To all the Beta Testers
 

In most Beta testing phases of online applications (games etc) people are asked to volunteer for the trial phase and they then get some kind of recompense for their time and effort in ensuring a final polished end result.

I wonder what will ours be, a hearty thank you from the Dark Blue & Green jobs. Or possibly just the opportunity to change the incorrect details at last when the program is out of the Beta Test phase.

To quote a famous jock 'We're doomed' it seems is the rallying call at the secret helicopter base in South Oxfordshire.

Almost Done
 

Shame on you! You should regard it as a singular honour to have been specially selected for the vital national task of proving this system to its limits so that the matelots and pongos won't be able to break it.

Baaaaaaaa

Regards

Ginseng

memorable question/answer
 

I'm off down town to change my mother's maiden name to one which has over 8 characters.

All LEAVE cancelled.

At a secret base in deepest Lincolnshire the brief is simply to log on and check pay details. At least that is one priority. The rest would appear to be a case of not rocking the boat.

Apparently the moving blue line is quite soporific.

At least MFMIS will come in on time and work straight out of the box.:}

Hi Gang;

Got into the system this afternoon after everyone else had gone home.

a). Submitted leave for Easter...been docked 2 days annual. Asked for it back on remarks!!
b). Submitted Home to Duty for March.. 31 Days..22 Journeys...NO!! Journey every day apparently and only as 1st or 2nd Passenger. No box for Driver. Submitted with Remarks about wrong status/rate/totals!!! Old form kept for proof and subsequent submission!!
c). Cannot make wifey primary contact. It won't let me. Primary contact is daughter from 1st marriage 450 miles away!!!
d). Bank details correct...well that's one thing!!!
e). Separated service totals = 71. Thought it was going to be at least 100???
f). Have to be born somewhere else..Town of Birth is less than 8 letters!!!

Entertaining 45 mins.:\ Slow but bearable when the rest of the Mob is on Grant!!!

More LAter;
'J' Bloke!!:cool:

PS..I almost forgot...it's all gone to my Workflow manager for approval. He's not that great with computers!!!

I find the use of the singular there more than a little worrying...

Fear not, there are at least 3 servers!!

J Bloke

You need to claim under the other option not 1st / 2nd passenger but the third option. (Can't remember the 3 letter abbv. as at home not on JPA!)

The LSA balance issue is being looked into...


Re eight letters simply repeat your town of birth..ie if it was Bath then your PW may be bathbath????? Its a minimum of 8 letters so be imaginative!!

Happy easter JPA'ers

Grim;

There were 3 options on the HTD thingy...just that the third (top) option was blank, then 1st Pax, 2nd Pax. It would not let me progress if I clicked on the blank. There was no option past 2nd Pax!!!:uhoh:

Got the Home town thing sorted. Bit of lateral thinking....:\

It will take a while to sort out the gremlins I suppose... I'm out soon anyway..(2015!!!)

'J' Bloke!!:rolleyes:

If the pay run is happening on the 18th it would have been good to get a password so I could at least have attempted to check that my details are correct. As I'm not back at work till the 20th I guess I will just have to trust that the system works OK. Hope my bank is understanding about large overdrafts.

Bank Holidays / Shift workers
 

Seems that its designed for a civilian environment where no one works weekends - they are all 'non-working' days. Bank holidays not recognised either so the wonderful new HR department will be giving every one (should be on now) 4 days additional ILA (Individual Leave Allowance or whatever) to cover Good Friday, Easter Monday and the 2 May bank holidays.

In addition absences cannot currently be put in retrospectively - no capability for having an 'emergency' day off for car / family / house etc problems and putting it in after you get back to work.

If you pay for food and go away for less than 3 days it appears that its still to be paid for ... anyone for ration packs? If I am paying for it I expect to be provided with it. :mad:

L1a1
Your first two days of food are not paid back, only the food beyond the 2nd day of absence.
The pay slips will be available to view after the 20th of the month.
The RAF have the best infrastructre in place to deal with the roll out of JPA, so yes, we may be seen as the Guinea Pigs, but with good reason.
Give it a few months and we will be wondering what all the fuss was about, I'm sure!
Remain positive and chin-up chaps. It's a great leap forward from the days of the trenches!!!:E

And I wonder how many people believe that, even Southside spouts less Boll*cks

As the days roll on since they flicked the switch I can't believe that even our 2-year in the post amateurs managed to overlook the fact that not everybody works Monday to Friday...but there's not much evidence they did.

