User_Workflows_and_Documentation.md

User Workflows and Documentation - Draft

Welcome to ANET! We hope you’re finding it easy to use. In the information below, we describe a little bit about how the system works, and some of the major uses cases for this software. If you do need help, you can read below to see if there are instructions for what you’re trying to do. If your question still isn’t answered, please email the system administrator at [BLANK].

Getting Started in ANET

What is the Advisor Network (ANET)?

ANET is an online tool designed to aid the Resolute Support mission to train, advise, and assist (TAA) the Afghan government. It does this by giving advisors an easy way to record the outcomes of their engagements, and share that information across the mission as needed. ANET’s advanced search capabilities make it easy for advising organizations and mission leadership to gain context on engagements which can shape future decision making.

Using ANET for the first time

Accessing ANET To log in for the first time, you’ll need to log onto a computer with access Afghan Mission Network. When you’ve done that, open up a web browser and go to the ANET webpage. Then you’ll be able to use the Advisor Network (ANET).

ANET logs you in with your existing credentials, so as long as you can log into your computer, you should be able to access ANET and already be logged in to your account.

Checking your information The first time you visit, you’ll first be taken to a page that shows your profile information. Please make sure that your name, rank, position, and other information is correct. You’ll need be associated with a position in order to see your organization’s reports and have your reports approved by your Super User.

You can add a position to your profile by typing the position into the field next to the word “Position”. As you type, we’ll search the existing positions to find what you’re typing in. If we don’t find your position, you’ll need to ask your Super User to create the position for you. Your Super User can also add you to a position once they’ve created the position.

After this information is up to date, you’re ready to use ANET.

Workflows for Advisors

These workflows are the ones that will be most helpful for advisors. Super Users and Admins are also able to complete these workflows.

Drafting and Submitting Reports

You have a couple of options for when you create your reports. If you create a draft report before your engagement, you can set a future date and find that report listed as one of your future engagements. If you create a report after the fact, you can submit the entire report to your approval chain all at once.

Here’s how you draft and submit a report:

1. From the home page, find the “New Report” button. It’ll be towards the top right of the page. If you’re a Super User or Administrator, you’ll need to click onto the “Create” button and select “New Report” from the options.
2. This button will take you to a page called “Create a new report”. You’ll enter information in the fields on the page. Some fields are required, while others (like PoAMs) are optional.
3. Meeting Goal: First, fill out what the goal of the meeting was. This field will be used to populate the executive summary used in the daily rollup, so it’s best to complete the sentence “The goal of the is meeting is to”. Engagement date: Next you’ll select the engagement date. When you click into the field, a calendar will display showing the current month. You can press the “today” button at the bottom to easily select the current day, or select another date. 4.Engagement date: Next you’ll select the engagement date. When you click into the field, a calendar will display showing the current month. You can press the “today” button at the bottom to easily select the current day, or select another date.
4. Location: As you being to type the location where the engagement happened, results that match what you’ve typed will begin to appear. You can keep typing, or select one of the options from the dropdown. If what you’ve entered has no matches, the box will turn red. If you’ve typed in your location properly and it does not appear, ask your Super User to add that location to ANET.
5. Cancelled engagements: If your engagement was cancelled, select the checkbox next to “This engagement was cancelled”. When you select that option, you’ll be prompted to select the reason for why the engagement was cancelled. Some fields on the form will no longer be visible. You’ll only need to fill out meeting attendance and next steps after this point. You can add detailed comments if you’d like.
6. Atmosphere: You can record the engagement’s atmosphere, by selecting the thumbs up icon for a positive atmosphere during your engagement, the neutral face for engagements that were neither positive nor negative, and the thumbs down icon for negative engagement. If you select either neutral or negative icons, you’ll be prompted to add details explaining why it was not positive.
7. Meeting Attendance: In this section, you can add the advisors and principals who attended your engagements. By default, you will be listed in this section. People you have added in recent reports will appear in the “Shortcuts” section on the right-hand side of Attendees. To add one of them, just click on their name. For others, start typing their name into the text field next to “Attendees” and select their name from among the results. If you don’t see the person you are trying to add, ask your Super User to add them to ANET. In this section, you can also select who the primary advisor and principal in the meeting were. By default, the first advisor and principal added will be selected as the primary. To select someone else, just select the check mark to the left of their name.
8. PoAMs: If your meeting related to one of your advising organization’s PoAMs or Pillars, you can select it by searching for it in the text field to the right of “PoAMs”. If your meeting did not relate to a PoAM, it’s okay to leave this part blank.
9. Key outcomes: In the field next to “Key outcomes”, you have 250 characters to provide a summary of the most important points of the engagement. This will appear in your report’s executive summary, so make sure it’s the most impactful information for leadership and other advisors to see. 11.Next Steps: In the next steps field, you have 250 characters to describe the next steps you’ll be taking on this issue or with this principal. This will appear in the executive summary.
10. Add detailed comments: If you feel that there is more information to include in your report, click on the “Add detailed comments” button. When you click on it, an open text field will appear where you can write as much as you’d like.
11. Saving your report: To save the draft version of the report, you can click on the “Save report” button at the top, or very bottom, of the page. This will create a draft of your report. You can click save at anytime to hold onto the work you’ve already completed. On this page, you can preview what your report’s executive summary will look like and see if there are any required fields that you still need to fill out. If you’d like to edit your saved draft, click on the “Actions” button on the top of the page, then select “Edit”. You’ll be able to edit and resave your report.
12. Submitting your report: When you’re happy with your draft report and are ready to submit it, scroll down to the bottom of your draft, and click on the “Submit report” button. This will send the report to the first person(s) in your approval chain.
13. Viewing your approvers: After you’ve submitted your report, it goes to the first person in your advising organization’s approval chain. You can see who needs to approve your report while viewing that report. By scrolling down to the section called “Approvals”, you can see each approval step in your organization. By clicking on each step, you can see the individuals who can approve your report.
14. Daily Rollup: Once your report gone through your organization’s approval process, it will be added to the daily rollup. You can view the daily rollup by clicking on “Daily Rollup” on the left-hand menu of the page.

