Military Duty Shift Reminder System
(2023 - Present)

At USAFA, a pair of cadets carries out a military duty daily. It is called, "JDO Shift" The main duties include getting the number of people who are on bed rest, reporting the number of boxed lunches needed for the squadron, picking up and delivering the boxed lunches, and other accountability duties to assist the supervisor. However, I noticed that the JDO shifts often forget their shifts and do not fulfill the JDO duties since there was no established system to share the JDO shift list except the supervisor sharing an excel file through Teams or GroupMe. It was inconveninent for cadets to go to excel sheet to find their names and check on when their shifts are each time. In my squadron, only 10% of the JDO shifts sent a message to the squadron to track how many people need boxed lunches throughout the 22 fall semester.

I learned about Microsoft Power Automate from my experience at Junction Asia 2022 Hackathon. Microsoft Power Platform was one the tracks to choose from. I have an excel sheet of all of the personnel in the squadron and shift count tracker. These excel sheets are stored in OneDrive. Power Automate pulls these data from OneDrive, and sends Teams message JDO shift reminder to a pair of JDOs and their supervisor at 2000 on the night before the shift and 0645 on the morning of the shift.

Following is what messages look like when JDOs receive them.

• The product improved the mission accomplishment rate by 87%.
• Other military duty shifts (JDOs, SDOs, and Summer Support Staff) utilize the system.

• 2023 USAFA Falcon Tank Finalist