So, shift workers aside they must have thought about bank holidays because even daisies get bank holidays...er, so why the aparent botch for easter, giving everyone extra days leave to fix it?

That's presuming you're not one of several people I know who has not even been given a log-in. There's only 40,000 or so of us now - can that be so difficult?

Server speed? hmmm, never tested it before we went live...

When I finally managed to log-in (because everyone else had gone home), it did a reasonable job, but with so many unanswered questions it just smacks of the amateurish, rushed, poorly thought out ideas that have become cancers to our daily operations. What the fcuk are we playing at?

Solidarity brothers (and sisters?).

I'm sure Southside will be along in a moment to tell us all how lucky we are.:p

Regards

Ginseng

Ginseng

Solidarity (Poland 1980) was organised.

The RAF has yet to accept it is not.

Dallas,

Come on now, none of this single-Service stuff; we are in the age of jointery, so we must all be equally disorganised!

J-Bloke,

The only answer I know to the tricky primary contact fiasco is this. Delete your current primary contact from the system in toto. Go and make a cup of tea. Come back half an hour later and enter your new primary contact. Watch the blue line for 20 minutes. Swear at the failure message, kick the computer, go and make another cup of tea. Re-enter new primary contact. Go and make a cup of tea. Re-enter old primary contact (if desired) as a normal (non-primary) contact. Watch the blue line for 20 minutes. Kick the computer. Go and make a cup of tea. Re-enter etc....... Finally, visit lavatory for 40 minutes to divest yourself of all those cups of tea. It worked for me (eventually) but my bladder is giving out under the strain and I've developed a nasty case of caffeine poisoning!

Regards

Ginseng

I'm just waiting for the advent of BOCS as well as JPA.

My life will be complete and I'll be able to work from home with these fine new systems. :yuk:

Grimwesel and Ginseng:
I am sure that you two believe in this new system. However after the fiasco of the last 10 days plaese will you accept these points:
Hardly anybody seems to be able to log on and do their business.
"Time out" has been blamed on the number of people logging on - yet apparentlty only 1 in 4 of all RAF personel have logged on. What will it be like when 40,000 RAF people log on ( and lets not talk about Army/Navy).
When you can log on, the data is incorrect and you seem to be unable to change anything. Time's out again.
When you cant change the data, you ring the help line, they cannot help you. This is because the majority of people have not been trained in JPA and in fact the 3 people that I have spoken to did not even know it was happening. (JPA launch to the RAF) - one girl i spoke to was in tears because she could not comprehend the number of phone calls she was getting about a subject she knew nothing about.
You cant put leave in. Nobody I know has successfully made a claim. If you do manange to claim an advance it is one day at a time. PIC numbers no longer exist, Last tour of duty no longer seems to exist, overseas posting lists no longer seem to exist. Any time in operational thertre before 2000 is discarded.
If we do get paid at the end of Apr it will be amazing, however how many will actually have the correct pay. I was screwed up last month because for some reason to allow JPA to work I was internally posted. Sadly this resulted in me paying for singlie food charges. I have no doubts that my pay at the end of Apr will be even more cocked up.
I, at my age can accomodate these cockups but imagine a young SAC and his wife with a young kid being messed up. Anybody tried speaking to a bank manager recently - I think it goes: " If you want help - press one", "If you want a credit card press two", "If you are in the RAF and have joined JPA - hang up - you have no hope".
Over the years I have been seriously involved with LITS. We thought that was bad, but this?..............

Ah BOCS another "off the shelf" piece of fabulosity :hmm:

Most amused by the email from the head BOCS needy who had a hissy fit because we weren't all "embracing change" (or "cuddling a !!!!" as is more apt in the RAF these days) and lovin the BOCS. Just genius.

I'm all for well thought IT that has real benefit to the smooth running of the military. Not quite so keen however on the poorly supported, ill thought out schemes that seem to repeatedly blight our lives these days.

:zzz:

I recall being told many years ago that the 3 'M' s were sacrosanct to maintain the 4th:

Meals+Mail+Money=Morale

Now you have PAYD which seems to be a rolling goat f*ck, plus 'capped actuals'....so that's 'Meals' screwed.

