WMIRS 2.0 Rollout Plan?

[Check Pilot/Tow Pilot]

Is the "Status Board" option working for anyone? I just released a flight, but the status board is not showing the sortie. I can see the members signed into the mission on the right side, but the sortie list is blank, even though the mission has multiple sorties and I just released one of them.

Sorties will not show up on the status board until a comm log entry has been added showing the flights actual ATD. It is also necessary to add an ATA before it will be removed from the status board.

Col Mangum, have you run an actual mission in WMIRS 2.0 and seen the status board working correctly? I ask this because a bunch of us IC's in CAWG cannot get the status board to display properly.

[Larry Mangum]

I have, we used WMIRS 2 to run GreenFlag East 2 weeks ago.

[Check Pilot/Tow Pilot]

I have, we used WMIRS 2 to run GreenFlag East 2 weeks ago.

Great and just to confirm, adding ATD in the Comm Log relating to a sortie changes the sortie from Planned to Started?

What allows a sortie to show as Planned?

Does ATA in the Comm log for a particular sortie change the sortie to Closed?

What is the criteria for an overdue aircraft?

[Larry Mangum]

I have, we used WMIRS 2 to run GreenFlag East 2 weeks ago.

Great and just to confirm, adding ATD in the Comm Log relating to a sortie changes the sortie from Planned to Started?

What allows a sortie to show as Planned?

Does ATA in the Comm log for a particular sortie change the sortie to Closed?

What is the criteria for an overdue aircraft?

An ATA in the Comm log, will show the sorties as being completed on the status board. You must still complete the debrief, entering the Hobbs and Tach times before a sorties will be shown as being closed and completed.

[Check Pilot/Tow Pilot]

The issue is we can't see the sorties in Planned.  Would you know how to activate them as Planned?

[Eclipse]

On the initial call they said that there were all these features that would be rolled out during the beta for testing before going live.  Things like "Flight Release" and "Reports".

Nice to see FR is still broken.

Check the boxes and click approve, the system throws a red error "Invalid Information. You have two tries remaining." even though the pin is correct.
You can click and re-click and it just shows the same thing, exit the screen and come back to the sorties and you'll find the flights are released.

[JeffDG]

On the initial call they said that there were all these features that would be rolled out during the beta for testing before going live.  Things like "Flight Release" and "Reports".

Nice to see FR is still broken.

Check the boxes and click approve, the system throws a red error "Invalid Information. You have two tries remaining." even though the pin is correct.
You can click and re-click and it just shows the same thing, exit the screen and come back to the sorties and you'll find the flights are released.

The simple fact was:  They released a system that was neither complete nor tested.  It's still neither.

They activated the "Mission Expense Report" this week, and it makes no distinction between "actual" and "estimated" costs.  So if we fly two sorties on one plane, and don't gas up between them, the first sortie has "estimated" fuel use for it's time, and the second sortie has "actual" use for both sorties.  It's worse than useless.

[Eclipse]

To be fair, they had somewhere between "the entire summer" and "however long they felt like"
to release the update, so there was a lot of pressure to roll it out untested.

[JeffDG]

To be fair, they had somewhere between "the entire summer" and "however long they felt like"
to release the update, so there was a lot of pressure to roll it out untested.

To be clear, it's not just "untested", it's "unfinished"

[Check Pilot/Tow Pilot]

They are working hard to fix the issues. Hopefully, you are sending in issues as trouble tickets so they have a heads up on things to fix.

It's not going away so let's be part of the solution.

[Fubar]

It's not going away so let's be part of the solution.

I understand your sentiment and even agree (to a degree) with it. The issue is wasting a volunteer's time is the greatest sin an organization can do. They've wasted a lot of our time by forcing us to use an unfinished product on a daily basis. Now we have to waste more time trying to document the bugs, processes issues, and perform data integrity checks since you can't trust your data is being stored properly.

Perhaps there was pressure from the volunteer leadership or maybe even the Air Force to transition away from the old WMIRS, I dunno. Regardless, someone failed the membership and the membership has a right not to be pleased about it.

[JeffDG]

Perhaps there was pressure from the volunteer leadership or maybe even the Air Force to transition away from the old WMIRS, I dunno. Regardless, someone failed the membership and the membership has a right not to be pleased about it.

From what I've heard, AFRCC still hasnt transitioned, and enters all their missions in WMIRS 1.0, so it wasnt the af pushing.

[JeffDG]

They are working hard to fix the issues. Hopefully, you are sending in issues as trouble tickets so they have a heads up on things to fix.

It's not going away so let's be part of the solution.

Basically, I think just enter the bare minimum mandatory information, and use your own mission management system.

NHQ won't get the information they want, but at this point, if they're going to insist on wasting my time on an unfinished and untested system, I don't much care what their preference is.

