The monthly meeting of the OA Users Group was held 11 January 1996, in the AFOMS conference room, Hanger 13, Randolph AFB, Texas. Squadron Leader Herlihy, AL/HRMJ (RAAF Exchange), opened the meeting at about 1415 hours; those in attendance included:

SqLdr John Herlihy    AL/HRMJ      536-3222  Herlihy@alhrm.brooks.af.mil
Johnny Weissmuller    Metrica/IJOA 340-8211  MPT@metricanet.com 
Elena Weber           AFOMS/OMYX   652-5811  WeberE@mail.omsq.af.mil
Joe Bergman           AFOMS/OMYA   653-3696  BergmanJ@mail.omsq.af.mil
Hank DuBois           AFOMS/OMYV   652-6811  DuboisH@mail.omsq.af.mil
Lauri Odness          AFOMS/OMYA   652-3696  OdnessL@mail.omsq.af.mil
Jim Keeth             AFOMS/OMYO   652-6811  KeethJ@mail.omsq.af.mil
Darryl Hand           Metrica      340-8211  codap@metricanet.com
Jimmy Mitchell        IJOA         349-8525  IJOAJLM@AOL.COM
J. S. Tartell         AFOMS/OMY    652-6623  TartellJ@mail.omsq.af.mil
Walter Albert         AL/HRMJ      536-3222  Albert@alhrm.brooks.af.mil
Bill Phalen           IJOA         733-8858  None

1. Mr. Joe Bergman, OMYA, was invited to speak first since he needs to leave the meeting early for a medical appointment. Mr. Bergman indicated that his staff was having trouble trying to use AUTHOR in that they were unable to master survey disks and were encountering General Protect Faults (0013:OJB5 & in AUTHOR.EXE at 0012:DAD6). Lauri Odness indicated she had also encountered some problems in editing the order of response items for Background Questions. She would also like to see the Print option activated and the ability to copy items. Since some of this feedback has not previously been provided to Dave Tucker and he was not able to attend this session, a separate meeting was arranged for David Tucker and Dr. Mitchell to visit AFOMS/ OMYA to see the faults noted above and attempt to troubleshoot the system. Lauri Odness indicated that some quick action is needed since she must very quickly make a decision as to whether or not send her Health Services Administrator (AFS 41AX) survey for printing or will use computer administration.

2. Darryl Hand, Metrica, Inc., reported that three program problems had been encountered in CODAP this last month:

A. The FACSET program is not allowing factors to be renamed even though this is sometimes needed. He indicated that the program has been modified to permit such renaming.

B. In the MODULE program, if there is a very large STS module (> 1000 tasks), the tasks in the later part of the listing can get off by one number. This is a rounding problem (related to the software on the IBM machine and how numbers > 999 were handled; the UNISYS system did not originally have an integer sort). Darryl reported that he has switched to an integer sort routine on the RISC systems, which will eliminate the problem.

C. GRPFAC also has some problems. TASSET uses stages, but there is sometimes a need to use a task module (TM) created by GRPFAC. If you try to rerun TASSET, it goes bonkers (it was not designed to be used with GRPFAC). It may be feasible on the RISC to make a change if such is to be desired (but this will not be possible on the UNISYS; the near-term future of the UNISYS is doubtful anyway, so no upgrading or maintenance is being done on that version of the CODAP system). STGFAC will stay the same but GRPFAC will be rewritten (on the RISC). Mr. Weissmuller suggested it also be done for the UNISYS machine to keep the CODAP software parallel until some formal decision is made on the future of the UNISYS.

3. As regards work on the CODAP interface, Mr. Hand reported that he now has CODAP documentation up and available on the world wide web (WWW). So far, there have been 39 "hits" where someone has accessed at least part of the documentation via the WWW; these hits include ones from the United Kingdom, Australia, the U.S. Army, etc. However, there have been no formal feedback messages, although the system provides users with the opportunity for feedback comments. Mr. Hand suspects that some of these hits are from key-word searches via gopher or search engines, and probably are not aimed specifically at getting access to the CODAP documentation. Darryl will track such hits in future months and try to estimate how many are legitimate searches for CODAP information.

4. Mr. Phalen indicated he was still anxious to work with knowledge clustering to augment and enhance automated task clustering algorithms; he indicated that we are waiting for the Canadian Forces to provide a couple of data sets for such experimentation (as per the CODAP meeting at the IMTA conference in Toronto last October). Dr. Mitchell stated he would contact Mr. Jeff Higgs to remind him of this commitment.

5. SqnLdr Herlihy stated he had been in touch with WgCmdr John Price in Australia by phone and learned that the Australian government is in the process of reviewing the need for their Exchange positions. It appears likely that the RAAF Exchange with the Armstrong Lab will be terminated at the end of SqnLdr Herlihy's tour of duty. The group expressed concern for such an action and several ideas for appealing or reversing the decision were discussed (who to call, etc.). It appears, however, that the decision may have already been finalized.

6. The next meeting is scheduled for 1400 hours, 8 February 1996, at the Metrica conference room, 10010 San Pedro, Suite 400, San Antonio, Texas.