HarborMaster — Demo Story & Script

⚓The story

Set the scene before you touch the product. This is the narrative the whole demo hangs on.

Harbor & Gulf Towing runs eight tugs out of two ports. Their maintenance world today is a wall of spreadsheets: an operating schedule colored by hand every Friday, engine-hour readings keyed in from paper, and a drydock plan that lives in one person's head. Crews work at sea with no connectivity, so nothing gets recorded until the boat is back alongside — if it gets recorded at all.

The cost shows up three ways: missed services (an oil change found 87 hours overdue), regulatory scramble (USCG drydock deadlines arriving as surprises), and zero visibility (leadership can't answer "which boat eats the most labor?" without a week of spreadsheet archaeology).

HarborMaster is the front line of a Dynamics 365 F&SCM Enterprise Asset Management solution: an offline-first workspace the crew actually uses at sea, feeding the same data backbone the office plans and reports from. The demo's through-line: data captured once on deck becomes projections, plans, and reports — automatically.

Cast of characters

Ray — Vessel Engineer, M/V ApolloDoes the morning rounds. Hates double entry. Hero of Act 1.

The Port EngineerOwns fleet maintenance & the drydock plan. Hero of Act 2.

The Ops DirectorWants answers, not exports. Hero of Act 3.

✓Pre-demo checklist 10 min, before the meeting

Open the app on the machine and network you'll present from — first load caches it for offline use.
Go to Analytics and click Clear canvas so Act 3 starts from a blank slate.
On Drydock Schedule, undo any stray cells from practice runs (click a cell until it returns to H).
Practice the offline toggle once: click the Online pill top-right, make an edit, click it back.
Set browser zoom so the Caterpillar Summary table and drydock grid read from the back of the room (~90–100%).
Keep the user guide URL in your follow-up email template.

Recovery move: if anything ever looks odd mid-demo, a browser refresh is safe — all data is local and your analytics canvas persists.

Act 1.Morning rounds with Ray ≈ 8 min

Theme: capture at the point of work — even with no signal.

Do	Say
Open the app on the Dashboard.	"It's 6 AM on the Apollo. This is everything Ray needs to know before coffee: his assigned work, what's overdue across the fleet, and the safety notice he has to acknowledge before the next docking."
Click Engine Room Daily Maintenance & Inspection (the In-Progress work order).	"His daily routine is a checklist, not a form. Designed for greasy gloves: big targets, low clicks. The full procedure is one tap away as a PDF job aid — no per-step sign-offs slowing him down."
Pass two or three steps. On the steering-gear step, hit Flag and add a short note.	"Something looks marginal — he flags it with a note. That flag can become a tracked deficiency without Ray leaving the checklist."
Click the Online pill (top right) to force offline. Complete two more steps. Point at the queued-changes count.	"Now the part every mariner asks first: the boat just left the breakwater and there is no signal. Nothing changes. Every entry queues locally…"
Click the pill again to go back online; watch the queue drain.	"…and the moment she's back in range, it all replays to Dynamics 365 automatically. No 'sync app', no IT ticket, no lost clipboard."
Navigate to Assets → Apollo. Show the equipment tree and gauges, then log an engine-hours reading in the component log.	"This reading isn't a number in a cell — it's fuel for everything you're about to see. Hour-based PM triggers, due-date projections, drydock planning. Captured once, used everywhere."

Wow beat: the offline toggle. Pause on it. This is the moment spreadsheet-weary maritime audiences lean in.

Act 2.The Port Engineer's week ≈ 8 min

Theme: captured data becomes foresight — services predicted, deadlines planned.

