Don’t worry everyone who currently has access to scoutbook calendar will continue to have access when the user interface changes
No difference in access, just a new interface.
I continue to see responses which miss my larger point. The issue here isn’t bug reporting or software developers: it’s the communication, the planning, and the product management of Scoutbook.
It seems that there may or may not be a product manager for these every-day BSA tools, and so I submit the following:
Whether it’s apparent or not, BSA is now a technology company. This is a good thing, as technology is more than a nice-to-have for modern families. It’s a requirement. An expectation.
BSA needs to own the responsibility for not only the code that it takes to create and maintain consumer technology, but also the critical roles of any technology product:
- user experience
- product management
- design
- documentation
- front & back-end development
- project management
While some of these roles may be in place (perhaps through a third party vendor), the product management aspect is what is severely lacking in this change. I would love to give this feedback to someone who can either answer the questions around how tech is staffed OR who will actually take some actionable feedback. If there is a place for that (other than these discussion forums), please let me know,
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Nope. Not even these forums are read by the developers. The way to give that feedback is to give it to your council and they will filter it up. So, nope. No path. So, while I may agree with all of your fine points, it is like yelling in the wind. Or like the cartoon company in an episode of the Simpsons “any questions may be directed at that brick wall over there”. Also, this consumer technology just emerged from bankruptcy, that during which, there were massive layoffs.
So, I realized the spot I was in a few years back. Hung my head in sadness, then pick myself up and looked around. Vigorously reporting all bugs is about all we can do. Educating fellow Scouters is also a mission I can take on.
@Matt.Johnson This is incredibly sad. What a missed opportunity by BSA! Thank you for the added context though. I’m going to talk with council and see where I can get, because this is just so important beyond Scoutbook’s calendar functionality.
Unfortunately, this has me setting up a move to alternatives to Scoutbook rather than getting me on board with bug reporting and getting excited for a “new” calendar. The only added benefit seems to be integration with activity logging, but we don’t use that currently and I can’t see the value in it for cubs.
I’m sure more change will happen and we’ll potentially come back around to Scoutbook or a BSA solution for calendars, but third party tech is looking to be the better route.
@BenThoma - actually the logs are a benefit with camping for NOA, service hours toward JTE
I wouldn’t give up until about January or so. With the new “stack”, they seem to be able to push bug updates out live. The old ASP based system requires the whole system to be down to push an update. If we read between the lines, the SUAC seems to say they won’t cut over (turn off the old Scoutbook interface) until they are feature parity.
Like @Stephen_Hornak says, service hours are “required” to be logged in Scoutbook (IA interface) for JTE for both Scouts and Cubs (last I looked).
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I don’t know how it will finally work, but right now it flows out of IA in Scoutbook. I played with it the other day about in our troop meetings one time, set it as a recurring item, and then selected both our girls troop and our boys troop. It worked great. The next time I went into SB everything I put in the calendar was there.
@JohnHiggins Well, if that’s the actual user experience for the foreseeable future, that’s a much better situation!
I would be very happy to help our den leaders and key 3 get up to speed on using IA for the calendar if I knew Scoutbook would continue to host a read-only version.
This would do two important things:
- Keep the parent user experience the same (at least for now—at least for this academic/program year, I would hope)
- Keep the links for synchronized calendars the same, so people’s calendars would appear to be correct when events may change.
I wouldn’t assume this unless it has been announced.
BSA has a serious communications problem. Reasonably certain no one in my Council’s professional ranks has any clue about yet another change to a system we need, but struggle to stay up to date on. PLEASE provide the council-level teams with a migration plan and timeline, along with training modules on where to find the tools we volunteers need to keep our Units up to date. Be aware; frustration levels among those of us who are doing our best to use the toolset (and have professional and family lives to “distract” us) just keep growing with each “surprise” near immediate-effect change.
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The council professionals have avenues to make such requests. There are only volunteers in the forums.
The surprise has been out for a few weeks now.
I have the same problem for our linked troops. We might be moving to Google Calendars if this doesn’t get fixed…
@CarrieHaber - i just responded here:
Thank you for this response…
OK…so who should be providing us with this kind of structured guidance? Assumed, given the apparent insider info within this forum, that someone here was part of or at least had close ties with Irving IT.
FYI, I’ve reached out to our Council Training Chair, and she had no idea how to get answers on questions like this. Got a “ditto shrug” from both our DE and District Commissioner. Most Unit leaders don’t have the free time to keep following up on stuff like this, and they just end up giving up on the BSA’s tools, and finding another way.
In my Council there is one staff member who supports Scoutbook. I suggest calling the main number and asking if there is someone on staff that supports Scoutbook and other IT tools. It could be a registrar or someone else in field services.
Your Council Training Chair and District Commissioner are both volunteers. A DE’s main job is to grow membership and raise money, not support tools.
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This is a question for your council. It seems like they aren’t too interested if they are giving a shrug. Like I said, the professionals can reach out and find who can give the feedback to national.
I second this 1000%! Thank you for speaking up. As someone who actually went through the Atlassian change, it still wasnt easy and there were still features missing after all that time. I dread IA. Scoutbook could be enhanced to be more user friendly.
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@EmilyThomas2 - the unfortunate thing is that scoutbook code is over a decade old and classic ASP, so it will need to be retired at some point.
