We would like the Church secretary to receive Scoutbook emails, so she knows what’s going on and when we utilize the facility above and beyond our facilities agreement. Further, we had to change CO’s as we meet at (and were previously chartered by) a UMC Church. I’d like the old COR (Pastor) to also be “kept in the loop” as he’s now our “meeting place liaison.” Is there a way to accomplish this? We want them to receive pack emails automatically… and in the case of the secretary, we don’t want to have her do YPT. She’ll have no interaction with the youth and we don’t want to waste her paid time.
Our new COR isn’t in a position to handle “letting the secretary know” as he’s from an entirely different Church.
I don’t want to link them to Scouts at all. Just receive Pack emails automatically.
I do not believe there is a way to accomplish this. I’d look into setting up automatic forwards through your email provider.
You could add them as a family member to a scout
I don’t believe family members get any emails or meeting reminders
@jacobfetzer there should be a way to do this. There are plenty of legitimate reasons, like with my pack, where this is a needed function.
A part-time Church secretary who has no other affiliation with BSA shouldn’t have to register as a CM (or whatever), pay money, and take YPT annually (my Council requires it annually). That’s easily a $100.00 annual burden for the Church (or the pack) which is completely unnecessary, just to receive emails to stay informed. There used to be a way. I wish there still was.
The closest Scoutbook option at the moment is the “external guest” email option in events. It only sends when “Send Now” is selected, and doesn’t save the email addresses in the external guest list.
Independent of this particular use case, there’s value to saving the external guest list and allowing it to be “reminded”. For example, outside guests invited to an event should be able to get updates, and not have to rely on whomever is updating the event to remember to add them to the list.
I recognize that the option was probably limited to “Send Now” since there’s no easy way to set a “No Emails” flag without the External Guest having an account. It just pushes units to use something other than the BSA software when routine use cases are excluded from the official software.
I understand your use case. I don’t think BSA will go for it though as they’ve intentionally limited the ability to add external guests for a combination of YPT and anti-spamming reasons.
From a BSA perspective, it is $45. Your council may charge more, but maybe that is something you could negotiate with them.
But the REAL cost is $45.00, plus opportunity cost, plus direct labor paying a secretary to do annual YPT, plus benefits, plus time to discuss, demonstrate, etc. The facility Secretary is not a volunteer.
It’s an unnecessary burden for COs, host facilities, and Units. There is a REAL cost to paying someone, AND we’d have to be DISHONEST in registering her in a BSA capacity. Beyond that, what if she leaves the job and a new secretary is hired? You see my point.
For us, this is double. BSA encourages Scoutbook as the communication tool. For many reasons, including YPT.
BSA and the UMC agreement has forced units to separate the CO relationship with the Churches. But they are ALSO encouraging the facility use of the UMC Churches through an agreement. Like thousands of other Units, this is us. But there is no mechanism to include those former COs to get email communications. And the former Execs and CORs (the Pastor, in our case) aren’t allowed to be seen as making decisions for the Unit. So how do we register them? Frankly, though the facility use agreement, there should be a way to include at least one facilities representative within Scoutbook, making it clear they are in a “liaison” role.
I’m TRYING to get the Pastor of our facilities (former COR) to register as a Unit Chaplain. He’s concerned that even that isn’t allowed. I’m attempting to work the problem, but there doesn’t appear to be a clear path.
I’d hope that someone on the Scoutbook side would see this and attempt to work a solution with BSA. Talking to other units, they have the same issues, and it strains the CO and Facilities relationship(s) that we so heavily rely upon.
I think you’re most likely to get movement on the BSA side if it comes through the council professionals, rather than up the volunteer chain (e.g. SUAC) to the IT group. It’s more a policy issue that needs addressing than a technical one.
If they aren’t involved in the unit, why would you register them? One can come up with many roadblocks and reasons not to do what is required. As a unit leader, one’s job is to break down roadblocks.
Bottom line: people who have access to unit contact info need to be registered.
I think the goal is specifically not to have folks with access to unit contact info, thus the desire for an email path, rather than registering more adults. Rather, the goal seems to be to have a mechanism supporting the equivalent of “Friends of Unit XYZ” being able to get notifications.
Again, I think this is a policy issue that likely needs to be worked through council staff so that the goals of the units concerned can be coordinated with the BSA policy goals to achieve a workable solution all around (or to determine that the BSA policies are not compatible with the stated goal). Folks like @MarkRosenkrantz can bring the goals to the party, and the professional staff can bring the policy information. Also, it means that one or more professional staffers become champions of the idea with national, which can increase the penetration of the idea, since they have different routes into the organization that volunteers like us.
We want to add our unit commissioner to the our Scoutbook instance. Based on this thread, it’s not clear how you add a commissioner, someone who clearly meets the scout leader requirements.
Normally, you could search for them in the Add Leader box from the Roster in Scoutbook. However, searching for users appears to be broken, so this may not work.
Unit commissioners are district positions. They are not assigned by the unit but by the district commissioner. The commissioner corps has its own set of tools. (Commissioner tools)
How Scoutbook gets current unit commissioner information for program unit tools appears to be a BSA® IT responsibility with its own project(s).
2022-09-12-B
They ARE assigned to the unit in Scoutbook. Obviously they have been “assigned” to the unit beforehand.
Unit commissioners are definitely supported (at least as far as including them on the roster for communications). Unfortunately, the search is t working properly. Some people may have had success searching by email address, but I don’t think that’s universal.
@DanielHenroid_Jr I would try searching for them, first.
If that doesn’t work, the Unit Commissioner should be able to go to (in Scoutbook):
Administration → My Account → My Positions
Click on the red “+ Add” button and add themselves. However, a unit Admin will need to approve the position in Scoutbook.
You are correct. All Council could offer was to sign the secretary up as an MBC that would only do things with our Unit, but it’s for a Pack. Not sure that would even work, and still have to do YPT and still have to be assigned a leadership role. This is a terrible idea.
Exactly… we just want to be able to add a user (like a parent partner, without a youth) to be able to receive Pack emails. We don’t want them to have any more access than to receive emails (and to thier own “profile.”). I’ll type something up and present it to Council… but I doubt it will go anywhere, as my Council isn’t that big and they don’t seem to want to do anything “extra” when it comes to BSA policies. I was hoping Scoutbook leadership might have a way.
I’ve asked around locally, and it’s a real problem for many units.
