When I go back to work next week, I have to immediately log into the Defense Travel System to create orders for a TDY to RAF Menwith Hill. Not exactly what I’m looking forward to after almost two weeks of leave, but it should be a fun TDY, so whatever.
Of course, DTS never works on my computer, so my first step in the process will be finding a computer on which DTS does work and isn’t being used. After that, figuring out the God-awful labyrinth of confusion that is that ridiculous system should be relatively easy.
Sorry to the non-military (or non-U.S.-military) folks who may not get today’s strip. Maybe we can get some personal experience stories in the comments to help it make a little more sense.
-Farva
DTS is EEEEVIL. It likes to go down a lot….. STS.
FIRST off, DTS isnt that bad. I have to do orders avery 2-3 months for medical TDY’s and I’m getting pretty good at it now. But then again, I go to the same place for the same amount of time, the only thing that changes is the dates for the TDY.
It depends on your job. My last four TDYs have been paid for by four different units, so four different accounting codes, and they’ve never been loaded right. Every single time I file my vouchers I get flagged for excessive costs, and have been denied cab fares from the airport to my TDY location, even with receipts. I’m sorry, but a cab from London to RAF Mildenhall is £300, whether DTS thinks that’s reasonable or not. Then it has to be approved, but as a Wing Staff Agency, all our reviewers and approvers are spread out through different units, and they all seem to like to take leave or go TDY at the same time. Seeing as many of my TDYs are short notice (usually one or two days to prepare) I don’t normally have a lot of time to wait for someone to come back and get all caught up on emails and office gossip before approving my orders. Add all that on top of the fact that, for some reason, my stupid POS computer doesn’t have the right security certificate to even log on to DTS, and it’s a certifiable nightmare. For me, anyway.
I harbor a lot of hatred for DTS.
I guess I can count myself lucky. The approving official at the Med Group is really easy to work with. When she was on leave one time, she hooked me up with a kid over at Finance who is a real whizbang on DTS.
As for the computer, I’m not sure what to say. I do my DTS stuff at home so I dont have to fight AF policies or equipment issues. I load whatever drivers I need and just use a CAC reader I bought at the BX. Sucks I have to do it on my personal time and computer, but it save alot of headaches. Now to get Outlook working again……………….
I’m going TDY, but it’s for 7 lvl school and AETC funded TDYs you get to do an old school travel voucher through Finance. We’ll see how that goes.
My experiences with DTS were mostly bad. I used the help screen to help me guide through things, but it would be the things DTS isn’t really setup to handle that would get fugly. I went TDY to Tyndall for William Tell with some of the flying units from Nellis. One of the flying units decided to End Ex early, so one other person and myself had to return early. Well the TDY Lead for my section went and got us the plane tickets back for us. What insued after my return was a fiscal nightmare, because I didn’t have any receipts for the new plane tickets and I couldn’t prove that the other flight was cancelled and refunded. Yay?
Now they have whole different POS web based thing you use for non-DTS orders called ePips. I miss the days of just walking up to the counter at the MPF and filing a travel voucher.
I had to use ePips when I filed my travel voucher for PCSing to Mildenhall. Finance has/had a class every other week where they walked you through the whole process. Took me about 20-30min to file my travel voucher. That was over a year ago now, so we’ll see how well it goes after my TDY. heh
I have had to use DTS twice, both times has been comparable to several simultaneous root canals. Not even the Unit monitors have any Idea how to use it.
One of the people I work with spent 6.5 hours trying to fix a DTS problem. Seem the system did not “charge” the CTO processing fee for 3 TDYs. Let’s just say he is now a really big DTS fan
Having been a UDM before I have always hated DTS. It never worked right, it always screwed up what I was trying to do, and it seemed like I had to do 4 or 5 orders just to get 1 right. I have always felt DTS was the worse thing the AF ever did. Now I’m a training monitor and dealing with TBA and I have come to understand something….the AF has no concept of what “automated” or “easier” means when trying to move to a paperless AF.
Is it DTS that’s so bad or the people each squadron puts in charge of it. As an A1C, twice I had to pay out out pocket because our Rep had no clue how to guide me with it and his solution to reconcile was for me to pay out of my pocket, around 200 total. Young airmen don’t make that much. That was a huge hit for me. But worth it to not have to deal with this Guy anymore
Word of advice: never “suck it up” when the AF owes you money. Or services. I took it in the pants for over $500 when I PCS’ed to Turkey several years back. All because Finance didnt process my vouchers fast enough and I incurred late fees and finance charges on my GTC. While I did go to my supervisor and 1st Sergeant, I wasnt aggressive enough to make anyone else push the issue. Never again.
