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November 2020 - Citizenship Application

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siddharthbala

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I think applicants from other months are not actively updating their status (at least not as good as September 2020 applicants). I've removed several September 2020 applicants from the sheet because they were stale entries and weren't updated in a long time. I also check with applicants from time to time to get updates if the records haven't been updated. That is the reason why the September sheet appears to be complete and appears to have more test invites IMO.

I think at least one person from each month's thread should take up that responsibility of keeping the sheet complete and follow up with people with stale entries. Otherwise, the data is skewed and won't reflect the correct stats.

It is pain-staking work but at the end of the day, it shows the correct stats and the data isn't skewed so it is worth it.
I used to do most of that for a long while, but then I stopped because it wasn't worth the grief and the drama. Not to mention the sheet now needs a redesign to reflect the new tracker steps as well which makes deciphering this new layout of the process to identify trends somewhat....impossible.
 

sk000

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I used to do most of that for a long while, but then I stopped because it wasn't worth the grief and the drama. Not to mention the sheet now needs a redesign to reflect the new tracker steps as well which makes deciphering this new layout of the process to identify trends somewhat....impossible.
BRO!! It's voluntary. It takes your personal time we all know that. That doesnt mean you stop providing your insights man! We've missed that. Good to see you around as usual.
 
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rajkamalmohanram

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I used to do most of that for a long while, but then I stopped because it wasn't worth the grief and the drama. Not to mention the sheet now needs a redesign to reflect the new tracker steps as well which makes deciphering this new layout of the process to identify trends somewhat....impossible.
Well the spreadsheet does need a re-design but the reason why I have not considered asking the admins to change it is because 2020 is in the past. There are more than 1500 applicants in the 2020 sheet and updating this new information for such large number of applicants isn't feasible. If we do add the columns and make these updates going forward, that would make the spreadsheet grossly incomplete as not all applicants will come back and provide those missing details (and thereby making the spreadsheet even more incomplete than it already is.)

So, to avoid all that heartache, I have decided not to proceed with the re-design at least for 2020. May be there is still hope for 2021 as it is only 6 months old and it is probably easier to modify the format and add new information.

The key dates can still be updated - AOR, IP, Test Letter, Test, DM, Oath letter and Oath dates can be correctly captured in the existing spreadsheet. Further, I am adding all the additional information from the new dashboard into the 'Notes' section so that we can keep track of the timelines between BG complete to test, for example.
 
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siddharthbala

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BRO!! It's voluntary. It takes your personal time we all know that. That doesnt mean you stop providing your insights man! We've missed that. Good to see you around as usual.
The only insight I have at this point is that I'm not 100% convinced about nv's theory re: the new tracker and the Citizenship test. There's some correlation, not seeing enough causation to say it's valid just yet. For context, nv said :

From what i could gather from the forums, it seems that people are getting that email when an update is coming soon in a few days or week- either for a test invite, or fingerprint requests, or additional doc... I know a few people who submitted their application before I did, and have not received this email regarding the status tracker...

But again, trying to find patterns in or predict what the IRCC is doing is never really usefulll :)
In my case, I received the mail about the new tracker probably around the same time as everyone else did (June 18, 10:09 AM). Looking at the posts from the time that the first mention of that new tracker e-mail was put forth here, it would seem I'm not the only person who also received that batch e-mail on June 18. Since we do not have a confirmation from everyone in November to conclusively say there's a pattern (which would be as difficult as getting routine updates from everyone on there.... heh :D ) it stands to reason that the notification about the new tracker has likely nothing to do with any impending update to people's statuses about the citizenship test, but what it most likely is, is just a simple go-live for what is the end of a production cycle, i.e. "Hey, we've made this system and we monitored for x amount of time, Product Marketing has finally decided to get off their ass and tell people about it because some of the applicants have already figured it out."

What we're seeing with a few applications just happening to get their citizenship tests within a few days of this announcement, is a coincidence that it just happened to correlate to being a few days of that 'go live' e-mail. Hate to be a Debbie downer, but I'd like to see more data on 'gap in days between e-mail announcing tracker vs actually getting a test invite' before nv's theory is proven - my own gap at this point from receiving that e-mail is about 11 calendar days or about 7 working days).

