Mission Manager Community
Mission Manager => Feature Requests and Issues => Topic started by: JT La Due-NCRR on July 02, 2013, 07:14:57 AM
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First Off, I want to say that MM is awesome and I can really see a huge time saving advantage with it. Keep up the great work!!!
I do have a few things I would like to see about.
1. Training Records. Would it be possible to get a section for training, similar to the Call-Outs? With our old recording system, we could log training with details similar to how we did the call outs. I thought about just using the Call Outs on MM for training as well, but don't want have to edit all the time records to change the category from Call Outs to Training. It would be nice to establish a training record, then use Check-In and Check-Out. (Would really be great it this worked offline as well)
2. Agency Reports.
a. I would like to be able to edit what fields are printed on this report. For example, we use Active911 for our paging and to identify who is responding/not responding so we won't be using the Messages system on MM. I would like to be able to turn the Message Responses column off on the report.
b. Participation to Minimum Hours. I'm not sure how this column does its math. I am assuming it takes the annual hours requirement and breaks it into days which makes sense but it doesn't actually work out well for the way we do our reports. Our team has different minimum hours per month based on ranks. For example, Associate members as well as Officers must have 6 hours minimum per month. Rescuers must have 3, and Senior staff must have 12. I would like to be able to put on their profile (or just by rank on the config screen) how many hours they must have monthly instead of just a general annual hours for the whole team. Also, I would like to see if the math can be simplified to monthly instead of breaking down days. The report I did for June, the Rescuers who had exactly 3 hours for the month were showing 105% instead of 100%.
c. Check Out time. With some of our call outs, a few rescuers will respond to the scene, get the mission completed, and then go back home. Typically, one of the members who responded will then email myself and our secretary the details of the call and when one of us gets time that evening, we will create a event record for them (Call-Out/Mission Record). The problem I have is that occasionally we may not be able to log this for a couple days. When we create the Mission and check them in, we can establish the date/time of checking and the system lets us tell it when it was. When checking out from a mission, it just uses current time. It would be nice to have an option when you check someone out from the members page in a mission and from the check in/out page in a mission, have it give us the option to set a checkout date/time. Typically, when entering a mission after it is over, use the members screen and use the option to Check out everyone (forgot exact wording). A pop-up asking for date/time would be great. It could even be prefilled with current date/time for those that don't need to change it. This would be much easier for us than going back and editing Time Keeping records for each individual member to show that they were there for a few hours and not a few days.
I think that sums up what I have found so far. I love the system and our team secretary is really enjoying the ease of the new time records reports as opposed to our old system. She was having to export our database into a spreadsheet and sort everything out before emailing to our Chief every month. She really likes how the report the MM system creates is already sorted out and now she just prints to PDF and emails the report right to him.
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Welcome JT.
First Off, I want to say that MM is awesome and I can really see a huge time saving advantage with it. Keep up the great work!!!
Thanks! ;D Hearing that MM is a useful too is always much appreciated.
Would it be possible to get a section for training, similar to the Call-Outs?
This has been discussed a couple of times, the results always come back to Training is pretty much the same as Missions, so creating a lot more complexity to MM didn't seem to make sense. Most teams create actual missions and juts call them Training, either in the General Mission Name, or you can create a Mission Type in the Configuration that is custom to training. Keeping MM simple an easy to use is a high priority, so this means as few features as possible to get the job done.
I would like to be able to turn the Message Responses column off on the report.
Unless you have the Message Responses set up in the Configuration, this shouldn't show up in the report. There was a bug making it show when it shouldn't. That's been fixed and it should be gone now.
Participation to Minimum Hours. I'm not sure how this column does its math.
While I totally agree from a team standpoint the different number of min hours based on rank, MM only supports one min number of hours. The total hours math is computed based on a full year - see the setting "Minimum number of participation hours per year" in the Configuration. Basically the computation is computed based on the number of days in the report against that percentage of min hours a person should have. This computation gets pretty complex internally, because MM trys to take into account when the member joined your team (assuming they wouldn't be required to have hours before they joined) and trys to toss out any days when they were on LOA. Bottom line, the "Participation to Minimum Hours" column is really a guideline, and its the actual Total Hours that should be the most accurate tool used to do any final evaluations.
When checking out from a mission, it just uses current time. It would be nice to have an option when you check someone out from the members page in a mission and from the check in/out page in a mission, have it give us the option to set a checkout date/time.
This is already a request on the wish list. Need to figure out a good way to make this easy.
Thanks for all the feedback!
Mike
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Would it be possible to get a section for training, similar to the Call-Outs?
This has been discussed a couple of times, the results always come back to Training is pretty much the same as Missions, so creating a lot more complexity to MM didn't seem to make sense. Most teams create actual missions and juts call them Training, either in the General Mission Name, or you can create a Mission Type in the Configuration that is custom to training. Keeping MM simple an easy to use is a high priority, so this means as few features as possible to get the job done.