Mail. The invention of e-mail has stopped the RAF from porking that up.

Money. JPA....... Need one say more?

Perhaps Them in 't Box need to get back to basics? And they wonder why so many are voting with their feet......

Beagle

Regarding mail you're not strictly correct. Military computers, utilising Microsoft's latest 1997 technology, offer many features that cause e-mail not to reach destination, often without an error message. Address books list addresses that nobody apparently ever logs onto and fairly regular unexpected denials of service from servers/networks/drives.

Even if the system is working, a moronic system of file naming created by FoI clouds the ability to find anything and the plods' contribution - having to type 'Internet-Authorised:' in the title of every off-base e-mail - is a valuable :hmm: tool to preventing people efficiently just pressing 'send'.

JPA follows a proud history of the military screwing around with technology that seemed to work okay for everyone else.

A colleague over the corridor expended 63 minutes of his life attempting to enter a very simple travel claim and a leave pass for the Bank Holiday weekend (for we must now do that) and didn't even get to finish the transactions.
JPA is the worst introduction of a system I've ever seen - and I have seen some stinkers. If anyone else had tried to introduce something like this (anyone who accepts that ISO 9000 or QA or anything with standards exixts) they would have been told to go away and get it right.
Good idea, badly managed, badly introduced. A trait of military projects???

Mr C

I agree with you that JPA is a good idea, as I'm sure is BOCS, in theory. What astonishes me is the apparent lack of thought that accompanies the introduction of new systems. Simple questions go unanswered, practices we've been carrying out for decades can't be accommodated but without anyone apparently having thought out an alternative!

Surely the number of senior officers at HQs various, who allegedly 'staff' projects from rucksacks to JPA decades in advance, have had more than enough time to apply the working RAF model to JPA? And if it doesn't work, get it to work before introducing it and looking like a bunch of numpties! You could argue that JPA is indicative of our culture - senior officers giving unrealistic, budget-driven deadlines to less senior officers who are culturally discouraged to give negative feedback or non-party views.

As for embracing change, no problem, let's do it, but it's got to work!

SRENNAPS
 

From my previous posts, I don't think that you can accuse me of looking at this through rose-tinted spectacles. Yes, access is appallingly slow at the moment, when it can be achieved at all. I also agree with the sentiments of other users that a better phased introduction and completion of data entry before the system was released to all users would have helped the current situation. Nevertheless, on the odd occasion when you have access (about 3 am), most of the functions do work.

Not sure where you got the bit about PICs not existing any more. As a self-service manager (yes, I am one, which came as a bit of a shock!), all my guys are listed against their PICs, and those that don't have one yet are shown on a local Overborne code.

To be fair, I haven't had to try the allowances/journey/advance functions yet. That pleasure is to come. But I have booked a number of periods of leave successfuly, although with a success rate of about 1 in 3 attempts; the leave balance function has then updated successfully (this happens overnight).

I do agree that it needs to get a whole lot better to be "fit for purpose".

Regards

Ginseng

dallas - actually I meant that now most people can have access to a proper Internet terminal (not something screwed around with by Plod on your work PC), at least they don't have to wait for personal letter mail to make its tortuous way to the recipient through the military post system....

Once, as a test, I put a letter to myself in the Islas Malvinas in the Sqn out tray the day I left the UK. It took 3 weeks to arrive! Even on Bennycom I could send and receive e-mail - but at a wondrous 17.6 Kbps and £1+ per minute.

I have two Mil email addresses. One I don't let on about and the other one.

The other one, that everyone knows about, forwards my mail to the one others don't know about and sends a message back to the originator that I cannot be reached and the email bounced.:}

Makes for a quiet life.

Does mean I have to be careful replying.

And as far as naming and FOI? Easy. Set up a rule that diverts all emails to the Delete folder. Set Outlook to empty the delete folder when you log off.

Drag emails you actually want somewhere else. :ok:

Peeps,

Having started this thread as a 'Green Job' to get a feel for what is ahead it doesn't fill me with confidence.

