Bug? Scoutbook Plus Messaging blocking 6% of my Scouts

[JamesBolling]

I love the new Scoutbook Plus Messaging (rich text) feature, but I’m finding it is blocking +5% (6 of 112) of my Scouts from receiving e-mails because of an error: “no guardian with email” and the linked parent account says “no email".

Impacted Scouts (135562654, 135562307, 134760074, 133738375, 132019487, 136488324)

When I look at these Scouts and parents, the error is incorrect. In all the cases I’ve checked, the Scout is linked to one or more parent accounts, all of which have a valid e-mail addresses.

I have also confirmed that if I use the Messaging feature in legacy Scoutbook, I am able to send the legacy plain text e-mail and both the parent and the scout receive the e-mail from legacy Scoutbook. So it seems to be a feature or bug specifically in Scoutbook Plus Messaging.

I have a hunch that this has something to do with some of the accounts having e-mail addresses that are duplicates, but I’m not 100% sure of that.

For example:

1.) One Scout (135562654) has two e-mail addresses on his profile – his is primary, and his father’s is secondary. Then the father’s e-mail address is also on the father’s account (135562654).

2.) Another Scout (135562307) has just his e-mail address on his profile. He is linked to three parent accounts (13150236, 130678951, 135562308), all of which have the same parent e-mail address. In this case, I see the error on two of the parent accounts but not the third.

3.) A third Scout (134760074) has his e-mail address as primary and an old account of his father’s on his profile as a secondary, and then he’s linked to his mom (134760075) and she has only her own e-mail address, and his father (12602573), and his father has only his own e-mail address on file, so not exactly duplicates.

Like I say, it feels like there may be something here related to duplicate e-mail addresses in the new Scoutbook Plus feature but not 100% clear to me that’s the issue.

Can someone who has source access look at see what returns this error “no email” on the parent accounts that do have an e-mail?

[DonovanMcNeil]

Do you see the same when you sort by Youth?

[DonovanMcNeil]

@JamesBolling I looked at one and both are Gmail - is that consistent for all?

[JamesBolling]

Yes, when I sort by youth, I just get the youth error, but the behavior/problem are the same. The youth is disabled from being selected and has the error “no guardian with email”

On whether or not they’re all gmail – yes/no. For example, Scout 136488324 the Scout’s e-mail is a Gmail. He has two parents linked. One parent the primary e-mail is an AOL account, but there is a secondary e-mail on the parent that is a Gmail account. The other parent has only an AOL account.

[DonovanMcNeil]

OK I reported it to be looked at

[DonovanMcNeil]

Would be good to send a message to those accounts to see what happens. Do they get it? Turn off BCC and look at email to see if they were included. That could be good data to have

[JamesBolling]

Thanks! I cannot send a mail to these accounts vis Scoutbook Plus Messaging – since they’re disabled I cannot even select them. In legacy Scoutbook Messaging, I am able to select the Scout and his parents and they do receive the mail sent from the legacy platform.

I did find one 135562307, which is an Outlook.com and all three parent accounts are using Hotmail.com account. So it’s not solely a Gmail issue.

One more oddity in case it helps.

For Scout 135562307, who is one that is impacted, he is linked to three parent accounts – all of which have the same e-mail address. I left a few letters visible in the screen shot so you cannot see the name, but you can see what I mean that they are the same Scout.

In two instances, the Scout and the parent is disabled, but in the third it is enabled. But all three parent accounts are using the same e-mail address, which is a Hotmail account. (13150236 works, but 130678951 and 130678951 are broken)

In this case, the thing that is noticeable to me in the UI is that the radio button for Primary e-mail is disabled on the two Parent accounts that don’t work, but enabled on the one account that does work. However when I try to enable the radio button on the two accounts where it is not selected, I get an error saying “To delete a primary email, you must first safe a new primary email.” which is unexpected behavior because I’m not clicking the delete button in the UI, I’m clicking the radio button in the UI to make it primary.

Parent: 13150236

Parent: 130678951

But either way, it seems like there’s code somewhere that validates the parent has a valid e-mail address that is failing for some unexpected reason.

