'Dashboard' puts Guard, Reserve Airmen in driver's seat Published Nov. 23, 2007 By Senior Master Sgt. Kelly Mazezka Air Reserve Personnel Center Public Affairs DENVER (AFPN) -- An enhancement to the virtual Personnel Center-Guard and Reserve, or vPC-GR, is scheduled to launch in December and will put Air National Guard and Reserve Airmen in the driver's seat of their personnel transactions. The new vPC-GR "dashboard" will streamline the way Airmen manage their vPC-GR account profiles, submit new requests, check the status and coordinate on existing transactions. "We're trying to make vPC-GR more efficient for everyone," said Lt. Col. Doug Ottinger, the director of the Air Reserve Personnel Center's directorate of future operations and integration. "The dashboard will allow you to complete all your coordination actions at once, with one log on." Since 2006, vPC-GR has enabled more than 25,000 online transactions for retirements and decorations, to route through coordinators, reviewers or approving officials. In the past, coordinators would receive an e-mail for every transaction requiring their review and have to log in and log out for each. The dashboard, on the other hand, enables the coordinators, reviewers and approving officials to process a transaction, monitor its progress, attach related documents, develop reports and initiate any additional transactions under one logon. The vPC-GR dashboard also will reduce the number of e-mail notifications necessary to complete the coordination process. The coordinator, reviewers and approval officials will have the ability to choose to receive one e-mail a day or none. "With the old system, commanders coming in for their (unit training assembly) weekend could be faced with hundreds of e-mails just for vPC-GR transactions," Colonel Ottinger said. "Many of our customers found the number of e-mails generated by every request excessive. Now they decide how many they receive. That's good news." When an Airman sets up his or her vPC-GR account profile, the system will default to send a notification e-mail to the member when there are pending actions. Airmen who would rather not receive the e-mail notification can uncheck the appropriate box. Airmen who choose this option are responsible to check their dashboard frequently for pending actions. Another dashboard feature allows specific Airmen to eliminate processing delays by delegating their responsibility or role to another member within their organization. If a primary member has delegated his or her role to another, it cannot be further delegated to someone else. The primary can release the delegated role by designating an expiration date or deleting it upon return to duty. For example, if a first sergeant must attend a class, go on an extended TDY or deploy, he or she can delegate the first sergeant role to another responsible Airman in the unit. The dashboard structure will affect coordination on existing vPC-GR retirements and awards and decorations applications. Information about these changes and future applications can be found on the Air Reserve Personnel Center's Personnel Services Delivery Transformation page. Comment on this story (comments may be published on Air Force Link) View the comments/letters page