As someone who has been using Scoutbook for a year now, I am a big supporter. In fact I will be doing an 1-1.5 hr training on how we use Scoutbook and how to use Scoutbook at the next Round Table.
I just had to help our pack, though, yet again with duplicate accounts.
The Scoutbook developers need to go back to the drawing board on account creation, sync, duplication, and Including commonality between councils.
This is clearly broken at some fundamental structural / process level.
I hope this is on the backlog.
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I don’t know if that’s a Scoutbook issue or a more fundamental BSA issue. Either way, you’re correct. It shouldn’t be so difficult to manage accounts for people.
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I had a leader with a duplicate account that I got cleared up last fall. The duplicate got added again when we rechartered. She has two different email addresses, so I’m not sure anyone can fix it. One email address is associated with her as a Tiger den leader and the other as a Tiger adult partner. So far, I’m just leaving it alone.
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It is interesting that the instant the BSA purchased Scoutbook there were people who thought membership and adult positions should automatically flow into Scoutbook. But this is why it didn’t for a couple years: getting systems that weren’t built to talk to each other to do so is really difficult. IT continues to investigate and fix these issues.
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That is what caused me to open this issue. Someone needs to “fix this” by getting to root cause. I am guessing it is not just “Scoutbook” but how things are being approached in general. Since we did electronic re-charter, I assumed we
wouldn’t have any account issues like this. We had one Pack leader get back 2 extra accounts and another 1.
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Matt,
It is not just a Scoutbook issue. Unfortunately Akela is also filled with duplicate accounts which then causes duplicates in Scoutbook. One way this happens is an adult completes a youth application for a LIon or Tiger using the first name Edward (for example) and is entered into Akela as an Adult Partner. This generates a BSA Member ID. The adult then decides to register as a leader and uses the first name Ed on the application. Unless this person writes their existing BSA Member ID on the application, there is a good chance the register will create another BSA Member ID because the system does not find an adult with the first name Ed and the same last name.
The other problem is when anyone registers in a new council, they get a new BSA Member ID. The legacy systems do not allow registers from Council A to see BSA Member IDs from Council B. This will be an issue until ScoutNET is retired and the BSA can go to universal Member IDs.
IT is trying to find all of these issues and is working on improving the algorithms but it is a hard problem to solve and is taking time.
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Is there any documentation in Scoutbook Help or elsewhere on how a unit or individual addresses the issue with an adult registered in separate councils? I looked in help but haven’t found anything.
We are gaining an adult into our Troop whom is active in a Pack in a separate Council. The adult application hasn’t been submitted to Troop Council but if I search for him in Scoutbook, he shows in both Councils. Previously he was a youth and MB counselor in the Troops Council but hasnt been active in the Council for a number of years.
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We used to tell people to invite the other version of the user (the one they actually log in with). I don’t think that’ll last based on the present functionality, but you can try.
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This is a frustrating challenge with Scoutbook and is almost 100% due to the recharter.
A hint I just stumbled across to help, (though not alleviate)
When adding a new Leader, (& sometimes Scout), don’t look up by 'Name" as the software suggests, rather look up and add by email. If the User is in the system with that email they will be added.
The challenge is for the younger Cub Scout aged Scouts. There, the Parent usually registers their email as the contact and as such the parents email is now tied to the Scouts Account - and if they choose to be a Leader, well you’ve got two emails into two accounts which of course causes problems later on in the game.
Still, at Boy Scout age an individual email search may solve some of these duplicate issues.
Does anyone have the email address to send requests to consolidate/remove duplicate accounts?
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Hi, @FranciscoPerez1,
The only folks who can consolidate/remove accounts are at scoutbook.support@scouting.org. Make sure you tell them which account to retain in as much detail as you can.
For adults, you can specify a particular account/database entry based on the AdultUserID that appears in the URL when you browse to My Dashboard → My Units → Unit Roster → Adult’s Name
https://www.scoutbook.com/mobile/dashboard/admin/rosteredit.asp?**AdultUserID=#####**&UnitID=####
For scouts, it’s the same basic path, but you’re reporting the scout’s ScoutUserID from the Roster → Scout’s name:
https://www.scoutbook.com/mobile/dashboard/admin/account.asp?**ScoutUserID=#####**&UnitID=####
Getting these parameters to appear is path-sensitive, so not just any way of getting to the adult/scout account page will get you the parameters.
