Jon, I checked out 6717 tonight under clear but not wonderful skies. It sure doesn't look like a GC. More like a low-concentration OC with a handful of bright giants. Nu Sagg is distracting enough, but two tiny groups of unrelated field stars >1 arcmin away on the W & E sides don't help either. The cluster itself is tough to spot at all. If it wasn't for those adjacent sets of 10-11 mag field stars, I would have seen nothing special at that position. I have a feeling the Harris vis mag of 9.28 includes those field stars, since his data likely originated with the 1998 Ortolani paper. In that study, the resolution of the equipment used was less than the cluster's core concentration of 2.9 arcsecs. The half-light radius (which is what our eyes interpret as a GC's visual diameter) is only about 35 arcsecs. It's a tiny little thing, to the eye and in physical reality. How the dickens did you ever learn of this curious little gem?
NGC 6717's
color-mag diagram shows a blueish main sequence, very steep red giant branch, and a horizontal branch well to the blue side of the RR Lyrae Gap. There's no sign of blue stragglers or a red clump. All this points to a very early two-generation (and possibly primordial single generation) origin about 12.5 billion years ago, with a slow evolution rate since then. At that age, it was here before the Galaxy was. Most of its current main sequence stars are well under a solar mass, perhaps 0.7 to 0.8 solar masses. There's a discernable asymptotic giant branch, which is usually the repository of the few remaining ~2 solar mass stars in a cluster of this age. Put more prosaically, it's an aging spinster who's been living off a tiny pension saved in her youth.
The problem with this cluster is the same as so many bulge globulars: resolving the properties of its members requires the very keenest of modern equipment, and that means very expensive telescope time. These days, who wants to open their wallet for a lonely old globular? Bulge globulars are sort of the floppy shirt-tail of the glamour scene when it comes to globular studies—there's a lot of them, most are alike, and none are especially notable to look at. The remote, exotic globular systems of Virgo Cluster galaxies and photogenic lovelies like M104 the Sombrero Galaxy attract all the high-budget attention these days. Poor little 6717 is a lonely little wallflower out there. Thanks for sending a little IIS Valentine to her.
=Dana