ASSISTv4.1 released in July 2018. We welcome your feedback, comments and bug reports. Here we document features and known bugs in ASSIST version 4.1
 
One feature to pay attention to is how latitude and longitude are input in ASSIST. There is an option to input degrees, minutes and seconds. You can input decimal degrees by only using the degrees input box. To input degrees and minutes, you can input minutes with fractional decimal places but pay attention to only enter degrees in whole numbers. If you input degrees, minutes and seconds ensure that degrees and minutes are given in whole numbers with no fractional values. It is a feature of ASSIST to convert the geographic positions into decimal degrees.
 
Ice algae reporting is not fully compatible with ASPeCt standards in ASSIST_v4.1. In ASPeCt it is possible to record ice algae densities, brown ice observation, for a single ice type at three levels (top, middle, bottom) in the ice. In ASSIST the observer must choose one of these levels to report the algae density. In the Arctic algae is typically found on the base of ice. We recommend Arctic observers report the level with the highest algae density. For observers interested in recording ASPeCt-style brown ice observations we recommend recording the three digit ASPeCt code in the note0 field. When we have secured funding for an update to ASSIST, we will fix this "feature".
 
There is a serious bug in the implementation of photo saving in ASSIST. Photos saving is completely broken on the windows version. For mac and linux you will find that photos saved to observations do not remain linked to if you quick the assist launcher and restart. There is a bug with temporary links in the database becoming lost on relaunch. Unfortunately we are out of funding and cannot fix this bug at the moment. In the meantime we recommend that you save photographs with a file name (or log) that identifies the observation and view of the photograph. For example name the photographs by ship, date, time and view as in polarstern_20180701_1400_port.jpg. You can upload photographs to the database at icewatch.gina.alaska.edu.  Please follow the upload directions, appendix D of the Ice Watch Manual, in exact order presented. Our apologies for this inconvenience. We would like to fix this unfortunate bug and develop upload of a full ASSIST download zip file, including linked photographs, in the future should funding come our way.

Project Contact: icewatch@gina.alaska.edu