Initial log in appears to work. Then forwarded to index screen. App then seems to lose MFA token, logs me out, and kicks me back to the log in screen.
Chrome Version 134.0.6998.118 (Official Build) (x86_64) on a Mac.
We have been told the login issues have returned this morning.
Is there anywhere to follow the progress of this outage?
What is the nature of this outage?
- Is this related to a bad software rollout?
- Was there not a warm version of the previous working revision left up to revert to in case of this issue?
- If not, is there not a point to roll back the code to that could get all of these vital systems back online?
- I heard rumors from a Campmaster this weekend that this is a virus or a DDOS attack. Is it that?
I mention the rumors because without a a place to view progress on the outage or even an announcement of the outage, Campmasters are given the opportunity to say things like âitâs a virus attacking all BSA computers.â
2 Likes
Scouting America IT does not release details. They are working with the system vendor to resolve the issues.
That is unacceptable. This issue has been going on for days now.
Roger Krone was CEO of Leidos. He knows you cannot run a software company that is depended on by thousands of people without transparency to issues and outages.
- Whatâs the issue?
- How are you addressing it?
- What is a reasonable time for this to get fixed?
Itâs basic software rollout procedure.
1 Like
The folks who monitor the forums are volunteers and we can only report what we have been been told. We do not believe this issue is caused by a software update on Scouting Americaâs part.
I have already told you Scouting America is working with the system vendor (Scoutbook, Scoutbook Plus, my.scouting.org and the various databased) are all hosted by a 3rd party system vendor. They have been working constantly to try to resolve the issue and after some configuration changes over the weekend thought things would be better today since they looked better over the weekend. Apparently the changes made over the weekend were not sufficient to completely resolve the issue.
Complaining in the forums does not help. If you are unsatisfied with the state of the resolution, you need to contact your local council staff. This is the only escalation path, but keep in mind, if too many people complain to their councils and IT staff is then called into meetings to explain what they have been doing, it may take longer to get the systems stabilized. It all goes back to the old adage âWe are going to keep having daily status meetings until we figure out why we are not making fast enough progressâ. If you take the workers away from the work to explain what they are doing, you slow down the results.
2 Likes
I realize that discussion boards are monitored by volunteers. It is terrible that all of the volunteers now have to deal with all of the incoming complaints, but as this is the only mechanism for contact
What is âunacceptableâ is not your recitation of the policy, but the actual policy. Scouting America needs a good dose of transparency. Transparency would make everyoneâs lives easier.
- How about they just put up a banner stating that they are having issues right now? Then Scouting volunteers wouldnât waste time trying to enter data that is not going to be saved.
- Who is in charge of Scouting America IT? If you google it, you get the CEO, Roger Krone, which cannot possibly be the case.
- Scouting America IT should have its own ticketing system outside of the forums so volunteers can spend their time helping people.
- Lodging âcomplaints,â as you called them, to Council is even less useful than âcomplainingâ here. They are overworked as well and that adds layers to the communication to just further obfuscate the problem.
And finally, I have been a software manager for 20 years. When you have outages, you are called into meetings constantly during the issue. Are the developers called in? Of course not. They are fixing the problem, but managers and product managers are support staff are required to constantly relay status up the chain. After everything is over, all of IT gets pulled into a meeting to explain what happened. In software land, we call this a retrospective. After which an Incident Report is generated and distributed. Transparency for the win.
2 Likes
The underlying issue is that national has established this as the way they want things passed along to their support folks, if it canât be resolved/addressed by the volunteers here. The only folks who have a route to push back on this are, in fact, the admittedly overworked folks at council. The SUAC volunteers here have no âpullâ to leverage in order to motivate that sort of change. To be clear, youâre not necessarily encountering resistance from the folks here. Itâs more âThis is the way it is. If you think it should change, the only folks who can possibly get that moving is enough councils complaining. In this instant, that would likely be counterproductive, given how few actual personnel [likely] exist in the IT group.â
I get that your hands are completely tied. You and all of the volunteers on this board are incredibly helpful. I send Scouters and parents here all of the time because of how incredibly helpful you have always been.
Iâve been told in the past that National frequents these boards. In lieu of there being any way to get in touch with them, I am HOPING that someone over there sees this post and does something about their opaqueness. Itâs ridiculous that Scouting volunteers have to shoulder this incredible burden while National absolve themselves of it any responsibility (zero accountability, no notification, vague handwaving about external vendors) from their bunker in Irving, TX.
Thank you again!
2 Likes
Best of luck! Iâve advocated for at the least a public bug tracking list for some time (as far back as the purchase of Scoutbook by the then-BSA), and you see the progress Iâve made in that direction. :â ^â )
Yes, we are all volunteers. Some of us have IT backgrounds and often are frustrated we canât help more than we can see from a âcustomerâ perspective. I have spent years being in the infrastructure and systems side, and know pressure of supporting and communicating issues. Iâm appreciative of the SUAC and their assistance.
What can we as IT knowledgeable people do? I recommend we keep providing detailed error reports of issues. I do hope a post-mordem happens to help âBe Preparedâ for future issues. If there are other ways we can help, let me know.
Thanks again!
1 Like
@DustinSouers good reports with details often help. With step by step repro for DEVs. This Repro is the first step SUAC does before even mentioning issues to not waste time.
2 Likes
Update! I filed this with my Council person, and they called me back on the phone to laugh and laugh and laugh. Our Council person is incredible. She can fix anything. Was your recharter messed up? Fixed. Do you need to file something obscure with National? Hereâs the form, and hereâs how you fill it out to get it through. ANYTHING that National kicks back to her, she can fix to get through their byzantine system. She shouldnât have to file bug reports.
1 Like
James,
I feel the whole problem is that this wonât get solved with a council person. This is a top down problem that frankly hasnât changed in the 3 years I have been in a Pack with my son.
The system itself is very badly developed and is riddled with bugs. Being an Engineering Manager myself I am losing it when they tell us to clear our cookies / cache when itâs clear the error says MFA which is auth related. One has nothing to do with the other.
The fact they outsource this (the development not the bug reporters) and donât have scouting volunteers lead the charge in someway is beyond wild. Some of us are eagles, myself included, and would gladly fix some of there issues for free without question.
Put simply there should not be an outage for 6+ days with zero communication or status updates to be notified on. Its poor development and its poor communication.
Anyways, hopefully this gets resolved because this is boarding on ridiculous and this is the second time in 3+ months this has happened for multiple days.
1 Like
@DonovanMcNeil FWIW I know you are trying your hardest to keep us from storming the gates so we appreciate it 
1 Like
Are you saying that Scouting America (at the National Level) is working on the resolution of issues with the vendors software? If so, why would you advise anyone to contact their local council staff. Which Staff should they contact? Why not just suggest an email to PR@scouting.org
Only council staff have the ability to open tickets with Scouting America IT. All feedback to Scouting America IT must go through Council staff. We are not suggesting Council staff can fix issues but complaints in the forums are only seen by volunteers, not staff.
@BabetteRoss - the vendor portion is where the server that are the Scouting America systems reside in hosted environments in an external data center. That data center/hosting party is working on the issues.
1 Like
âWe are not suggesting Council staff can fix (these IT) issuesâŠâ Thank you for that clarification. I really would not like anyone under the impression that this should be any Councilâs support desk issue. It is not and cannot be resolved that way.
This topic was automatically closed 7 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
