The Coast Guard’s current HR system — Direct Access — has a user population similar to what CG-LIMS will have at FOC: everyone in the Coast Guard. They just rolled out an upgrade to the underlying software over the weekend.
I encourage everyone on the CG-LIMS project to consider the implementation from an end user perspective and think about ideas you’ll want to steal and things you’ll want to do differently with major CG-LIMS releases.
If you hadn’t heard about the system being upgraded, it’s an indication that we’ll need to market the changes even more than the folks at PPC did for Direct Access. They used an ALCOAST and blog entries. They may have relied on field SPOs to get the word out to units. At HQ that would normally happen with a posting on the HQ “Special Notices” page.
The marketing message I saw stressed the need to log in and make sure I knew my password before the update, since the “Forgot my password” link would no longer work.
Since I knew password, I’ve got to say the process of logging on the first time this morning was as good as I could have asked.
I tried logging on with the old URL:
And it provided a page telling me to update the URL to:
I signed on with same User ID and Password that worked in the old version, and it brought me right in.
The top left corner had a short welcome message and links to online resources a phone number, and an online trouble-ticket form. It’s great that they provided all three resources. In my opinion, all three are vital for a rollout like this across the enterprise.
Here are the links in the screencap above. Most are reachable from the public internet:
Navigation Demos and Guides. Learn how to get around in MyPortalDirect. Guides for Self Service, Command and SPO users.
New Procedure for Running Reports. The ability to have reports delivered via email has been removed.
2011 PPC Training Schedule. PPC hosts monthly workshops for Direct Access users.
Guides:
» Direct Access Online Help
» SPO Manual
» ALSPO Messages
» Pay & Allowance Rates
If you encounter problems, please contact PPC Customer Care at 866.772.8724 or use the online Trouble-Ticket Form.
I realize this is an upgrade to a product that’s already fielded and users trained. Before we get there, we’ve still got to get through the initial implementation process. Still, I think this is a good opportunity for the team to consciously take note of the upgrade process from an end user perspective, and share your thoughts on what worked and didn’t for you. Feel free to comment with you feedback.
CG-LIMS 
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