I want to express my displeasure with unit renewal and the answers I have seen about specific issues seen by myself and others. Almost always the response to issues is to reach out to council. I have done that and I see that many, many others have done so as well. We get no response. We’ve called, left voicemails, emailed groups and individuals. No response and me and others are left in a tough spot. I have an adult leader that has not done YPT, holds a committee spot and paid up a while ago. We cannot reach this person, but cannot remove them from the roster or opt them out. Why does Troop leadership not have the rights to manage things like removal from OUR roster? Because of this issue I cannot renew our unit. Bad user experience that should be looked at with a focus on improvement.
You’re preaching to the choir with that statement. Those of us volunteers who monitor and moderate the forums only have contacts with the IT team responsible for the Scoutbook (Plus) tools.
Sometimes you can get some good advice for a workaround for an issue that someone else has seen. Unfortunately, it often comes back to your council as the people who can fix it or can submit a ticket to national.
@StephenMarquardo on the regular my.scouting.org menu do you see the Opt Out option to the far right? That is an option for those whose dates line up with the units - but it takes at least 24 hours after it is checked
@DonovanMcNeil… I was able to opt out three others. This particular person doesn’t have the option. The symbol is grayed out. Likely because she shows as paid and registered. We volunteer our time to this, as you do. We also pay the increasing fees to be volunteers. When it becomes this much of a challenge and require this much additional effort it makes me question what I’m doing. Luckily, I see the Troop once a week and remember why I do it, but recharter challenges every year is getting old.
Frustrating because council is unresponsive to most of us. I’m hoping this forum as well as others help to get that message around and someone hears it and works to make that better.
@StephenMarquardo most likely she is on a different schedule for registration than the unit (as individual is yearly now). It creates an odd situation as I understand it - BSA sees the person as registered for a year and therefore wants to keep them for the whole year so they do not come back to BSA saying they “took my money” - some councils have Ghost units to put people in to keep them the full year from what I understand.
We could likely fix this, as you said. I could always move her out, recharter, and move her back in. We would need council to respond to us though. That’s where my struggle, and other Troop’s struggle, comes into play. Every year it seems like there’s a lot of recharter posts about Troops struggling. I’m hoping National sees them all and is putting that at the top of the FY25 list of things to improve. Recharter every year is enough to make me want to step away from a leadership position and just be a parent again.
In case you hadn’t seen it in the various responses you mentioned reviewing, this is per BSA directive, based on prior posts from SUAC members. Expanding on Jacob’s comments, the only folks who have a method to interface with the national teams responsible for registration systems are the council professional staff, and generally only via submission of a MemberCare ticket or a similar bug report (depending on the nature of the issue).
As unit scouters (Key 3/Key 3 Delegates) we’ve never really been able to directly manage the registration status of our scouts/scouters in the database. We’ve always had to interface through the Registrar – either with paper/online applications or via submission of hardcopy recharter packets “in the olden days”. As the various systems become more closely tied to the actual registration/person database,
This might be good data to include in the bug report/MemberCare request to council (for them to pass along to national). This is a not-unusual edge case that clearly wasn’t addressed adequately when the individual renewal (separate from unit recharter) system was developed. A thorough description of the use case should help the person at council communicate the underlying problem to the relevant folks at national (and point them at the right solution).
It sounds like a reasonable description of the use-case might be something like:
Issue Description:
Registered scouter has paid their individual renewal, but has not maintained current YPT, and is non-responsive to the unit about completing it. The unit needs to complete their recharter, and wishes to remove this individual, since they are not currently eligible to serve as a registered scouter in their unit due to expired YPT. No mechanism is provided for unit scouters (COR/COR delegate) in the current online recharter system to permit such removal so that unit recharter can proceed. The entire unit’s recharter is prevented until the individual is either removed or completes YPT.
Question 1:
Is the intended workflow for units to contact the council registrar and have the registrar remove the individual from the unit? If so, what impacts does this have on registrar workflow when units are all attempting to recharter at essentially the same time?
Question 2:
What mechanisms are currently provided in the system to permit COR/COR Delegates to “disapprove” an individual whom they no longer wish to serve as a registered scouter in their unit, particularly in light of individual BSA membership renewals being disconnected from unit recharters? Can a mechanism be provided for COR/COR Delegates to mark an individual scouter as Not Approved in the recharter system so that units can remove them from the unit even after individual membership renewal has been completed?
I assume you mean that you’re hoping national sees these issues coming in from the councils? I don’t know if it was mentioned yet on this thread, but nobody from national monitors these forums. The only way that “word” gets back to them on these types of issues is via council professionals submitting bug reports.
Well the other way to look at it - get 30 days past your date - you will be in a grace period for 60 days - your DE will get report saying this unit is not renewed and their boss will say to take action and contact - tell them the issue and to solve it and you can renew.
