I used CAPWATCH regularly over five years ago, but I haven't touched it in a long time. I've been using eServices Member Reports application instead. What is the purpose of CAPWATCH nowadays? What do people use it for? Are there any benefits to using CAPWATCH versus Member Reports? My duties include Personnel, Administration, and Professional Development, etc. Thank you.
Very little unless you are:
A database guy.
Using SIMMS
Using the Encampment Management system.
Otherwise it is just a set of disconnected .csvs
Actually, I use those tables for quite a lot, when when doing activities because I can put rosters together, get data for an MSA, check qualifications, safety currency.. a lot faster than I can do it playing the eServices icon generation game of Click. Excel is the handymans database engine ;)
I wrote a web-based reporting tool that ingests CAPWATCH data and allows you to view various reports.
Technically, it would support other Wings, but at the moment it's only running for FLWG.
It's one of the only ways to get up to date info for other organizations, you have an audit trail on even some of the PD stuff like specialty tracks and levels (ie who approved etc). You can view your membership counts since Jan 2000 (rumor has it, it's coming to eServices with the new look of the front page). If you don't have access to WSA View or Reports, you can see who has access to what using the MemberPrm table, you can also see some details of member records that are not in Member Search, such as Education Level (at time of application), etc.
There is a ton of stuff there, you just need to poke around.
I've written an entire provisioning module in Google Apps that takes CAPWATCH and:
Creates account for all Wing members
Creates security groups for members to access shared files
Creates mailing lists based on ES Quals, Unit of assignment and Duty position, auto updated when assignments change
Creates spreadsheets of trackable/trend-able data
Provides information to activity directors about registered members (like safty currency, es quals for sarexes), and creates auto updating email lists of registered attendees
A bunch more
Quote from: JeffDG on March 06, 2014, 01:51:43 AMI've written an entire provisioning module in Google Apps that takes CAPWATCH
Oh, man.. you'd be my best friend .. :)
Even just for a unit level, this is just way the way to go.
Quote from: a2capt on March 06, 2014, 02:02:55 AM
Quote from: JeffDG on March 06, 2014, 01:51:43 AMI've written an entire provisioning module in Google Apps that takes CAPWATCH
Oh, man.. you'd be my best friend .. :)
Even just for a unit level, this is just way the way to go.
Yeah...not really practical at below Wing level.
Been in dev for about 18 months now, and starting to really hum along!
If you've got ~100 on the roster, just to handle the mailing list ads/removes, etc. parts of it sure would be.
Also possibly setting up for the group, and docs has popped up in the discussion at the group level.
I download the CAPWATCH text files for tasks that can't be easily answered with member reports.
For instance: give me a comma-separated list of E-mails for people who don't have TLC, so I can E-mail them about an upcoming offering. No such thing in eServices, but with a few lines of bash/awk/sed, I've got my list.
I'm working on making those scripts easier for other people to use, but really, they're only meant to be for me. And who runs shell scripts anymore, anyway?