Consider what a Department-level form is for. DD Form 2717 — DD Form 2717, DoD Voluntary/Involuntary Appellate Leave Action, March 2013 — was established to Department of Defense Voluntary/Involuntary Appellate Leave Action, and it was placed in the DD sequence because the underlying transaction occurs throughout the Defense establishment in substantially the same shape. Standardizing the record was cheaper and more reliable than letting six services each design their own.
This is why the arrangement matters to you rather than only to the archivists. not stated governs the form throughout the Department, with not stated as the responsible office, so the record you create is legible outside your own component. Joint assignments, agency details and cross-service transactions all depend on that: the paperwork does not have to be reconstructed each time it crosses a boundary.
Current edition: not stated, status not stated. Understand why that date is worth attention here. When the Department reissues a form, the replacement takes effect across every component simultaneously, so an older copy is not merely locally out of date — it is out of date in every office that might receive it.
The sequence printed on the form is the sequence in which a reviewer will read it, and the two should agree. Header data frames every entry below it; the substantive fields depend on that frame; the certification stands at the end because its whole function is to vouch for what came before. Entries made out of sequence commonly contradict entries made earlier.
Before the first entry, compare the date printed on the form face with not stated. This is not bureaucratic fussiness. Editions change field numbering, and a receiving office working from the current layout may look for information where your copy does not put it. On a Department form the exposure is wider than usual: your record may be reviewed by an office in another service entirely, one with no reason to remember what the previous edition looked like.
For an ambiguous field, read the form's own instruction, then not stated, which controls.
Download the form
The set published here is PDF, covering 3 pages with roughly 31 fields. More than one format survives because the Department serves users under very different conditions, from a desk with current software to a location where a printer is the only reliable output.
Two states of the same page circulate, and the reason is worth knowing. In the fillable pdf, the boxes are real fields holding real data; in the printable pdf, the boxes are drawings. Where a record will cross components — as Department records regularly do — the typed version is the safer artifact. Each scan, each forwarding, each reproduction costs handwriting a little legibility, and the office that finally files the record is rarely the office that received it first.
What the form asks for
- Section 1 - action memorandum. 1. To (inmate).
- 2. From (correctional facility).
- 3.a. Type of court martial.
- b. Date adjudged (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- c. Date court-martial approved by convening authority (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- d. Sentence.
- 4. You have accrued ordinary leave in the amount of (number of days).
- 6. Your request/mandatory appellate leave begins on (date).
- 21. If you have any further questions regarding your release on appellate leave, please contact:
- at DSN:
- or commercial (phone number).
- All correspondence shall be addressed to:
- You were briefed by (name, grade, title).
- Date (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- Signature.
- Section 2 - inmate endorsement. 1. To (Correctional facility - street, city, state and zip code).
- 2. Date (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 3. I understand that I have accrued ordinary leave in the amount of (days).
- I have previously sold (days).
- and am entitled to sell a total of (days).
- Initial if electing to: a. Receive pay and allowances during the period of accured leave and then continue in unpaid appellate leave status; or
- Initial if electing to: b. Receive payment for the accrued leave, as of the day before the appellate leave begins, and then serve the entire period of appellate leave in unpaid leave status; or
- Initial if electing to: c. a combination of both a. and b. above.
- Receive pay and allowances for (days).
The completed form goes to the office named in not stated or in local implementing procedure, and it is worth keeping a copy before it goes. On a Department form the destination is frequently outside your own chain — another service, a defense agency, a joint staff — and recovering a document that has crossed an organizational boundary is a slower business than retrieving one from a file down the hall.
Forms referenced inside this one are located by number alone, and that simplicity is a direct product of Department-level numbering. Because the DD sequence is maintained centrally and not duplicated by service, a number is a complete address: one number, one document, throughout the Defense establishment.
It helps to see the DA and DD sequences as what they are: separate registries with separate custodians. One serves a single service under a service proponent, the other serves the Department under not stated or an equivalent office, and neither was ever indexed against the other. A number that appears in both systems points to two unrelated documents, which is why reading the prefix comes before reading the digits.
Understanding why editions change explains why checking them is not optional. Revision follows directive reissue, changes in what data is required, and amendments to mandatory notice text — decisions made at Department level and communicated through publication rather than notification. The file you saved does not update itself, so the edition date at download is what you rely on.
A word on what this page is. It distributes a published Department of Defense document and describes what the document contains and how it is completed. It is not the issuing authority, does not speak for one, and offers no legal advice; nothing written here determines whether a particular submission will be accepted, because that determination belongs entirely to the office receiving it. Questions of applicability, eligibility or procedure go to not stated, to your servicing personnel office, or to the office identified in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 2717?
- DD Form 2717, DoD Voluntary/Involuntary Appellate Leave Action, March 2013
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?