[edavignon]

@JamesBolling

#1 - The father did not have an e-mail address in Akela. I have synced it and you should be able to send e-mail to this youth.

#2 - The mother (13150236) has an e-mail address. The father did not have an e-mail address on either of his MIDs. I synced his e-mail to 130678951. You need to contact your Council and ask them to use the Relationship tab of Registrar Tools to remove the Scout from 135562308. This extra relationship could be causing your issue.

#3 Neither parent had an e-mail in Akela. I have synced both. You should be able to e-mail this Scout.

If you find other Scouts with this issue, try saving the Parent’s profile to force the e-mail address to sync to Akela.

[edavignon]

@JamesBolling

For 133738375 contact your Council and have them move the relationship of the Scout to parent MID 12009654.

132019487’s parent was missing an e-mail address in Akela. I have synced this.

136488324 contact your Council and have them remove the relationship to MID 136488325

[JamesBolling]

Thanks! I really appreciate your help @edavignon ! (especially on the weekend!)

Four things:

1.) Question: For 133738375, can I have council remove and re-link 12009654? I agree something is messed up there since the parent account only loads if I pull it up from our roster; it won’t load if I try to open it from the link to the scout in the Scout’s Profile. But 12009654 is a valid profile of a registered Adult leader with a valid e-mail address and the only correct parent. So I can’t just have council unlink them forever. If we remove and relink that Parent to that Scout, do you suspect that will address whatever data quality issue exists on the back end or will reestablishing that link likely just put the problem back?

2.) For the cases where the parent had a valid e-mail address showing up in the Scoutbook Plus Profile UI that didn’t exist in Akela, is it possible to get a broad resync of Akela to whatever Scoutbook Plus is reading from? If the addresses are in the Scoutbook Plus Profile, it seems like a lot of work to tackle these one at a time on the end user side by having bunches of parents go edit and resync their profiles for what might be a large number of users across our Council.

3.) For these parents who have duplicate member id’s, is it just as good for me to use the my.scouting.org manage member ID tool to link the duplicate IDs? I don’t know what account the parent logs into with exactly, I’m I hesitant to just start whacking parent/child relationships. I would be more comfortable having the parent self-service combining their duplicate IDs if you think that will help.

4.) Design change request: Neither Scoutbook Plus Roster nor my.Scouting.org Organization Manager Roster lets me search by member ID. As an adult volunteer who sometimes opens tickets with this form where Member ID is the preferred way to communicate, it would be great if when you respond with a Member ID I can search by that so that I can figure out what Scout or Parent you are referring to instead of having to check all six Scouts and all 12 parents that we’re discussing in this thread.

[edavignon]

@JamesBolling

1. The issue with 133738375 is the parent has 2 MIDs. The Scout is linked to 133738376 which needs to be removed and linked to 12009654.

2. I have already requested this be done. My suggestion of you editing and saving was a workaround until the missing addresses are synced.

3. In the cases with your unit, the parents with multiple MIDs already have them under management. Management does not fix bad relationships. Only the Council can fix these.

4. Searching by MID will not be allowed without also having other information such as last name and date of birth to prevent someone from entering a “random” number or a number they find in the forums and getting personal information for that individual. Not allowing searches by MID only is why it is safe to post MIDs in the forums without names.

[JamesBolling]

1. Got it – I somehow missed that there were two. I only see one in the Scout’s profile in the UI.
2. Sweet! thank you. I did try resaving the profile for one of them and it didn’t work. Resync is great news.
3. Got it – thank you. I’ve sent mail to our registrar.
4. I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing. I’m saying if I’m in my roster in Scoutbook Plus or Org Manager, I would like to be able to search the members of my unit that I’m an admin for by member ID. I’m not sure how I missed it before – I swear 20 min ago I wasn’t getting results in Scoutbook Plus but it’s working now. I guess I might have had an expired session / user error? Either way, no, I’m not asking to be able to pull up any random member ID // agree that would be bad.

[JamesBolling]

I think we’re on the right track // I’ll work with my registrar on the rest of the unlinking. Thanks again for your help!!