It would be nice if parents of scouts, who are not registered leaders themselves, would be able to access the adult roster for their child’s unit in Scoutbook, in order to put names to faces and find contact info. It would also be nice if parents could use the “send message” menu in Scoutbook to contact leaders.
I just logged in with a “parent only” account and can do both. From a roster page (unit or subunit), they need to click the gear icon and then select show contact info. For messaging, they can send to any of the leaders, but need a connection to the scout to send to other parents.
Hmmm, this may be a problem with the specific account I was testing with. I will look into this further. Thank you for letting me know that you have access to these features!
Sounds like @jacobfetzer was testing in Legacy SB - @GwendyDarling where are you trying to see roster? - Messages are just in Legacy
1 Like
I’ve just created a parent-only account for the purpose of more accurate testing. Here’s what I see. No roster can be accessed on the IA side of things. On the Scoutbook end, a “parent-only” account is INDEED able to send messages and see the troop roster. But there are no photos shown next to the names of all of the scouts listed, other than their own child. (Photos are shown next to the adult leaders’ names, though.) Is this for privacy or legal reasons? I understand not having access to the other scouts’ profile information, but can’t see a good reason not to show their profile photos on the roster in the “parent-only” view.
My feature request is this: SOME way for scouts and families to use either SB or IA to help them learn the names and faces of other scouts and leaders. This would help new scouts and parents get better connected and thus more active in their unit, in the same way that name tags would in an unfamiliar social setting. Without photos shown next to the names of the scouts, the current SB roster feature is one big step away from being useful.
@GwendyDarling - I can add from my use of scoutbook for over a decade, the photos had a less than 10 percent adoption. It was added as I recall well prior to BSA purchase as a social engagement idea from the original developer.
As Stephen wrote, there has generally been poor adoption of the photos for youth and adults in my experience, and often they were not kept updated. So, many of my scouts – when aging-out of Scouts BSA – still had photos from their cub scout days.
That said, you might see if the parents setting the Talent Release toggle on the youth profile changes the visibility of the youth. Also, you may need to be connected to the youth with at least a View Profile/View Advancement connection in order to see anything at all. Parent/Guardian accounts are not automatically connected to youth other than their own.
2 Likes
@GwendyDarling - here was the post on photos:
https://scoutbook.scouting.org/mobile/forums/change-log/10397/photos--videos--slideshows--and-galleries/
1 Like
Thanks, everyone! I’ll look into that and report back.
@GwendyDarling - the talent release is found here:
1 Like
Changing the talent release had no affect on photo visibility, even after waiting 24 hrs. However, individually setting the permissions (in connections manager) so that parents could “view profile” of other scouts DOES seem to work. Photos are visible, as are rank and SID, but no vital information. This works for me. Thanks for your help and suggestions, everyone. 
Glad you were able to find a path to get what you were after (at least for the moment). That said, it’s not clear that SB+ will have a similar functionality going forward. It is much more closely tied to registered roles, and much more restrictive in terms of access to information for non-registered (i.e. not a registered scouter) adults.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 24 hours after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