Creating Future Engagements

Future engagements are a great way for you to keep track of your upcoming engagements. To create a future engagement, start by creating a new report. In the date field, select the date of the future engagement. Feel free to fill in as much information as you already know---information like the attendees, location, and meeting purpose.

Then, just click save at the top or bottom of the page. This will save your future engagement as a draft report which you can come back to after your engagement and finish filling out the information.

My ANET Snapshot

The “My ANET Snapshot” on the homepage gives you a quick look into some important information about your reports. Each of these sections quickly shows you how many reports of that type there are. To see the reports themselves, just click on the number.

Reports Pending Approval In the first box, labelled “Reports Pending Approval” you can see how many of your reports need to be approved before they’ll be added to the daily rollup. If you’re a Super User, this number tells you how many reports have been submitted by advisors that you need to review.

My organization’s recent reports On a given day, several advisors in your advising organization may submit reports. The number of reports submitted by members of your organization is listed in the second section of the “My ANET Snapshot”.

My reports in the last 24 hours This section quickly displays reports you have drafted or submitted in the last 24 hours.

Upcoming Engagements This section displays how many future engagements you have created. Future engagements are draft reports which have a date in the future. To learn more about future engagements, please see that section above.

Searching

Searching in ANET is the best way to quickly find information. At the top of the home page, there’s a search button where you can enter a keyword. Keywords are things like people’s names, locations, topics, and others.

Once you’ve entered your search, you’ll be taken to a page of search results. These results will show you any reports, people, positions, locations, or organizations that contain that keyword.

Saved Search

If you want to be able to quickly check the results of a search, you have the ability to save your searches. For example, if you were interested in seeing all reports that use the word “corruption”, you could search for it as described above. To easily check the search results, you can save that search by [BLANK].

When you’ve saved your search this way, the results will display on the homepage under “Saved Searches”. You can also toggle between multiple saved searches by clicking on the dropdown menu under “Saved Searches” and selecting the search results you’d like to view.

Daily Rollup

ANET makes it easy to see recent reports. At anytime, you can click on “Daily Rollup” on the left-hand menu and see the reports that have been approved within the last 24 hours for engagements within the last [BLANK]. You can scroll through the report summaries, and click on the “Read full report” link to see the entire report.

The daily rollup also includes a graph visually display how many reports from each AO have been submitted within the last 24 hours. You can also quickly view cancelled engagements here.

Delete Draft Reports If you ever need to delete a draft report—if, for example you accidentally create one—you can do so by [BLANK].

Please note that you cannot delete reports that have been submitted for approval, or those which have already been approved and added to the daily rollup.

Commenting

Once a report is submitted for approvals, ANET users can comment on it. While users reviewing reports before releasing them to the daily will be prompted to add a comment when rejecting a report, all users can use commenting the commenting function. These comments will be visible to all users.

Editing Rejected Reports

If your reviewer rejects your report, you’ll receive an email letting you know. The email will include the comment the left explaining why the report was rejected. You’ll need to edit and resubmit the report.

In order to edit the report, you’ll first need to navigate to the report in ANET. You can do this by clicking on the link provided in the email, or clicking on “My Reports” on the left-hand menu of the homepage. When you find and click into the report, you can review the comment the reviewer left.

To edit the report, click on the “Actions” button on the top right of the page, and select the edit option. You’ll then be editing a draft version of the report. Once you’ve made the changes you need to make, you can save and resubmit the report for approval.

