Unsticking those stuck as "untrained" forever more

[moosetracker]

OK.. The training reports for the district.

 

I have 3 stuck on the "untrained" report, with no courses they need to take. Looking them up in on-line Training Verification.. They are definately trained. One is probably addicted to training as he has 5 pages of training...

 

I have 7 stuck as "trained" that also are clearly "untrained".. I had 12 but checking on on-line Training Verification, some are due to older classes they are grandfathered into.

 

I though this was a simple fix. Tell the registrar to uncheck whatever flag is set stating they are trained or untrained.. He is clueless to how they are like that.

 

Then this weekend I was discussing it with out Council Training Chair.. She looked at me and said.. "I am one of the ones permenently stuck as "untrained".. You have got to be kidding!.. This lady doesn't just organize behind the scenes, she does all the presentations and is on the road leading training course 2 or 3 nights a week..

 

So if any of you out there have the magic solution to this. Also I was told that you are trained when National deems you are trained.. Please can any of our pilot councils tell me if these "buggy" reports are what National is going to use for stating you are trained or not?

 

As an add on, anyone else have a look at the "new" training Excel spreadsheet. (At least that is what I am told by my registrar, just came out last weekend. It is suppose to have ALL training everyone took.. It can be broken down by district (even includes those who are registered as district only, MB counsilors & District registered volunteers), it lists the people down the rows, and the columns go out to about 26-something columns listing some info for the adult and then all the courses.. then each column you took a course has the date (or the last date) you took it.

 

Seems to have a few bugs.. (surprise, surprise).. Missing Youth Protection & Weather Hazards (but have other trainings with expirations Safe swim, Climb on safely etc.).. Also missing the "Troop Committe Challenge - Web".. Has some of the courses that are now dyfunct, but not all, one they removed too early (IMHO) is New Leaders Essentials..

 

Also does not give Unit info (which I can see, people would show up multi times, and some don't have unit info.)

 

All in all if they can work the bugs out, this will be a very useful tool!!!

[moosetracker]

the 26-something is refering to something between 260-269 columns.. While re-reading that looked unclear, wanted to clarify.

[Beavah]

Yah, lots of reports like this out there. Word is that a few of the pilot councils have abandoned the mandatory training pilot because they kept runnin into these system errors. I hear they're trying to work on da issues, but I'd expect you'll see the deadlines continue to get pushed back.

[Eagle92]

Not part of the pilot, but was having folks on the 'untrained" report who were clearly trained, including yours truly. What I did was did a training survey, made copies of the completed reports for my recrods, transcribed it into codes to make it easy for the registrar, and submitted everything to the registrar. That fixed about 95% of the problems.

[moosetracker]

But this is not a problem of the council not having recorded the training (Although yes we have that too! I now have a list of the courses that the signup sheets never got to the registrar to enter..And my predessor did not make copies of the sign-up sheets so once lost, they were lost..) ..

 

This is different, it is the case of the training has been recorded correctly, These people are credited for all the courses they are required to take (and then some..). It is just, the two reports that split you into the "Trained" and "UnTrained" categories has got to be looking at some switch that has stuck it.. Or maybe there is something to look at the courses entered to see if field "whatever" is filled in, because that field is important to these two reports or something.. I am just hoping someone has figured out the trick to unstick..

 

Beavah - I personally want to get going. The sooner you dive in and swim to the other side, the shorter period of time you have to listen to the gripes of those who did not want to go swimming!.. Being a programmer this software just aggravates me. I want to dive in and fix it. Unfortunatly I am left with taking what I have and working around it.

 

I can manually change the reports I give out, to have the right "Trained" or "untrained" status. But, if these are the reports that National are using, I am just covering up an issue that may come back and bite an innocent party when several years down the road they can't register due to being "Untrained" while my reports were telling him all was just dandy.

 

[rkfrance]

I recently got this note from our council training chair, who just got back from Philmont.

 

"National will be getting a new module for ScoutNet in 2011 called the Membership and Training Module from an outside vendor that promises to simplify everything for everybody. This will need to be in place and working prior to implementing required training."

 

We'll see....

[HICO_Eagle]

"National will be getting a new module for ScoutNet in 2011 called the Membership and Training Module from an outside vendor that promises to simplify everything for everybody. This will need to be in place and working prior to implementing required training."

 

Does anyone else find it the least bit ironic (and aggravating) that an organization with a mission (and proven ability) to train leaders needs to go to an outside vendor to implement "required training"? How much of this stuff is a self-licking ice cream cone?

[Eagle92]

HICO,

I think RK is talking about an outside computer programming company to create the software to keep track of everything. If that's the case, TRUST ME you don't want BSA doing their own work, that led us into SCOUTNET in the first place: a former SE with no IT experience hiring out a company he knew nothing about AND he didn't know everything he wanted in the system.

 

Luckily BSA now has IT folks who have an Idea of what they want. BUt they had to hire them form outside the organization instead of promotinghtem form within.

[John-in-KC]

My day job is looking at the innards of a ratherarge, but somewhat static, database.

 

A quality dynamic, distributed database has to have an easy to use, field-proof user entry, a schema which is economical of processing time and stores each data element once, and a data management method which backs up daily

 

in addition, there needs to be a test environment, which has everything the production system has, only on a smaller scale. Finally, the managers need to have access using the same external networks the customers use. If you cannot tell that the production rig isn't supporting some ISP/ WAN still routing data through an obsolete protocol, and be able to deal with it, then your credibility to your customer will be exactly zero

 

Every "IT Professional" contemplating a new deployment should go an reread the "Bastard Operator from Hell" series. It's a great anti-guide to developing/testing/deploying software

 

Better yet, go read the last year of Dilbert, and figure out how it applies to your development or production environment