Testing & Tracking

[Always Ready]

I *personally* have never used SIMS before, but I've seen it in action. It can totally transform a squadron and I highly recommend it. It keeps things simple and more accessible.

OpenOffice can be downloaded to Macs and it can create, open, edit most of the Microsoft Office-type files including Access files.

I've also seen SIMS do the exact opposite, creating so much unnecessary administrative garbage that the personnel officer and DCC spend 12 hours a week doing personnel stuff.  I suppose it's what you make of it, but either way, now, you end up updating SIMS, then updating the same information into the new cadet promotion utility.  Seems a little redundant to me.

I've seen that too with the good ol' paper system...I was dumb enough to volunteer as a cadet for admin/personnel duties because we didn't have a SM doing it. Let me tell you, I still wasn't done fixing all the problems in the files by the time they switched me to a new position, four months later. Two year later when I left the unit as a SM, my personal file was in shambles and that was with two SMs and a Cadet (part-time) working on it every meeting.

Like all tools, if SIMS is used properly and efficiently, it is meant to help things run smoother. The best solution is always whatever works for the individuals and for the squadron (and is within regs).

[Pylon]

I *personally* have never used SIMS before, but I've seen it in action. It can totally transform a squadron and I highly recommend it. It keeps things simple and more accessible.

OpenOffice can be downloaded to Macs and it can create, open, edit most of the Microsoft Office-type files including Access files.

I've also seen SIMS do the exact opposite, creating so much unnecessary administrative garbage that the personnel officer and DCC spend 12 hours a week doing personnel stuff.  I suppose it's what you make of it, but either way, now, you end up updating SIMS, then updating the same information into the new cadet promotion utility.  Seems a little redundant to me.

The double entry to eServices notwithstanding, the idea with SIMs is to reduce paperwork to the point that it can replace your hardcopy records for an SUI, etc.

It's not quite double-entry.

I'm entering everything into SIMS: Attendance, moral leadership participation, PT scores, written testing scores, duty assignments, contact information, CAPF 60 data, everything.  It saves me work by doing things like autocalculating if a cadet passed PT or not based on their scores, autocalculating their 60-days between achievements, saving me from needing sign-in sheets for every meeting, generating a variety of useful reports and forms (for example, I like the CPFT entry log report, which puts the minimum passing scores next to each cadets' name... makes it easy to answer the persistent 'What do I need to get?' questions during the CPFT), etc.   So in addition to giving me handy reports, SIMS also acts as my official personnel records.  I don't need to maintain their paper jacket, I don't need to maintain E-Services.  I just drop other pertinent hard copy stuff into their folder (CAPF 2As, certificates, PA's, etc.)

I also update cadets' records in E-Services.  However, I don't enter the whole deal.  Using the Administration module, you can check a box to enter only the achievement completion date.  Since I'm already entering scores, attendance, etc. as I go along into SIMS, there's no need to put this data into E-Services as well.   Therefore, I'm only going online and entering 1 date per cadet achievement completed.  Pretty easy and nowhere's near "duplicative" of the entire administrative workload.

Fully utilizing SIMS has been one the best things I have done since I became Deputy Cmdr for Cadets.