest:

3. Click Save rule. The rule's row in the rules panel now ends "Also sent to:" with the channels you chose; with none it reads "Watch Desk timeline only".

Browser delivery has two settings of its own in Settings > Notifications under This browser: the tier, CRITICAL + HIGH or CRITICAL ONLY, and Quiet hours on this browser. Rule emails have Hold rule emails overnight. A browser push carries its own event, so opening it lands on that row here, with Acknowledge beside Open. More than three rule alerts in one server run become one summary per channel.

How to read and acknowledge events

A row is the station and the time the change occurred, the severity word on its chip (with a live dot while unacked), the title, then the kind of change, the source it was read from and how long ago the server recorded it. Acknowledging means "I have seen this": it is your own bookkeeping, synced across your devices, and it never hides the row or changes anything at the source.

1. Narrow the ledger with When (Since my review - it reads "Since this browser last opened Overview" until you set a review point - Last 24 h or All 30 days, each with its count), Kind (All, NOTAMs, Weather), Severity (All, Critical, High, Info), Unacked only, and Order: Newest first or Priority first (critical, then high, then info). A filter narrows what is shown, never what exists - the header reads "50 shown of N matching", and the rows a window hides are counted under the list with Show all 30 days to widen it.
2. Press J and K (or the arrow keys) to move the selection and Enter to open the selected row: the decoded facts sit above the raw excerpt they were read from, then the actions. A NOTAM row opens in the NOTAM board's detail drawer when you follow it. Follow up in the open row (In 1 h, In 4 h, In 12 h or Tomorrow 06:00Z, with an optional note) sets a personal reminder to look again; it is never an acknowledgement, and a due one appears in the band at the top of Changes.
3. Press A to acknowledge the selected row, or click Ack on the row or Acknowledge in its body. Ack with a note keeps a line that prints on the handover; Undo ack in the body withdraws it.
4. Click Ack shown (N) in the timeline header to acknowledge every unacknowledged row the current filters show; a dialog names the count and the scope and reminds you that Undo ack and Reset acks remain. Ack all N on the No longer watched group confirms the same way; a single row's Ack stays one press. Reset acks (N) beside it withdraws the shown acknowledgements, notes included, after a confirm. Mark reviewed to here on the summary strip is not an ack: it moves your review point to the newest recorded row, synced to every device, and nothing else.
5. Click Load older at the foot to page the same query further into the 30 days, and a station chip above the list to scope it to one station. Rows a background read finds wait in an "N new changes" band above the list - Show N new adds them - so nothing moves under your eye.

A row's chips are read from the source, never guessed: ACTIVE NOW or NOT ACTIVE from the NOTAM's D) schedule, SCHEDULE NOT DECODED - READ RAW when it could not be read (treat the NOTAM as in force), CANCELLED on a withdrawn NOTAM (it keeps its record and loses its schedule chip), ACTIVE AT YOUR ETA on a route rule, and ACKED, TEAM ACKED, NOTE and MUTED UNTIL for what has happened since. A second line under the title prints the notice's effective period, apart from when it was recorded.

How to mute a station or a rule

A mute holds deliveries until a UTC instant; the timeline keeps recording underneath it.

1. On the Monitoring view, click a station card to select it, and the mute strip appears under the cards for that station. Each enabled rule row carries a compact strip of its own.
2. Pick 1 h, 3 h, 6 h, 12 h or 24 h, or type a UTC time as HH:MM and click Set - it resolves to the next time the clock reads it, up to 7 days out.
3. Click Unmute to lift it early.

The strip says what a mute does: "Holds phone and browser push, the escalation reminder and the in-app feed until then. Events are still recorded on this timeline, and emails keep their own schedule." Rows recorded while muted carry MUTED UNTIL, and the summary strip's Snoozes fact counts the mutes in force ("no active snoozes" when there are none - a statement about mutes, not about whether any channel is set up; the Monitoring status panel says that). From any page, Cmd+K then ! offers Mute 3 h or Unmute for a station or a rule by name.

How to watch a route as one unit

A route unit is a flight folder or a roster duty watched as one thing: its departure, destination, alternates and monitored airports, plus its ETA, so a forecast-window rule can be anchored on the hours around arrival rather than on the clock.

1. In the rule editor, set Scope to ROUTE.
2. Under Route, choose from your open flight folders and the next six imported roster duties, and click Choose on one. A folder with no airports is refused at the source.
3. Finish the rule as usual. A Forecast rule on a route with an ETA reads "the N h around your ETA" in its restatement and is skipped once the whole window is behind the clock; a route with no ETA keeps the rolling window, and the restatement says so.

Saving a day in the flight brief, or adding an alternate there, rewrites the airport set and ETA on every rule scoped to that folder. The Ops Map has the shortest path: with a route plotted, click Watch this route in the route panel's Watch Desk block, confirm the listed rules (runway closed and aerodrome closed at critical, approach aid unserviceable at high, no weather number seeded) with Add the rules, and they are added here as "Ops Map" rules while the map stays open; the block then reads "Watching · 3 rules on this route" with Open Watch Desk. A route already watched says so rather than adding twins.

To read one flight's changes, click Flight in the scope chips on Changes and pick a saved flight or an upcoming roster duty. A panel shows its time window, its airports, which of them your desk stations cover (with a way to add a missing one), the rules already following it and the changes recorded for it, with Open brief for a flight folder; the timeline narrows to that flight's airports until you clear the chip.

How to hand over

The Handover view reads the complete window you choose from the server - events, acknowledgements, notes and team acks, under the same filters the Changes view applies - for whoever sits down next, or for you tomorrow. It does not depend on how far the timeline has been loaded.