Agreed. If the AF owes you even a penny, make sure you get it from them, no matter how much hassle it is, because you’d better believe if you owed THEM a penny, they wouldn’t skip a beat to extract it from you, whether you could truly afford it or not.
So now, will Barbie’s injury ground him? I mean, that’s a lot of glass embedded in his hand. And does that mean no Vegas TDY?
See, I’m guessin maybe we are the only non AF folks on here right now… cuz all the other posts so far have been about DTS….which is a strange name since not all services use it…anyway, yeah, I hope that glass in Barbie’s hand doesn’t ruin his vegas trip…but I’m thinkin no since Farva gave us a big lead up to it…
Nah, I’m with you guys. Don’t use (and judging by the stories here, hope never to use) DTS.
That being said, I’m concerned the monitor damage may hamper Barbie’s natural ability in Vegas… acting superior to everyone else! Kinda hard to say “I’m a fighter pilot” when you got your hand all wrapped up because a monitor hurt you…
DTS just shows the world how screwed up the sytem is; instead of having one or two folks trained on DTS and use it every day, blah, blah, blah – We have several hunderd folks gaggling around the monitor, wasting time trying to get their “trip” booked/filed, and even then they have to team up with a “expert” who uses it everyday. Can we just paint a bullseye on the main DTS server and put us all out of our misery????
That’s the problem every time the AF tries to automate an already simple system, Whether it is TBA, DTS, TAS, etc. The automation of the system should be simple, quick, and user friendly. None of these systems are.
I think the problem is not that the AF is trying to automate stuff because if you think about it, most of the world is automated nowadays. The problem is when someone or a group of someones gets sold on a product without looking at how it will actually work in the AF. Take Vista for example. XP was compatible with practically every program the AF used at the time. If it wasnt 100%, it was easy to find or create a patch to make it work. Vista however, wasnt compatible with alot of AF programs and alot of agencies had to either dump thier programs in leiu of new ones, or get waivers to continue using XP. You see alot of programs and systems the AF gets these days are civilian programs or systems modified to meet the needs of the AF. So that slick new Training program might look good when Boeing is used as the model, but not so much when used for the AF. While I still keep hardcopies of all my paperwork, it is convenient to be able to look up my last five EPR’s when applying for that special duty or when my leadership is running through my next EPR. But technology is only great when it works.
Luckily for all of us the Air Force finally decided to let TAS die. Too bad it’s replacement is about 2 years away.
I almost ALWAYS have problems with my travel vouchers, but that’s a Finance problem.
We are not allowed to hit the finance troops…
Unfortunately.
On the Civ side, DTS is relatively user-friendly. The problem comes when the travel/finance Nazis try to apply their own policies and complicate the mix. NO TRAVEL FOR YOU!
I’m with Farva on this one. I am in DTS at minimum once a week. I travel on average 3 out of every 4 weeks and even go through some months where I’m on the road every week. It never fails that when I get back there is an issue of some sort on my voucher. DTS apparently believes that if you travel somewhere, you have to use an ATM. This causes a flag, and another signature before approval. Stupid computer program….. Personally I’d rather use my personal debit card to avoid confusion and it saves me from have to figure out what I owe to Uncle Sam. On other hand, putting in so many orders, Ive become good friends with some of the people at the help desk and can usually get these issues taken care of pretty quickly.
And Farva, you comic is not far from the truth. One of my troops cracked his laptop screen after getting mad at DTS.
Just started in a new office and they have a DTS guru who handles all of their TDYs. No DTS for 2 years? Victory!
I’m on TDY right now and I didn’t have a single problem with DTS. I had a problem with the human side. People don’t like to open the program up and approve the orders or read the comments when there is an issue. Like with this TDY, a different unit was paying for my TDY and I didn’t have the accounting code loaded. They were paying for everything except my rental car. My unit was paying for that. Well, instead of looking at the comment, and separating out the two payment lines, they charged it all to my unit and approved it. I guess we’ll figure it out when I get back to work in the middle of August. LOL
While DTS tends to be flakey, does anyone besides me remember DTS Limited? We were using at Kadena before DTS came full online. Took on average 3 weeks to 2 months to get a voucher back.
My wife manages DTS for training. She agrees with you.
DTS is the worst idea in the long, sad history of bad ideas
My favorite thing about DTS is the fact that it apparently can’t grasp the concept of currency conversion. The last several trips I’ve made from Korea back to the CONUS, I had to get special authorization because my rental car for $178,000 per day was slightly over the limit.
