Just a quick update on how things are going with Cadet Portal:
We had a very successful weekend at Cranwell in late September and we had meetings with RCN (Project Sponsor), Wg Cdr Training, Wg Cdr CCF and others - lots of good work done
The Events module is coming along nicely and the changes to SMS to accomodate this have been completed at a database level. We still have a decent number of things to complete on this and this is the current development sprint focus
We are almost there with the Training dashboard with Music functionality being added in. I have engaged with three different band-CFAVs directly and we have some minor changes to make in light of the updated ACTO 123. I am also engaging with the Corps Sports Officers to talk to them about how CP can be used to support them in the future.
We have created an initial Deployment Communications Plan and I have enlisted the help of a Media Comms CFAV to help with the design and development of a comprehensive strategy to help us with the launch when we get there
We are trialling using Microsoft Teams to communicate with key members of the Cadet Portal Working Group which is really helping us to communicate effectively
We have a new developer starting with us soon now that the necessary paperwork requirements are almost complete - hoping that will help us to speed up development specifically with wiring in the user interface to the database
So, all going well and I think we will be well positioned for the Command Board in three weeks time.
If anyone would like a demo of Cadet Portal, please contact me from your Bader account and I will look to see if I can organise group demos for ACC members as required.
Off of the top of my head, Iām thinking along the lines of being able to post documents (training programme, orders, etc) to the interface, being able to post basic messages to people - essentially, a little like the Facebook groups used by many units (but without the issues with under-13s) or the Jive system as used on Defence Gateway.
Yes, this will be available in the Squadron Downloads section of the tool which will link to SMS. In SMS (in the future), there will be a section that allows you to upload documentation to your Squadrons Cadet Portal. This could include things like training programmes (although I think we will add other training programme functionality in future separately but that will be in a future release), Gift Aid forms, local Squadron Orders (fire, security, standing etc etc).
Yes, in a future release, we want to be able to post announcements and urgent announcements (for things like event cancellations etc), that is all in the roadmap. Wonāt be in MVP (or I should say āprobably wonāt beā but will be in a future version).
Has much thought been put towards integration with a commercial solution such as Jive or Slack? One thing that would be very handy would be the ability to create push notifications, without which a system such as this is rather less useful.
Yes, but that will not be possible due to the associated license costs and MOD restrictions in place. However, we are looking to implement push notifications to cadets email in the future. If we are to implement the latter, we will need to develop a mechanism to turn such notifications off to meet the Data Protection Act (2018) requirements which include the GDPR provisions.
I donāt think we will get to the point of custom Cadet Portal SMS notifications due to the associated costs - having worked for a software company that was doing precisely that, I can state with reasonable authority that SMS notifications are an expensive beast to manage especially for a system with the number of users that we will have.
In the future, Microsoft Teams (think Slack but Microsoft) will be rolled out across the RAFAC (for staff) as a communications tool and we are using Teams to manage this project at the moment (which is also acting as a helpful trial project for wider Teams adoption). However, there are various things that need to be in place before Teams can be rolled out more widely but it is being actively looked at the moment.
I work within the IT Department of my organisation and we are trialling Teams.
We have identified that Teams is a whole new way of working compared with sending things by email. Which is great but this will come with an associated training cost
If teams is rolled out across the RAFAC with no training, I can predict that the take up will be low, because nobody will know how to use it or even why they should.
Training for staff does seem to be a massive issue in this organisation, so Iām not convinced that there will even be any.
I donāt know a single person that uses skype for business with their bader account - most donāt even know they have access to it
Bang on with the take up and training, but then what do you expect when you donāt invest properly in IT and try and do it all on the cheap. But thatās HQAC for you.
We werenāt given training for Bader or Ultilearn or SharePoint like weād get at work for new software etc.
Ultilearn promised all manner of different test styles, but has become a dumping ground and mind numbing test process and SharePoint is just another dumping ground.
To this end it would be pointless introducing anything new as people donāt use what there is already. Then there is the tedium of MOD restrictions on things, which baffle me as to why it applies to us.
Iād use SfB a hell of a lot more if it could do group calls. As it is, that functionality is disabledā¦which seems mental when it could save the organisation Ā£Ā£Ā£Ā£ in travel claims to meetings etc.
It is not ādisabledā - it is simply not available on the license we currently have. The money you suppose we would save would be countered somewhat by the additional license costs and I bet those come from different budgets.
There is a hope that we will be able to get onto a better licence scheme one way or another. One step at a time.
I know itās a licensing thing rather than an organisational disablement, but Iād wager it would still provide a net saving to the organisation overall. Which budget it comes from should be irrelevant in the big picture, if the net effect is a saving to the organisation?