View Principals You Advise

Keeping track of who you’re advising is a critical part of the TAA mission. ANET provides a couple of ways to view the Principals you’re advising.

One way to find this information is to search for your name in the search bar at the top of the homepage. When you find yourself among the search results, click on your name. You’ll be taken to a page with your profile information, including your contact information, the position you hold, and reports you’ve authored or are mentioned in. In the “Position” section of the page, you’ll see a subsection called “Advises”. This section lists principals you advice.

You can also get to your profile information by navigating to your advising organization. You do this by clicking on “EFs / AOs” on the left hand menu, and selecting your advising organization. Once there, click on “Laydown” in the submenu on the left-hand of the page. You can find yourself under “Supported Laydown”.

To see if other advisors are advising your principal, you can click on their name to view their profile information. Under the “Position” section, you’ll see the subsection called “Advised by” which lists their advisors.

Emailing Individual Reports

When you read a report that you think someone else may want to read, you can quickly and easily email it to them from within ANET. To send someone a report:

1. Click the “Actions” button on the top right of the report
2. Select the “Email Report” option
3. You’ll be prompted to search for the name of the person you’d like to send the report to.
4. You also have the option to include a comment in the email. Once you’ve added the comment, click the “Send Email” button and you’re all set.

##Workflows for Super Users *These workflows are the ones that will be most helpful for Super Users. Admins are also able to complete these workflows. Super Users and Admins have advanced capabilities within ANET. Super Users are able to manage information for their organization, and admins are able to manage information across the system. *

Approving and Rejecting Reports

Super Users (or advisors who are added to an organization’s approval chain), may need to review advisors’ reports before they are released to the daily rollup. One way to quickly see which reports you need to review:

1. Start on the ANET homepage and click on the box within the ANET snapshot called displaying a number and the words “Pending my approval”.
2. Clicking there will take you to a page of the reports that are waiting on your approval.
3. Select the report you’d like to review by clicking on the “Read full report” button visible on the bottom right of the report summary.
4. There, you’ll be able to see the entire report, including the executive summary which will be displayed in the daily rollup.
5. Below the report summary, you can can reject with a comment by clicking on the “Reject with comment” button. Similarly, you can edit or approve the report by clicking on the “Edit report” or “Approve” buttons, respectively.
6. If you reject the report, you’ll be prompted to include a comment with the rejection if you have not already done so. Once rejected, the report is resent to the author to review.
7. If you approve the report it will go to the next approver if there is one, or it will be released to the daily rollup if you were the final approver.

Creating a new person

As a Super User, you are responsible for creating new people when your organization members come onto the mission, or need to mention someone in a report who has not previously been mentioned.

To create a new person in ANET:

1. Click on the “Create” button on the top right-hand side of the page.
2. Then, select “New Person” from the options.
3. You’ll be prompted to fill out information about that person.
4. Name: fill out their name (first and last).
5. Role: Select advisor or principal from the dropdown menu of options.
6. Email: You can optionally add an email address for that advisor or principal
7. Phone number: You can optionally add a phone number for this person
8. Rank: You can select the military rank of the person, or identify that they are a civilian or contractor.
9. Gender: You can select the person’s gender.
10. Country: You can add which country the person is from
11. End of tour date: You can add their end of tour date.
12. Biography: This is an open text field where you can record helpful information about this person.
13. Position: You can identify which position this person is filling by searching for the position (by name or billet/tashkill number). If their position does not already exist in the system, you can leave this blank and create the position for them.
14. Once those fields have been completed, click the “Save person” button at the bottom of the page.

Creating a new position

To create a new person in ANET:

1. Click on the “Create” button on the top right-hand side of the page.
2. Then select “New Position” from the dropdown menu of options.
3. Begin filling in the information requested on the page:
4. Type: choose whether the position is for an advisor / billet, or a principal / tashkill.
5. Organization: Search for the organization that the position is for by searching in this field.
6. Code: You can add the billet / tashkill code here.
7. Position Name: Enter the name of the position here.
8. Person: You can search for the person who fills this position in this field.
9. Permissions: This drop down menu lets you choose what permission someone with this role should have in ANET. Super Users can assign positions the permissions of an advisor or Super User. Admins have the added ability to assign positions administrative permissions.
10. Assigned Position Relationships: You can list which advisees an advisor in this role is responsible for advising. If you’re creating a new Afghan principal, you can identify which position is responsible for advising them by searching in this bar and adding that role.
11. Location: You can optionally add where this person is located by searching for that location in this field.
12. Once you’ve filled in the information on this page, click the “Save position” button on the bottom of the page.

Creating a new location

To create a new location:

1. Click on the “Create” button on the right-hand side of the home page.
2. Then, select “New Location” from the options.
3. On the “Create a new Location” page, enter the name of the location.
4. Drag the pin on the map to the location.
5. Click the “Save location” button at the bottom of the page.

