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JBSA News
NEWS | Dec. 13, 2011

AF officials implement task management software for personnel, services, manpower community

By Tech. Sgt. Steve Grever Air Force Personnel, Services and Manpower Public Affairs

Air Force officials are providing specialized task management software to help field operating agencies in the Air Force's personnel, services and manpower community track and manage official taskings and correspondence from Headquarters, Air Force Manpower, Personnel and Services. The new software went online Nov. 1.

The web-based Task Management Tool is designed to support task management processes for the Air Force Personnel Center, Air Force Manpower Agency, Air Force Services Agency, Air Force Personnel Operations Agency and Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations.

"Each FOA received TMT to help them keep official taskings organized and ensure accountability," said Joey Keyes, the Air Force's deputy assistant to the chief information officer for manpower, personnel and services. "It also assists FOAs with task consolidation, collaboration and management."

The TMT software took about four months to implement and coordinate some of the logistical and technical details between Air Staff, Air Force Reserve Command, Air Force Space Command, AFPOA and the 902nd Communications Squadron at Randolph Air Force Base, Texas.

"TMT brings a unique ability to see responses from multiple organizations that are consolidated on one screen," Keyes said. "The system eliminates the need to locate and attempt to organize multiple e-mails to consolidate an organization's response."

TMT is also a centralized repository for supporting documents and comments related to each task. Action officers can upload their documents to a single location to allow for better collaboration on documents related to a particular task.

The current process FOAs use for receiving official taskings from Headquarters, Air Force Manpower, Personnel and Services is e-mail. But, the current method does not give Air Staff or FOA leadership the ability to track, transfer, or search old and current taskings.

According to Gary Cunningham, AFPOA's TMT project manager, AFPOA has worked with Keyes and other Air Staff agencies to distribute 375 licenses to all five FOAs to get them up and running with the TMT software.

"TMT provides a streamlined system for organizing and staffing taskers to give FOA senior leaders, executive officers and action officers' visibility over their unit's taskings," Cunningham said.

Mike Williams, AFRC IT project manager, said AFRC worked with AFPOA representatives to establish a unique version of TMT to allow users from other domains to access their TMT system through a common access card-authenticated website.

"This web-based system also allows A1 FOA users to access their TMT sites from home and mobile devices," Williams said. "We currently support about 371 users and work closely with Air Staff and A1 FOA support teams. Our enterprise tasking solution layer in TMT allows us to connect every TMT system together as well, which will give MAJCOMs the ability to send taskers to each other once they are online with their individual systems."

Kimberly Schmitz, Air Force Executive Secretariat Learning Office, and Sean McGarrahan, Air Force Workflow Support, were also deployed to provide TMT "Train the Trainer" training to 36 FOA members who will implement and manage the new software for their respective agencies. These Airmen and civilians will also instruct more than 300 unit members to use the TMT software for managing Air Staff taskings.

AFRC has set up additional TMT systems for AFSPC and Air Force Special Operations Command and are working to bring the Air National Guard online next year.