1. Click the Handover tab.
2. Pick the window: Since my review, Last 6 h, Last 12 h, Last 24 h or All 30 days. The panel states the scope, then either COMPLETE ("Every matching row in the window was read") or "This report is incomplete" with the reason, and a preview of the rows.
3. Click Print report for the print flow, or Email report to me to send it to your account address.

The report is headed as informational, not a compliance record. Every stamp on the paper carries the day, month and year to the second in Zulu, and a row whose change occurred at a different time from the server's sighting prints an "Occurred" line under the recorded one. Print, email and both exports carry the one dataset the preview shows, and an incomplete read says so in every export's header rather than leaving rows out silently.

Export CSV (N) and Export JSON (N) sit on the same panel and hand that window to the browser to save - the same rows and the same notice in both, with team-ack columns when you are in an organisation.

How to put the desk on a wall

The watch wall is the Ops display's watch variant: your desk stations first, then the board's pinned stations, one card each, refreshing itself on a wall monitor.

1. In the page header, click Watch wall. It opens as a chromeless display with the station chips and + Add along the top and the UTC clock at the right.
2. Read the WATCH band at the head of each card. A breach is printed in the evaluator's own words with the rule's name ("gusts 30 kt vs your 25 kt figure - Gusts"); a quiet card says what was checked instead: "Within your 2 rules on this report", "No weather or wind rule covers this station - nothing checked", or "No decoded report to check your rules against". Unacked critical and high counts from the 30-day ledger sit on the band too.
3. Use the pop-out control to send the wall to a second screen, and the close control to leave it.

The wall's foot states its stance: a highlight means your number was exceeded, never a status verdict, and weather and NOTAMs are reference only and may be incomplete - verify officially. There is no alarm audio.

How to screen airports against your aircraft

Airport checks is the desk's second view: each airport's published facts beside your aircraft's own figures, line by line, never a verdict.

1. Click the Airport checks tab. It carries the airport count and the profile in use.
2. Read the head panel in order: 1 Aircraft, the profile whose numbers stand beside every fact; 2 Today's numbers, an optional override of the landing and takeoff distance figures for this flight only (figures entered for another aircraft or flight are offered back with Reuse for this context or Clear, never applied on their own); 3 Airports, up to eight, seeded from the desk or from a brief's link and added by search. A FIR on your desk is not an airport and gets no board.
3. Read each airport's board: the airport-level lines (rescue category, fuel, approach aids), then one group per runway end, each line the fact and yours side by side. Each line reads within (the fact meets your number), exceeds (your number is larger than the fact allows) or unanswerable, with its reason printed beside it: Add your value, Source unavailable, Not reported or Not applicable. A band names the numbers of yours the board is missing, with Edit profile and Enter today's numbers.
4. Use Show to keep one kind of line with its count, Refresh to re-read NOTAMs and METARs for the board, and Print to send it to the print flow.

Nothing on the board is added up, ranked or recommended. Without a profile the board offers Add an aircraft profile and prints the facts with your half blank. A flight brief can open the board directly with its own airports, and ?view=checks on the page URL lands on it.

The guide and the tour

The Help view - Guide in the header opens it too - holds the desk's own manual, "How the Watch Desk works", as chapters you open one at a time or with Open all; the first opens by itself until you click Got it. Take the tour at its head walks every view of the page in about four minutes, switching views as it goes and built for the desk's current state so no stop points at a band that is not there; Esc skips and Enter advances. The same walk sits first in the top bar's Guided tours menu while you are on Watch, tagged On this desk, and under Settings > Help & onboarding. Its callout is a desk plate: a chapter kicker ("Watch tour · Monitoring"), a stop counter, a "What you can do here" list and the keys for that band.

On iPhone and iPad

Watch is a Desk surface; the iOS app has no Watch tab. What the phone gets is the deliveries: a rule with Phone push ticked reaches the phone's alerts, respecting that device's quiet window, and every recorded event lands in the app's notification feed. Acknowledgements you make on the desk sync to the account, and the desk-station list is the same list the Overview and the phone's Home watch. See Notifications and widgets on iPhone for the phone side.

Troubleshooting

The timeline is empty after I added stations. That is expected for a while. The server records changes it sees after a station is added, so the ledger starts empty and fills as checks run; the quiet-ledger state names what was checked and when. It is not an all-clear.

The timeline says "50 shown of N matching". The rows on screen are the first page of the server's answer for your filters, and N is everything that matches. Click Load older for the next page, or a station chip to narrow the query.

A station sits under No longer watched. It was removed but still holds rows from when it was watched. No checks run for it now; click Re-add to watch it again (withheld while the desk is full), or Ack its rows and clear the chip with its x.

Since review reads a dash, or counts from this browser's last Overview visit. No review point is set on your account yet. Click Mark reviewed to here on the summary strip: it moves the review point to the newest recorded row, syncs it to your other devices, and never acknowledges a row.

Save rule refuses. Read the reason in the editor's footer: a missing name, a threshold you have not typed, a route not chosen, or a combination the vocabulary does not hold. The app never suggests a number for you.

A push arrived but the desk says "That event is not in your ledger". Events are pruned after 30 days, or the event belongs to another account. The timeline below is your current ledger.

Where next

• Overview - the desk list the Watch shares and the last-look stamp it reads.
• NOTAMs - where a NOTAM row opens its full raw text and decode.
• Ops Map - Watch this route from a plotted route.
• Keyboard and command deck - the Watch scope behind Cmd+K and "!".