Do	Say
Open Insight Tables → Engineering: Caterpillar Summary.	"Shore side now. Every Caterpillar main engine in the fleet, on one screen: current hours, last service, next due. Notice Andrew K's port engine — that oil change is 87 hours overdue, in red. Today that discovery takes a phone call and three spreadsheets."
Point at the Export Table button.	"And yes — everything exports, because we know the first question is 'can I get that in Excel?'"
Open Engine Usage & PM Projection. Scroll one chart slowly.	"Here's where it gets smart. The solid line is hours the crews actually logged — Ray's reading from this morning is on it. The dashed line is the boat's observed operating tempo projected forward, and where it crosses each dashed threshold is the date that service comes due. The system learns each boat's pace; it doesn't assume one."
Open Drydock Schedule. Point at Andrew K's row: red Dec 5 DD-expiration, the ringed deadline cell, and the `RDD` blocks in November.	"Regulatory drydock deadlines stop being surprises. Andrew K must be on the blocks before December 5th — the board rings the deadline and the yard window is already penciled in ahead of it."
Click an empty cell on Poseidon a few times to cycle H → DD → RDD, leave it as RDD.	"Planning is literally painting. Each click is tentative, shared instantly with the team, and queued to D365 like any other edit. This replaces the Friday-afternoon Excel ritual."
Click the same cell back to `H` (cleanup).	(Tie-off:) "And because the engine projections live next door, you can drop the 25,000-hour services into the same yard window. One haul-out, both jobs."

Wow beat: the projection chart. "When will it be due?" answered from data the deck crew captured without trying.

Act 3.The Ops Director gets answers ≈ 6 min

Theme: ask the question, build the answer — live. Start from the blank canvas you prepared.

Do	Say
Open Analytics (empty canvas).	"Last hat: leadership. Instead of showing you my favorite report, let's build yours. What do you want to know about this fleet?" (Take a real answer if offered; the script below is the fallback.)
Drag a KPI Card onto the canvas.	"Open work orders, right now, fleet-wide. Live number — it just came from the data we entered in Act 1."
Drag a Bar Chart. Set Dataset → Labor & Cost, Measure → Labor hours, Group by → Asset.	"Which boats eat the most labor? Twelve months of hours, by vessel, in three dropdowns."
Drag a Trend Line. Set Filter → Corrective only.	"Is unplanned work trending the wrong way? That's the early-warning chart for an aging fleet."
Drag a Donut. Dataset → Deficiencies, Group by → Priority, Filter → Open only.	"And the open deficiency mix by severity. Four widgets, ninety seconds, zero IT involvement. In production this same model lights up embedded Power BI — same questions, same data backbone."
Drag the donut's grip handle to the top of the canvas. Refresh the page.	"Arrange it how the morning meeting wants it — it's saved. This is the morning meeting now."

Wow beat: taking a live question from the room and answering it with the field wells. Rehearse two or three combinations so you can improvise safely.

⚓The close ≈ 3 min

Bring it back to the through-line: one capture, many payoffs. Ray tapped a checklist and logged a meter reading; that became an overdue-service alert, a projected due date, a drydock plan, and a leadership dashboard — with no one retyping anything.

Then land the platform message: what they just saw is the experience layer. The system of record is Dynamics 365 F&SCM Enterprise Asset Management — asset hierarchy, maintenance plans, work-order costing, procurement, and financials in one place, with Power BI on top. Natural next step: a scoping workshop to map their fleet, routines, and integrations (oil-analysis labs, telematics) onto that backbone.

Likely questions

"Is this Dynamics 365 we're looking at?"

This is a demonstration front-end running on a local data store deliberately shaped 1:1 to D365 EAM entities (assets, functional locations, maintenance plans, work orders, requests). In production this UI talks to F&SCM via OData — the sync queue you watched drain is exactly that integration point.

"How does offline really work?"

It's a progressive web app: fully cached after first load, all edits land in a local store first and replay to D365 when connectivity returns. You watched it live in Act 1 — and the whole demo itself runs offline.

"We already use Power BI."

Perfect — the analytics canvas demonstrates the self-service concept; production reporting is embedded Power BI over the same D365 data, so their existing skills and licenses carry straight over.

"Can it talk to our oil-analysis lab / telematics?"

Yes — that's an integration touchpoint in scoping. Lab results (e.g. Lubo) and engine telematics feed the same component history that drives the projections you saw.