Few ideas & features that would help.

[Mason Lee]

Hello my name is Lee and I am the main guy from the 28th C.A.D. https://www.28thcad.org/ that pays for PERSCOM. To put a sense of our community we are currently managing 224 soldiers on PERSCOM from all status codes. So far your system has proven time and time again considerably helpful towards our administrative needs. As such I also see the homage your system pays towards a realistic administrative management of soldiers in a unit or community while being streamlined. While over the course of a few months while using PERSCOM not only myself but my clerks who also have access to the ACP/PERSCOM have ran into a few hindrances if you may. I am in no way wiz at codes, API, HTML, and whatever open source language you use in PESCOM so I'd like to dialog about these ideas.

Promotion Eligibility & Progression Tracking

Currently your promotion eligibility and progression tracking uses one tracked items to determine the promotability of a soldier and that is the Time in Grade (TIG). Although this is a step in the direction that many communities who use PERSCOM want to see, from an wider perspective and real-life service experience with S/G-1 Administration promotability standards the incorporation of a point based system would allow more detail to progression tracking. An example of such an system would be not only with TIG tracking you add Point Threshold Tracking to items such as the Combat Records, Awards, and Qualifications. Much like while editing Ranks to determine their Minimum TIG requirements you can add similar fields to the aforementioned items that give them a point value, and next to the Minimum TIG requirement on ranks you will have a Minimum Point Requirement. Below is a quick mockup of how the UI would look from my own vision. I managed this UI by editing the HTML source code by inspecting and changing a few things. This is not by all means a working system already implemented through the API. 

 

Soldier Profile Actions / Flagging

While on the Personnel>Soldiers page of PERSCOM we obviously have the ability to manage every soldier in PERSCOM with multiple actions. (Obviously) In real life a flag is a code placed on a soldier/service members "packet" for lack of better terms that S/G-1 and units can see. Reasons for being "flagged" range from failure of Height/Weight, Physical Tests, punitive actions, etc. The purpose of the flag is to give a face-value "WARNING" on the soldiers profile thus preventing them from being promoted, awarded, etc. A system vaguely similar to this on PERSCOM would be the notes, but unfortunately the notes are not the most "face-value" warning that we ( I ) need. My proposition is to see if an additional action simply called "Flag" can be added. Much like every other action when you click on "Flag" a box appears that would look much similar to the note except for flagging the soldier. What this can do after saving is add a small red flag icon on their soldier profile and row. Example seen below;

 

In our community we are blessed to have a group of well versed coders, graphic designers, and members and we often have to mend things around to fit our needs. For a company (DDG) who's goal is to provide an versatile system to other communities much like ours it only seems sensible to suggest these ideas fourth towards you. Like I have said before I am not an expert nor even a beginner in coding and I cannot begin to sympathize on how long or quick this would be to add to PERSCOM. I hope these miniature graphics and crude presentation of an idea can help you foster an idea that could be implemented. If I come to any more ideas and features I'd like to suggest I will most certainly add them to this post.

Thank you for reading this,

have a good day.

 

Mason Lee, 

28th C.A.D. XO

[Jon Erickson]

Hey @Mason Lee, thanks so much for bringing all your ideas forward. After visiting your website, it appears you may be running IPB v4.4 and therefore do not have access to the new IPB marketplace? Without access to the IPB marketplace, you will not receive the latest PERSCOM updates. I say this because, the currently released version of PERSCOM includes several of the features you mention. For example, we have implemented a promotion points tracking system that does exactly as you mention. When awarding, entering records, qualifications etc, you can attach a pre-set number of promotion points to that entry. Each rank is then assigned a minimum amount of promotion points to achieve the rank. When the soldier has met the minimum amount of points, you are informed of the ability to promote them. All this is currently included in PERSCOM. You can also disable TIG tracking if you'd like and just use promotion point tracking.

Second, we have also built in a "Notes" module that allows you to attach whatever content you'd like to each soldier. We envisioned this to be used for administrative tasks as you mention, to keep track of soldiers and "flag" them if you must. These notes can be categorized and grouped together for different tasks. They can also be hidden from the soldier and can only be seen by members you set, or it can be totally public. You choose.

Hopefully these features tackle the vision you are imagining. Let us know if we can expand the current features even more!