How about a single option in the mission about what type to record the time as? It would default to "Actual Mission", but could be changed to "Training", etc. Maybe that's harder on the back end than I'm thinking, but it seems like that would take a lot of the complexity out of it.
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How about a single option in the mission about what type to record the time as? It would default to "Actual Mission", but could be changed to "Training", etc.
How's this for a solution?:
If this Automatic Time Keeping is added there are a few special cases for the Time Keeping Category: 1. If the Mission Name includes the word "Training" the time keeping category will be entered as the first Time Keeping and Calendar Categories that contains the word "Training". 2. If the Mission Type includes the word "Training" the time keeping category will be entered as the Mission Type. 3. Otherwise the Time Keeping Category will be entered as "Actual Mission".
This change to MM has been made and is now live.
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I think that would work great!! We had a training last night and I was going to enter the time keeping today but instead I will go ahead and try it as a call out with the name "20130703 - Training-Swiftwater Rescue 1" and if I understand the new change, it should recognize this as a training and then record the time appropriately?
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Provided the Training time keeping from a call out works now, (will have to test later), the only major concern I have left that is holding me back from presenting the entire system to our command staff is the ability to edit checkout times. I put in records for the last two months a couple days ago and although I could specify what time they checked in, it used current date/time for checkout causing some records to have 700+ hours on a call in the Time Keeping. I was obviously able to manually edit the time records but the logs from the call out still reflect scene information ranging from May 29th to July 2nd. (May 29th is when the call actually occurred and July 2nd is when I entered the entire record in MM. (I know a 2 month delay would not be typical but a 1 or 2 day delay may be more common and that on our reports will not work well for our chief.
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Which logs are you referring to? The event and radio logs are editable individually. And if you are using this live in the field, there shouldn't be too many records that need editing.
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"20130703 - Training-Swiftwater Rescue 1" and if I understand the new change, it should recognize this as a training and then record the time appropriately?
Correct :D
the only major concern I have left that is holding me back from presenting the entire system to our command staff is the ability to edit checkout times.
You got it. There is a new section on the Personnel Screen "When Change" with a check box that will allow you to change the date and time of when things are changed on this screen. This works like the "Check to specify operational period, date and time" on the Radio and Event Log screens. (note this was a JavaScript change so you many need to refresh (F5) the Personnel screen)
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Ok, putting training in the title did work. Thank you very much for that!!!
The new section on the personnel screen for the "When Change", I'm not sure if I'm doing it wrong or if it isn't working. I created a new test training event, and used yesterdays date for checking, notification, on scene, etc... When I went to the Personnel Screen, I put in yesterday's date, and the time I wanted to check out at, checked the box, then went and used the link to check out all personnel. I also tried just dragging the names down to the checked out box.
With both methods, when I go to the time keeping (and the reports for the Personnel Status Report for the mission), it reflects current time, not the When Change time.
I think this option will be a great way to do this, if it will work properly. The only other area I would like to see a change time option would be to close the event. (if it is already possible to edit that time somewhere else, please let me know where as I may have very well missed it.)
EDIT: To clarify on the closed time, I looked over all the paperwork I printed for our training and I see where to change the Mission Closed time in the event log. I guess the only place I was seeing the longer time was the Elapsed Time in the Personnel Status Report. This is not a critical issue for us as this report will accompany all the other paperwork that shows the proper in and out for the call.
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With both methods, when I go to the time keeping (and the reports for the Personnel Status Report for the mission), it reflects current time, not the When Change time.
Can you try and clear your browser cache and reload the page and try again?
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I want to establish once again, for the record, you all rock! (I do web design in my spare time and I don't know for the life of me why I didn't think to clear the cache)
Thank you for your hard work on making such a great system. I am really looking forward to sitting down with our Chief and Assistant Chiefs on Monday to show them our new reporting program.
Thanks again!!!
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I want to establish once again, for the record, you all rock!
Thanks! ;D Glad it's working for you. Hope your Chief's like it too.
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I have been one to request a training log as well. We have found that for many trainings, setting up a mission is a bit cumbersome. It would be nice to integrate it with the RSVP system and calendar such that it grabs the event and attendance, and then has a note field that I can write what was accomplished.
Something similar would also be helpful for most of our missions. My team rarely receives the first call for a mission unless it involves a mine or a cave. There are 19 teams in my county, and we usually support those teams either in management or in the field. As such, I am never in a position to get MM running initially. Being able to quickly select members who were there (like the RSVP system) and give a quick synopsis would be useful.
JL
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I have been one to request a training log as well. We have found that for many trainings, setting up a mission is a bit cumbersome. It would be nice to integrate it with the RSVP system and calendar such that it grabs the event and attendance, and then has a note field that I can write what was accomplished.
I'm wondering if some sort of report from the Calendar would work? Just thinking out loud.
Something similar would also be helpful for most of our missions. My team rarely receives the first call for a mission unless it involves a mine or a cave. There are 19 teams in my county, and we usually support those teams either in management or in the field. As such, I am never in a position to get MM running initially. Being able to quickly select members who were there (like the RSVP system) and give a quick synopsis would be useful.