The thing is, there's enough volunteer talent in the organization to build WMIRS 3.0 from the ground up in no time flat, but the not-invented-here syndrome is strong in NHQ and they would have purposefully blocked member-created systems mid-mission in the past, so that will never happen.

[Check Pilot/Tow Pilot]

It's not going away so let's be part of the solution.

I understand your sentiment and even agree (to a degree) with it. The issue is wasting a volunteer's time is the greatest sin an organization can do. They've wasted a lot of our time by forcing us to use an unfinished product on a daily basis. Now we have to waste more time trying to document the bugs, processes issues, and perform data integrity checks since you can't trust your data is being stored properly.

Perhaps there was pressure from the volunteer leadership or maybe even the Air Force to transition away from the old WMIRS, I dunno. Regardless, someone failed the membership and the membership has a right not to be pleased about it.

I agree 100%, but if we can't affect the problem then let's be part of the solution.

[JeffDG]

It's not going away so let's be part of the solution.

I understand your sentiment and even agree (to a degree) with it. The issue is wasting a volunteer's time is the greatest sin an organization can do. They've wasted a lot of our time by forcing us to use an unfinished product on a daily basis. Now we have to waste more time trying to document the bugs, processes issues, and perform data integrity checks since you can't trust your data is being stored properly.

Perhaps there was pressure from the volunteer leadership or maybe even the Air Force to transition away from the old WMIRS, I dunno. Regardless, someone failed the membership and the membership has a right not to be pleased about it.

I agree 100%, but if we can't affect the problem then let's be part of the solution.

Put the absolute base minimum amount of information in WMIRS, and run your missions some better way.

Whenever NHQ gets their heads out of their posteriors and provides a system that is complete and tested, re-evaluate.  Meanwhile, don't provide any extra info in WMIRS, if NHQ wants the information badly enough, they'll provide an effective way for us in the field to give it to them.

[Check Pilot/Tow Pilot]

Do what you want but in CAWG we will continue to use WMIRS 2.0.  We'll figure out workarounds, track and send bugs to NHQ, and suggest ways to make it better.

Today you can sign in Resources and People, keep a Unit log, keep a running Comm Log. Some say that status board is usable but we are still testing it.

We have opened up around 50 tickets and feature requests. Do we wish that NHQ IT would respond to our requests, sure but we understand that they are resource constrained.

[Eclipse]

they are resource constrained.

Maybe, but there's no excuse for that whatsoever.

If outside contractors are doing this, then it's arguably FWA.  This should be an in-house project with members
from all over the country, and when resources are "constrained", bring in more.

[RiverAux]

This should be an in-house project with members
from all over the country, and when resources are "constrained", bring in more.

This is something a bit more complicated that fixing a broken form or finding errors in a proposed regulation.  This is a complicated major project and I just don't see it as something that a scattered group of volunteers could do with a few hours here and there each week. 

Granted, it doesn't appear to be going swimmingly the way they're doing it, but who here hasn't seem some volunteer-made web page or even mission management system that falls apart because of dependency on a volunteer that wasn't as reliable as you thought. 

Now, maybe there could have been a group of volunteer advisers working with the programmers to get things in better shape before release. 

[JeffDG]

This should be an in-house project with members
from all over the country, and when resources are "constrained", bring in more.

This is something a bit more complicated that fixing a broken form or finding errors in a proposed regulation.  This is a complicated major project and I just don't see it as something that a scattered group of volunteers could do with a few hours here and there each week. 

Granted, it doesn't appear to be going swimmingly the way they're doing it, but who here hasn't seem some volunteer-made web page or even mission management system that falls apart because of dependency on a volunteer that wasn't as reliable as you thought. 

Now, maybe there could have been a group of volunteer advisers working with the programmers to get things in better shape before release.

Actually, yes it could be.  Distributed software development is a well-developed discipline, and we have experts in managing such projects in house who would, if merely asked, would happily donate their time and efforts, rather than wasting their time with a half-finished, untested PoS.

At a recent meeting, one of our older members referred to it as "WMIRS No. 2", which based on the colloquial definition of Number 2 taught to toddlers, is a fantastic description.

The problem with a distributed member-developed system is that NHQ is deeply invested in "not-invented-here" syndrome.

[JeffDG]

Do what you want but in CAWG we will continue to use WMIRS 2.0.  We'll figure out workarounds, track and send bugs to NHQ, and suggest ways to make it better.

Today you can sign in Resources and People, keep a Unit log, keep a running Comm Log. Some say that status board is usable but we are still testing it.

We have opened up around 50 tickets and feature requests. Do we wish that NHQ IT would respond to our requests, sure but we understand that they are resource constrained.

I'm working my way up to that number just myself, and would be there if I stopped every time I hit a problem and filled out a bug-report form that is filed in the circular file.

All of this could have been done far more securely and efficiently by simply providing an API to transfer data to WMIRS.  Existing systems are out there that do all of that and light-years more, but NHQ didn't invent them so they must be crushed.