As it stands, I see no reason for that e-mail to be correlated to a very specific step in the process considering they're both controlled by discrete systems. Should add that it's not all doom-and-gloom though - it would seem the GTA area is very popular for administration of the tests, at least looking at the number of people likely being serviced by the same VO that are getting the test invites. It also seems that the folks from September 2020 are on a tear as well. I think the original theory about there being something different about the way end of October-early November applicants are being handled (either a different lot/batch/method of processing) still, for now holds true - I'd be curious to see how October vs. November 2020 applicants hold up by comparison because October 2020 seems to be on the struggle bus right now, at least looking from the sheet. What is a bigger marker for progress though, still seems to be the location of applicants,
 
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siddharthbala

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Well the spreadsheet does need a re-design but the reason why I have not considered asking the admins to change it is because 2020 is in the past. There are more than 1500 applicants in the 2020 sheet and updating this new information for such large number of applicants isn't feasible. If we do add the columns and make these updates going forward, that would make the spreadsheet grossly incomplete as not all applicants will come back and provide those missing details (and thereby making the spreadsheet even more incomplete than it already is.)

So, to avoid all that heartache, I have decided not to proceed with the re-design at least for 2020. May be there is still hope for 2021 as it is only 6 months old and it is probably easier to modify the format and add new information.

The key dates can still be updated - AOR, IP, Test Letter, Test, DM, Oath letter and Oath dates can be correctly captured in the existing spreadsheet. Further, I am adding all the additional information from the new dashboard into the 'Notes' section so that we can keep track of the timelines between BG complete to test, for example.
Makes sense - tbh, seeing the horrific lag on that sheet when going to update it made me realize that maybe a Google sheet isn't the most practical method for warehousing this data. I seem to recall, around the time of my Express Entry, that someone had made a decent site with a basic login, a db on the back end and some barebones UI on the front end to allow people to log in and track their status there. It'd be an interesting little project if someone actually made something like that again for citizenship tracking that could allow for data dumps or an endpoint to a direct feed to a BI tool for some of us with entirely too much time on our hands to practise analytics queries :D
 

rajkamalmohanram

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Makes sense - tbh, seeing the horrific lag on that sheet when going to update it made me realize that maybe a Google sheet isn't the most practical method for warehousing this data. I seem to recall, around the time of my Express Entry, that someone had made a decent site with a basic login, a db on the back end and some barebones UI on the front end to allow people to log in and track their status there. It'd be an interesting little project if someone actually made something like that again for citizenship tracking that could allow for data dumps or an endpoint to a direct feed to a BI tool for some of us with entirely too much time on our hands to practise analytics queries :D
The website you are referring to still exists.

https://myimmitracker.com/en/ca/trackers/canadian-citizenship-processing-tracker

The problem is importing all the data from the spreadsheet into that tracker. Well, again, that's a gargantuan task, isn't it?
 
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siddharthbala

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The website you are referring to still exists.

https://myimmitracker.com/en/ca/trackers/canadian-citizenship-processing-tracker

The problem is importing all the data from the spreadsheet into that tracker. Well, again, that's a gargantuan task, isn't it?
It is, but not nearly as bad as you'd think - thankfully the raw data is still more manageable coming from the Google Sheet, but it'd be better to architect and start from scratch on that system than try to bring the crap from the existing sheet in there and then have stale data in there too.
 

rajkamalmohanram

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It is, but not nearly as bad as you'd think - thankfully the raw data is still more manageable coming from the Google Sheet, but it'd be better to architect and start from scratch on that system than try to bring the crap from the existing sheet in there and then have stale data in there too.
Yeah, that system has only 80 records. I'll keep an eye out on the updates there as well but trust me, even in that tracker, there will be stale data because some people are excited to get themselves added but provide no updates whatsoever.

I should really thank the people that are regularly updating their status or at least responding when being requested for an update.
 
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siddharthbala

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Yeah, that system has only 80 records. I'll keep an eye out on the updates there as well but trust me, even in that tracker, there will be stale data because some people are excited to get themselves added but provide no updates whatsoever.

I should really thank the people that are regularly updating their status or at least responding when being requested for an update.
100% - I just think it'd be easier to enforce staleness criteria automatically with the web app simply because you can define what staleness criteria to automatically hide a record if conditions are met (user hasn't logged in within 3 months, etc.) and if that person logs back in, pop it right back in the dataset.

Right now, with the Google Sheet, unless there are enforced rules about what to do with the stale records that are adhered to, you're just going to have those dangling there for all eternity. :D
 
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salem10

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Today June 29, my tracker has been updated. A request of fingerprint is required from me.
All entries are in process.
Application received Nov 30
In Process feb 25.
 
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ufarooqi

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Today June 29, my tracker has been updated. A request of fingerprint is required from me.
All entries are in process.
Application received Nov 30
In Process feb 25.
How about Citizenship Test entry? Is it `Not Started` or `In Process`?
 
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salem10

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