Tongue in cheek - Glad you Guys and Gals are doin the 'Beta Testing' but I am sure our own admin staff will further screw it up when we get our hands on it :rolleyes:

Will continue to monitor and get a feel for what is ahead, patience is a virtue, or so I am told,

HEDP

Has anyone else out there had their P60 for the last tax year?

I get the impression that now SAMA has gone to the great Recycle Bin in the sky chances of receiving one are slim to zero. Personally, I thought it was a legal requirement to issue them. Or has that been conveniently ignored by the work experience kid in charge of this project/shambles?

Or is it just me who's been forgotten?

CBA

CBA, I haven't got one yet either... does this mean our uniform rebate will be forgotten aswell?

you lot are so lucky, my pay has been screwed up by the army long before JPA ;)

Funny old thing Ice Station have even cocked the emails up.
Up until last week I had a fully functioning IGS Internet and E-mail account. IT Gurus decided to adopt a standardised e-mail address list, gave me (and about 1000 others)a new e-mail account without telling anybody. Of course they set up an automated reply and forward function for everybody increasing the volume of e-mail traffic in the process. However, I can't now get any e-mails or documents back to my home e-mail to work on or refer to.
Is that why moral is rock bottom at RA F**Kinloss.
Can't wait until the end of the month. Does anyone know how to use JPA to make a claim for interest payments, bank charges etc? Thats if I ever get past the "server unavailable"
Only good thing to come about from JPA was the 2 extra days leave credited to cover the bank holidays that JPA couldn't allow for. I couldn't get past the "server unavailable" so gave up before Easter. I presume we are unable to put leave on retrospectively so thank you very much for the 2 extra days. Nowhere near enough to what we all deserve for having to put up with an ill thought out and poorly executed IT system. Can't wait until the Army and Navy try to get on the system or even to try and make claims when in Iraq, that will be a challenge.
Overall a big negative :ok:

Luckily (?) we in the Navy have only changed allowances and not gone to JPA. This now means we definitely have no idea what we are entitled to and no idea how to claim anyway.

I wonder what the Investors in People scrutineers would say about the whole farce.

I thought the 2 extra days leave was to bring us into line with the new Leave Year - April thru March.

That should have been 3 ie 33 days plus carry over (15 of course!). Apparently the system was designed in 1774 when bank holidays hadn't been invented yet.

CBA

awaiting the "Actually the first bank holiday was in 1536..." reply. You get the idea.

I managed to log on and check all of my details on thursday afternoon when the rest of the RAF had been stood down. All my bank details were correct and after being awkward for a good while it finally had the decency to allow me to add emergency contacts and NOK details. The system appeared to get faster as the afternoon drew on and the RAF shut down for Easter. Way I figure it is if we could come up with an air force wide Rota where only 5 people can log on at any one time, I'm sure it'll work a treat! I'd like to book 23/06/06 if it's alright with everyone else.

As for my re-engagement leave, that's gone from the system. Fortunately I had the presence on mind to get a print out from SAMA before they pulled the plug on it.

I guess the 20th of this month is judgement day.........................

Oh, and the personal best on Sqn at the moment is 3 hours to submit a leave pass! Anyone done better???

Has anybody on the system been posted yet? :rolleyes:

If that works it will be a miracle.

On an older and maturer system (it crashed in January too) all my 'new' details were correctly mapped across. Where there were no 'new' details all the odl ones were left in place - line manager 3 years out of date - wrong unit - wrong phone numbers - wrong accounts codes.

Don't worry about the little teething problems with JPA. You ain't seen nothing yet. Best bit of course is that all the people capable of sorting in out are being posted. :}

Still no BSA, no pay statement for March, no pay statement for April, no JPA password....
What's worse is that I was posted on 20 March back to the UK from an overseas tour. The upshot of that is that now, nobody knows where I am or which unit parents me! I know how it is supposed to be but try telling that to the computer.:mad:

SBG

found the JPA server
 

http://flyforums.proboards53.com/ind...ead=1145351966

This is what the JPA server looks like:mad: :mad:

JPA - don't you just love it?
 

Came into work for a 8am start . . ..

Tried logging on to JPA . . .

Now going for Lunch at 1pm [5 hours of logging on attempts later]

still not succeeded in logging on yet.

JPA:

Drive to implement - Air Force Board.
[NB Air Force Board are all aircrew]

Blue touch paper lit, now retiring to safe distance . . .