Also, make sure you indicate if there’s advancement in one or both of the accounts to retain, what the correct BSA ID is, why you’re changing the email address (e.g. this is a parent email not the scout), etc.
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This is my number 1 frustration with Scoutbook. I am with units tied to military families. I have not cracked the code for successfully transferring scouts in with all of their records. When submitting the BSA transfer application, our council processes it and a brand new empty records appears along with a record for every council (BSA #) that scout or leader has ever had. Sometimes this means 4+ different accounts for that person. The record with all of the achievements is there but with the incorrect BSA Member number.
I need step by step directions to tell me or the council’s registrars how to properly transfer scouts into Scoutbook and keep all of the achievements/history. I would greatly appreciate any and all help, advise, wisdom. Thanks in advance. 
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Hi, @CarolGersema. The shot answer is that, due to the BSA’s long-ago choice to use different blocks of BSA ID’s for different councils, there is no straightforward way for council personnel to simply pull the existing Scoutbook record and paste it in to the new council inside Scoutbook, or so I’ve been told. There must be some way to get the records transferred in the council’s database, because inter-council transfers happened before Scoutbook existed, so they should have some process to get that data correct. I just don’t know if that was anything other than “manual entry” by the registrar.
If you have the scout’s existing BSA ID, and some other identifying information, you may be able to transfer them in using the Transfer in Scout tool under:
My Dashboard → My Units → Unit Roster:
This doesn’t resolve your “duplicate accounts” issue, which arises directly from the multiple BSA IDs that exist for the scout. My recommendation is to record all of the BSA IDs associated with the scout (and the related council) somewhere, then:
Email scoutbook.support@scouting.org with the following information:
- The scout’s full name as it appears on your charter
- The BSA ID you want to retain (i.e. the one that belongs to your council)
- The ScoutUserID for each of the accounts that exists for that scout. This appears in the URL bar when you browse to each of the accounts for the scout from My Dashboard → My Units → Unit Roster → Scout’s name
- The ScoutUserID and BSA ID for the account that contains the advancement information you want to preserve.
- The ScoutUserID and BSA ID for the account that contains the log information you want to preserve.
- The ScoutUserID and BSA ID for the account that contains the parent information/connections you want to preserve.
- The AdultUserID (and BSA ID if relevant) for the parent account you want to retain. You can get this by browsing to the parent’s dashboard from the scout’s dashboard.
The support folks may or may not be able to preserve everything, but this is the closest I’ve come to getting the data for scouts from out of council. That said, I’m not sure how well it would work for a scout who doesn’t have a ZIP code in standard US form. Nor am I certain how well it works for records spread over multiple Scoutbook database entries.
Thank you. I will try this… that is a lot of work per scout. I currently have 150 scouts in 1 unit alone… the other 3 units have between 17-35 scouts each. About 80% leave each year… So I am really looking at how to help council/national help our families. We were sold on Scoutbook for the ease of transferring records without losing data for our military families. This worked really well before it became free. Again, I greatly appreciate the info.
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Yeah, it’s not a trivial feat, for sure. Hopefully the IT folks are working on an improved transfer method that can run behind the scenes. Who knows how long that will take, though. I suspect that, over the long haul, as Nationals (hopefully) goes to a single person-database with a single set of BSA IDs (i.e. not subdivided by councils), then a lot of these issues will go away. That said, I don’t see that being a short-term task.
The reason transferring scouts worked in a more obvious way before the BSA purchased Scoutbook is because the platform was really intended to be used at the unit level (not the council level) for tracking scouts. Then, there was no verification of any information (including BSA ID, name, contact info) against unit rosters except when advancement files were uploaded, and only enough data had to match in order to push out to Internet Advancement. Once the BSA ID’s were locked on accounts (after the BSA purchased Scoutbook) to prevent multiple accounts with the same BSA ID, we became dependent on the BSA correctly entering all of the data for the accounts, not just making sure we matched the BSA ID in the scout’s Scoutbook record with the one on our official rosters.
My opinion on this situation is that it needs to be addressed faster by the developers than “it is hard, we will get to it when we get to it”. The house of cards is falling.
This should be “break in work” and a solution implemented that “gets to root cause” needs to be enacted as soon as possible. Weeks, not months, not quarters, or years.
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Thank you, I agree this needs to be fixed as soon as possible.
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