News
HQ Compass Update - to All members (14-Jan-15)
Dear Colleagues,
We wanted to update you following our message on 8 January regarding Compass, the membership system for all adult and youth members in Scouting, and provide a more detailed progress report and share our immediate plans to support you using Compass. We acknowledge this email covers a lot of information but we hope it provides feedback on many of the comments and questions you may have had recently.
Availability and speed of Compass
As we acknowledged, the outages of last week at the very time many of you had organised training sessions and group sessions to learn, understand and input your data into Compass was exceptionally annoying.
We are pleased to say that the root cause of a significant problem that was causing these outages was identified on Friday 9 January and the fix applied that day, but we continue to monitor this situation and work on additional fixes to improve the stability of the system. We are not naïve enough to say that such problems will not reoccur. We have however taken steps to minimise any potential impact of these. We also know that the speed of Compass is dependent on a variety of local issues as well as those of the system itself. We are continuing to work with our suppliers to seek and apply further improvements.
Youth data upload deadlines
Recognising the difficulties the instability of the system has caused locally, particularly last week, we have extended the deadline for the upload of the youth data to Sunday 15 February 2015 for those of you who might need the extra time. We greatly appreciate your support in meeting this revised deadline.
Support for users of Compass
Whilst the stability of the system is, and will continue to be, our number one priority, so too is the support we give to you.
In order to be able to respond to more of your enquiries the Scout Information Centre will be opening both this weekend and next for Compass related queries only. Team members will be on hand to answer Compass calls from 9am - 6pm on Saturday 17 January, Sunday 18 January, Saturday 24 January and Sunday 25 January.
We would also add that the first source of support and guidance for using Compass should remain the user site www.scouts.org.uk/compass where user guides for all tasks can be found as well as a frequently asked question section and a user forum to ask queries of other members.
The Latest Updates section of the user site lists known bugs and action being taken to resolve them, in response to requests for this information.
Issues being worked on
We are aware some specific areas of the database and functionality of Compass are causing frustrations and we are providing additional support for these.
Training records – we are preparing a briefing for Training Managers of known issues with adult training records, the actions being taken nationally and ways in which addressing these challenges with the data can be supported locally.
Disclosures and Vetting (England and Wales) – in general this function is working well for members in England and Wales using Compass to process their checks. We can see that many Districts and Groups are catching up with the processing of disclosure checks. However, it is not yet a complete picture and we are providing a report on Compass for GSL, Commissioner, Secretary and Administrator roles in Group level and above to use to understand where there are gaps. Support will be provided to facilitate discussions at District meetings of GSLs to better explain the changes made to the disclosure process at the same time as the changes to Compass.
Adult roles – we understand there are still some issues with the information and data transferred from the former membership management system (MMS) to Compass. We have previously explained the background to this. Please keep an eye on the Latest Updates page on www.scouts.org.uk/compass for any fixes and progress with these known issues.
Why Compass is so important for the future of Scouting
We are aware that a number of you have concerns and questions regarding the wider strategy for Compass and the reasons for our commitment to it.
To help explain these, we have provided links to excerpts from an audio conference we hosted with District Commissioners in December which sets out our approach to a number of critical aspects. These can be found on the Latest Updates page of the Compass user site. Here you can listen to us talk about many topics related to Compass, including uploading youth data, working with OSM, census, data protection, reports, responding to criticisms and more.
We hope this update has provided some of the answers and information we know many of you have been asking for. We are listening to your feedback and responding as quickly as we can with support that will help all members. Do keep any suggestions coming in on additions we can make to www.scouts.org.uk/compass to make it even more useful for you. The progress on adding youth data to Compass is good with over 200,000 now added, your continued dedication to building the data and information in Compass is greatly appreciated.
Yours,
Wayne Bulpitt Matt Hyde
UK Chief Commissioner Chief Executive
We wanted to update you following our message on 8 January regarding Compass, the membership system for all adult and youth members in Scouting, and provide a more detailed progress report and share our immediate plans to support you using Compass. We acknowledge this email covers a lot of information but we hope it provides feedback on many of the comments and questions you may have had recently.
Availability and speed of Compass
As we acknowledged, the outages of last week at the very time many of you had organised training sessions and group sessions to learn, understand and input your data into Compass was exceptionally annoying.
We are pleased to say that the root cause of a significant problem that was causing these outages was identified on Friday 9 January and the fix applied that day, but we continue to monitor this situation and work on additional fixes to improve the stability of the system. We are not naïve enough to say that such problems will not reoccur. We have however taken steps to minimise any potential impact of these. We also know that the speed of Compass is dependent on a variety of local issues as well as those of the system itself. We are continuing to work with our suppliers to seek and apply further improvements.
Youth data upload deadlines
Recognising the difficulties the instability of the system has caused locally, particularly last week, we have extended the deadline for the upload of the youth data to Sunday 15 February 2015 for those of you who might need the extra time. We greatly appreciate your support in meeting this revised deadline.
Support for users of Compass
Whilst the stability of the system is, and will continue to be, our number one priority, so too is the support we give to you.
In order to be able to respond to more of your enquiries the Scout Information Centre will be opening both this weekend and next for Compass related queries only. Team members will be on hand to answer Compass calls from 9am - 6pm on Saturday 17 January, Sunday 18 January, Saturday 24 January and Sunday 25 January.
We would also add that the first source of support and guidance for using Compass should remain the user site www.scouts.org.uk/compass where user guides for all tasks can be found as well as a frequently asked question section and a user forum to ask queries of other members.
The Latest Updates section of the user site lists known bugs and action being taken to resolve them, in response to requests for this information.
Issues being worked on
We are aware some specific areas of the database and functionality of Compass are causing frustrations and we are providing additional support for these.
Training records – we are preparing a briefing for Training Managers of known issues with adult training records, the actions being taken nationally and ways in which addressing these challenges with the data can be supported locally.
Disclosures and Vetting (England and Wales) – in general this function is working well for members in England and Wales using Compass to process their checks. We can see that many Districts and Groups are catching up with the processing of disclosure checks. However, it is not yet a complete picture and we are providing a report on Compass for GSL, Commissioner, Secretary and Administrator roles in Group level and above to use to understand where there are gaps. Support will be provided to facilitate discussions at District meetings of GSLs to better explain the changes made to the disclosure process at the same time as the changes to Compass.
Adult roles – we understand there are still some issues with the information and data transferred from the former membership management system (MMS) to Compass. We have previously explained the background to this. Please keep an eye on the Latest Updates page on www.scouts.org.uk/compass for any fixes and progress with these known issues.
Why Compass is so important for the future of Scouting
We are aware that a number of you have concerns and questions regarding the wider strategy for Compass and the reasons for our commitment to it.
To help explain these, we have provided links to excerpts from an audio conference we hosted with District Commissioners in December which sets out our approach to a number of critical aspects. These can be found on the Latest Updates page of the Compass user site. Here you can listen to us talk about many topics related to Compass, including uploading youth data, working with OSM, census, data protection, reports, responding to criticisms and more.
We hope this update has provided some of the answers and information we know many of you have been asking for. We are listening to your feedback and responding as quickly as we can with support that will help all members. Do keep any suggestions coming in on additions we can make to www.scouts.org.uk/compass to make it even more useful for you. The progress on adding youth data to Compass is good with over 200,000 now added, your continued dedication to building the data and information in Compass is greatly appreciated.
Yours,
Wayne Bulpitt Matt Hyde
UK Chief Commissioner Chief Executive