Having been TDY more than 50% of the time I’ve been at this duty station, my biggest DTS tip is this: know who your approvers are, and don’t be shy about bugging them to do their jobs. Next biggest tip: ALWAYS go to ‘other authorizations’ and select ‘variations authorized.’ ALWAYS. Saves more headaches than I can count.
It’s gotten to the point that we don’t even set up our plane tickets/hotels/rental cars in DTS… we check the little box for SATO travel assistance, go over to their office, and they take care of pretty much all of it… we go back into DTS, set up individual items with the proposed costs, then when we get back, we update them with actual cost. So far it’s a ton easier, but I still don’t get the warm fuzzies when having to deal with DTS, and I think it somewhat defeats the purpose to have to do it that way. Heaven forbid you try to take leave while TDY though… if ANYTHING changes about your leave (even sometimes when it doesn’t) you have to fill out at least 3-5 boxes with justifications on where you’re going, if your leave was approved, etc… Overall major PITA.
Back in my day, computers were not common. And desktop computers were you clunky calculator. I was in during the Carter years. God, I feel old. Sextants and water injection, those were the days!
Water injection? Were you a BUFF guy?
No, KC-135As. I did train on a Buff at Chanute.
I worked on the R/T models for 5 years at Farichild. I saw a patch somewhere around the base that said something along the lines of “KC-135A – When man thought he could burn water.”
In some ways I’m glad I served when I did…we were told(sometimes at the last minute) where,when and how to go, given a stack of paper orders and off we went.
Common Sense DOESN’T exist in the US Military…..
Stationed at Incirlik the Air conditioner unit for our barracks failed during the summer. The big Diesel engine that ran it quit. They found a replacement unit in Austrailia…they then not only had to buy it, they also had to pay to have it shipped to Turkey. One of my freinds in supply figured that they could buy every room in the barracks a window-mounted unit for half the price(and get them to us in 5 days), where as the shipping from Aus. took 7 months.
They just posted a software update last week so any computer that it did work on now will not load it.
Stupid thing, all I get is a pop-up with their logo on it. DTS is the biggest FAIL ever!
I hated DTS at first but then I found this awesome 800 number and this guy accessed my messed up voucher and made it perfect in about 5 minutes. Too bad I can’t seem to find that number again
I created an account just to comment on this strip.
As a fellow PA Farva, I feel your pain. I don’t believe I’ve ever had the same accounting code twice, which is a total nightmare. Every time I’ve went TDY it’s been a total cluster when it came to the DTS side of it.
And yeah, being Wing Staff means getting a hold of any of your POCs for anything is also a nightmare.
OMG I hate DTS! It makes my life as a spouse so damned stressful when hubby is leaving for the desert because he has to make so many freaking changes before it’s all approved and then half the time it gets fudged up after he leaves and I have to go to his unit with my SPOA and his orders so they can fix the danged thing… and I am very proud of myself for not cussing here. It stresses him out so badly that the final week before he leaves is more of “just hurry up and leave” than “no don’t go!!!”
DTS is the sort of pain in the neck software you get when the Air Force decides to force shape all of its experienced Computer Programmers into other career fields and outsource.
DTS is the spawn of the devil. A process that used to take me ten to twenty minutes by filling out a paper voucher, and which usually had me paid within two weeks has turned into at minimum two hours on the computer every time I want to try and do a voucher followed by at least a month to get paid. Of course it shouldn’t take a month, they say it should take a few days, but with the “digital” copy going through even more approving hands then the paper copy ever did it always take forever. Even better is that most of our experts on it know only slightly more then the rest of us and they usually can’t fix things any better then we can.
I love hearing DTS stories. I was an administrator (ODTA) for USTRANSCOM few years ago. I made sure all my peeps, both travellers and AOs, had training on how to use so I had happy people. Unfortunately too many ODTAs either don’t get trained properly themselves or just don’t think its their responsibility to train their folks. I’m retired now but help the peeps in my new unit as much as I can (I’m a contractor now doing something else)
DTS is one of those great ideas that ultimately failed on implementation. As a finance troop (ducking rotten tomatoes) I’ve worked with DTS quite a bit. As with all modern day USAF automated systems it was designed to make everyone’s life easier, but ends up creating huge heartburn for the end user. No, DTS is not user friendly which is why 75% of the errors and horror stories in DTS are caused by user error. If you know the ins and outs of DTS it is a pretty efficient system and a lot better than the old way of doing things–just the ability to Cross-org a fund cite from another unit saves about 4-5 hours of heartburn. The problem is the AF expects every member to be an expert even if they only travel once a year and all of the “experts” were either force shaped or made to work in Ellsworth. And yes, the other 25% of errors are caused by the system itself as it does go through mood swings and can be very buggy.