Creating a new organization

To create a new organization:

1. Click on the “Create” button on the right-hand side of the home page.
2. Then, select “New Organization” from the options.
3. On the “Create a new Organization” page, first indicate if the organization you need to create is an advisor organization (NATO), or an organization within the Afghan Government by toggling between those options.
4. Then, if the organization you’re creating is part of another organization, you can add that parent organization by searching for it by name in the “Parent organization” field.
5. In the “Name” field, enter the name of the organization you’re creating.
6. Enter a description of the organization in the “Description” field.
7. Finally, click “Save organization” on the bottom of the page.

Creating a new PoAM / Pillar

To create a new PoAM / Pillar:

1. Click on the “Create” button on the right-hand side of the home page.
2. Then, select “New PoAM” from the options.
3. In the “Short name” field, enter the short name of the PoAM.
4. In the “Long name” field, enter the long name of the PoAM.
5. In the “Responsible org” field, search for the organization or suborganization that will use this PoAM.
6. Finally, click the “Save PoAM” button on the bottom of the page.

Editing people, positions, locations, organizations, and PoAMs

There are several ways to find the person, position, locations, organizations, or PoAMs that you’d like to edit. In most cases, the easiest way to find this information is to search for it by name, using the search bar at the top of the home page. For example, if you want to search for the person “John Smith”, just enter that name in the top search bar, and look through the results for the person you’re hoping to edit.

Once you find what you’re hoping to edit by searching, click on it from the search results page. You will be taken to a page that lets you view the detailed information about that person, place, or object. When you’re there, click on the “Actions” button on the top right-hand side of the page, and select the “Edit” option. You’ll then be able to make and save changes.

Understanding People and Positions

As a Super User, you’re responsible for managing the people and positions in your organization in ANET. When you’re managing your organization, it’s helpful to understand the relationship between people and positions.

Positions Positions live within organizations and have relationships assigned to them to indicate who is advised by that position, or who advises that position in the case of Afghan principals. Positions are also what get assigned permissions in ANET. That way, as people rotate in and out of theatre, their permissions, roles, and advisees remain constant as they take over someone’s role. When you create or edit a position, you can add the person currently filling that position to it.

People People fill positions. When you create a person, you add details about them, like their rank, contact information, and a biography. You can also add that person to an existing position when you create or edit a person. If you need to add them to a new position, that doesn’t exist in ANET yet, you’ll need to create the position and then add the person to it.

Replacing someone in an existing position

When someone new comes into theatre you’ll likely need to create that person and add them to an existing position. We recommend that you start by creating that person as described in the directions above. When you reach the bottom of the page, you can search for the position that person is going to fill, and assign them that way.

Alternatively, you can create the person who is coming into theatre. Then, you can navigate to the existing position. Click on the “Actions” button, then select the “Edit” option. From there, under the “Person” field, replace the current position holder with the person you just created.

Creating an approval chain for your organization

As a Super User, you can create approval chains for your organization. These approval chains indicate who needs to review advisors’ reports before they’re added to the daily rollup.

The approval chain is a series of steps. In each step, you can add one or more person to review reports. If there is more than one person in a step, it means that either of them can review the report. One of the two (but not both) must review the report for it to move on to the last step.

After the report has been approved by someone in the final step, their report will go to the daily rollup. If, along the way, one of the reviewers rejects the report, the report will be returned to the author for corrections. The report will then need to be resubmitted.

##Workflows for Admins These workflows are the ones that will be most helpful for Admins. Admins are able to complete all of the workflows available to Advisors and Super Users. They also have a few additional capabilities within the ANET front end outlined here.

Setting a Default Approval Organization

As an administrator, you have the ability to modify the default approval organization. The default approver organization is the organization that reports will have to be approved by if the author is not part of another organization. Typically, if reports go through these approval steps it means that the person who submitted the report needs to be placed into a position, which will add them to an organization.

If, for example, you have the admin organization acting as the default approval organization, you’ll be responsible for reviewing reports submitted by an advisor without an organization. If you see this, you should check to see if they’ve been added to a position, and whether or not that position has an organization.

To set the default approval organization, start by selecting “Admins” from the left-hand menu bar on the home screen. From there, you’ll see a field called “Default approval organization”. To change the default approval organization, enter the number of the organization that you would like to be the default organization. Once you’re done, click the “Save settings” button at the bottom of the page.

Updating the Security Banner Text and Color

Admins have the ability to modify the color and text of the security banner. To modify these settings, start by clicking on “Admins” on the left-hand menu on the home screen. From there, you can change the text of the security banner by entering your desired text in the “Security banner text” field. Similarly, you can change the color by entering your desired color in the “Security banner color” field.