Hopefully the new Mission Sharing features will help out in these situations.
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Wanted to say thanks again for a great tool and also for setting up the callout system to recognize "training" in the mission names. We did a few tests last month and the team loved it so we have officially went live with Mission Manager this month. (Our secretary who handles time reports to our Chief really loves it. It cuts her monthly paperwork time down by a bunch.)
The only issue I am having right now is for team events that are not training. We do many events that we classify as public relations. Is there any way you could possibly set the missions to recognize "Public Relations" or "PR" like it does training. Typically, our PR events we do have a lot of different things going on and I would love to be able to run them as missions so I can assign teams (Boat Demos, K9 Demos, Water Safety, General PR) in the mission but would like the time keeping to record properly under the Public Relations column instead of the Missions Column.
Thanks,
JT
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We did a few tests last month and the team loved it so we have officially went live with Mission Manager this month.
Great, glad things are working well for you!
Our secretary who handles time reports to our Chief really loves it. It cuts her monthly paperwork time down by a bunch.
Always like to hear MM is saving time and makes things more efficient ;D.
Is there any way you could possibly set the missions to recognize "Public Relations" or "PR" like it does training.
Done. It should work like it does for training.
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Awesome, Just did a test Public Relations event and it worked perfectly!! As much PR events as we are a part of during the summer, this will be a huge help.
I did notice with our callout we had yesterday, and a test one I did today, the regular missions are not showing in the Time Keeping under the Call Outs. I'm not 100% sure if they were automatically before or not either. They create the time record but the Category is blank.
I realize this may be because we renamed the Missions Field on the menu to Call-Outs and in time keeping it's Call Outs (no hyphen). I am guessing, and it is purely a guess on my part, that it may either be because the menu has a hyphen and the time keeping doesn't, or simply because it is renamed call outs instead of Missions which I believe was the Mission Manager Default name for them.
I had named it call outs because I was thinking that name would better suit our needs, but now that we can use it for training and public relations as well, Missions would work fine for us if that is the issue. I have no problem changing it back (most likely will change it back as now Missions really fits us better since we consider trainings and other events missions anyways and not call outs but I wanted to check and see if that was potentially the problem before I went messing with anything)
Thanks,
JT
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I did notice with our callout we had yesterday, and a test one I did today, the regular missions are not showing...
If possible, could you do a little more testing on this and see if you can narrow down the issue a little more? I'm not sure I fully understand, but I can say that changing the menu "Missions" to "Call outs" should have no affect on time keeping.
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Ok, I'll keep testing and see if I can do something that makes it work.
What I know now is that if I create a Callout with Public Relations or Training in the title, it records the time for the personnel with the category in time keeping as either Public Relations or Training. Call-Outs named "130807T- Missing Kayaker Training" and "130703T - Swiftwater Training" both set the Category in Time Keeping as Training.
The Call-Out named "130809PR - Public Relations Wildcat Water Fest" set the Category in Time Keeping automatically as Public Relations.
The two actual Call-Outs I created in the last couple days, "130804001 - Car in water - Wildcat" and "130808001 - Water Rescue Pineville", both left the category blank. I am attaching a screenshot of my time keeping overview that shows 4 records. The image is annotated with what I am referring to. Hopefully this will help clear up any confusion as to my issue. I will do a couple more test events in the meantime to see if I can get it to play nice though.
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I have created 2 more test callouts and 1 more test public relations callout. The Public Relations recorded the Time Keeping Category properly as Public Relations but the 2 test callouts left the Time Keeping category as blank.
Please don't make this too big of a priority right now if you have other peoples issues to take care of. It is kind of annoying to go to time keeping and set the categories manually but in the big picture, it is not a big issue right now. With everything Mission Manager is making easier, having to set the category after a callout is not a big problem right now. Generally, we do more training and public relations than actual calls anyways.
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Ok, good news. It was bugging the heck out of wondering if it was because I changed something in the menu or mission categories. I changed both the Menu Link back to Missions (I was considering doing this anyways as Missions really fits better now) and I changed the Category in Time Keeping from Call Outs back to Actual Missions. (I created a test account to find what it is named by default). I created a mission after that and it recorded it in Time Keeping properly as Actual Missions (previously renamed to Call Outs by me).
Based on my experience in web and database design without actually looking into the Mission Manager code I am suspecting my problem was happening because I changed the Time Keeping category from Actual Missions to Call Outs. My assumption is that the system couldn't find the Actual Missions category so it left it blank. (again, this is just my assumption but it makes sense to me based on my results.
Either way, it is working properly and leaving the Time Keeping category as Actual Missions will work just fine for our needs.!!
Thanks for your help!!
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My assumption is that the system couldn't find the Actual Missions category so it left it blank. (again, this is just my assumption but it makes sense to me based on my results.
That would exactly be the case! Nice detective work. Thanks for looking into it.
Mike :D