…& having the need for sign-up sheets rather than the Cadet Portal should help this. 
I don’t see any reason to retain sign up sheets.
For me, the argument that it means that cadets will have to put themselves out to be able to sign up is pretty weak. I know which are my committed cadets versus those whom we never see.
Cadet portal will make my life easier. I will no longer get home and realise that I’ve forgotten to bring the sign up sheet with me which means that I can’t add the names to the SMS event.
I will no longer have to chase Squadrons to send me their list of bids for Wing events.
I won’t have Squadron’s ignoring my instructions or “forgetting” to issue JIs to cadets.
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If I want to sign up for something when i’m not at Sqn i’d get a mate to put my name down. Simple.
I am reading all of this with interest ladies and gents and it is good stuff. A lot of the discussion is about local culture and how the tools available will be used locally.
What I would say is that it will be in your interest to adopt Cadet Portal going forward and all of the new stuff coming in SMS and in Policy - its all good news 
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Told my lot if they dont sign in they miss out because as from tomorrow when they get access everything is going on it. It will make my life so much easier!
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What’s to stop Cadets who don’t attend as regular asking other Cadet’s to sign them up. Or in many cases with the girls, they will sign themselves and their friends up. Either way there is a plus to all this…it’s less paper being used and a notice board free’d up for other notifications or info.
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This has been pressed for deployment of Cadet Portal to 10 Wings today:
- Beds & Cambs
- Norfolk & Suffolk
- London
- Middlesex
- Central & East Yorks
- Cumbria & Lancs
- North East Scotland
- South East Scotland
- Devon & Somerset
- Merseyside
The account generation script is running now and cadet welcome emails are going out 
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Have you changed anything compared to previous tranches, any learning outcomes so far?
Do you mean with the Cadet Portal functionality itself? Or something else to do with the authentication process etc?
more in terms of the roll out and authentication of the new cadet portal accounts compared to previous tranches
The big part is that Azure AD was expecting numbers to be in +44 format rather than straight into 07…etc. It didn’t throw any errors at all but when the cadets came to authenticate, they could only do the email option which didn’t help.
That has now been corrected and mobile/landline numbers are transposed over automatically from SMS to Azure AD. This means that when the cadet authenticates, they will see something like this with all of the options available to them for authentication and account recovery instead of just email:
That was identified during Beta and worked much better for the subsequent Tranche 1 and 2 deployments.
The number of email errors we are seeing are decreasing over time - so my endless nagging about data quality with the OC Wgs and their staff might be having a positive impact.
We are conscious that good internal and external comms are essential and the Command Board have approved the VSDT Comms Manager role (and the role advert is still open Sign in to your account). Having someone helping out on this front will be a big improvement and allow me to focus more strategically.
We have the new videos on vimeo for cadets and parents which were strongly requested during beta so they have helped aide understanding. The Sqn Implementation Case Study has been well recieved as well.
We have updated our Cadet Portal SPOL site based on feedback with a new resources page at Sign in to your account which I think helps people find things easily.
We supply each OC Wg with a customised report on how many cadets per unit are missing email addresses which they can use to work with their unit commanders to sort that aspect out.
The ‘Resend Welcome Email’ feature was a direct improvement that fell out of Beta so you can quickly and easily resend the email.
The account generation script is running hourly at the moment to identify new accounts required and welcome emails are automatically sent - so that is a lot more streamlined and efficient and doesn’t rely on a human which is good.
The servers seem to be coping very well with the increased traffic that circa 25k new users bring. We have made massive improvements to Cadet Portal performance and dropped the average page load time from circa 10 seconds (yes, I know, terrible) to under 0.4 seconds now which is a massive improvement.
So, the short answer is yes, there have been massive improvements - but if I am honest, most of them came about through Beta.
I will be publishing the Beta report that we sent to Command Board once I have made it into a more CFAV friendly format
However, cadets are moaning about the complexity of the username i.e. CIN@rafac.mod.uk but at the moment, there isn’t much we can do about that. Some of them have found the authentication process heavy handed, which it is because Microsoft system and MOD requirement to use, so there isn’t much we can do about that.
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“To provide training which will be useful both in the Services and civil life.”
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For the authentication… From where is the “alternative email” address pulled please?
Will it be the same primary address at which they receive the initial welcome email, or would I need to add a second email address to the records of those without mobile phones?
The obvious alternative would be to add a parent’s phone, but I’m just trying to understand the lay of the land to avoid difficulty down the road.
Best. Post. Ever.
There is a secondary email field available for cadets.
And there is nothing wrong with that from a technical point of view - but that means things go to the parents and they need to be aware of that.
Roger.
I have a couple of cadets without email addresses (I have already given the parents the full rundown, copying the information you sent out verbatim).
I fancy that I might have one or two without mobiles… So in that case they will presumably require either a parent’s mobile number in there or a second email address different to the primary in order to activate?
Is that correct?
Are you based at a Squadron in the 1970’s?
Apparently.
I’ve also got people who use a single “family” email address. They’ve probably got joint facebook profiles as well. 
I have this also.
Literally… what the.
I do apologise if this has been covered. I don’t visit here very often and have had a read back a little…but there’s a long way to go…
Do we have Parent’s email addresses too so that we can send messages to them as well as cadets? Can we send an ‘all cadet’ email?
I currently have:
Cadets
NCOs
Staff
Committee
Each set up as a distribution list.
Can we do that with the portal?
Again, sorry if it’s been covered.
Just got access today, and I must say I absolutely love it! Well done to all the VSDT Team.
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