I’m trying to run an advancement report. Got error message “The information is unavailable. Try again or report this to the forums (112).
ref: PD-20241202222401-369611-827323”
I cleared the cached, but still have the error. I’m running it from https://advancements.scouting.org/ I’m in pack 2279.
@KevinLuu - what is your purpose for running that report. I suspect you may have better luck in needs purchasing and needs awarding in classic scoutbook
Can someone clarify for us. Should our Advancement Coordinator not be using Scoutbook Plus for running their reports and getting those to our local Scout Shop. Isn’t Scoutbook legacy/classic going away? Or not for awhile? I thought we were already supposed to have migrated over to using Scoutbook Plus for everything. Can someone clarify please?
@PeterBerg - cub scout advancement is in scoutbook plus with the exception of awards for cubs. The advancement report for scout shop/council was moved back to scoutbook classic in September due to issues that were found. It would be advised to follow the change log in the forums to note these things.
@PeterBerg Cub Scout packs should mostly be using Scoutbook Plus for advancement. However, there is an issue right now with the Advancement Report in Scoutbook Plus, so you should use the Needs Purchasing Report in Scoutbook (legacy).
Troops have the option to use Scoutbook (legacy) or Scoutbook Plus, but Scoutbook Plus does not track individual requirements for older Scouts, yet. Scoubook Plus has the same bug with the Advancement Report, so we ask that troops use the Needs Purchasing Report in Scoutbook (legacy).
Thank you Jennifer. That is good to know. When I was training our Cub Scout advancement coordinator on Scoutbook Plus, we were having some issues running all the reports that we used to run in Scoutbook Legacy. I will advise him to go back to Scoutbook Legacy for the time being. But I guess Den leaders will still use ‘Plus’ to enter their advancements. We are not going to be able to keep up with Change logs to know when we can use parts of the tools. Hopefully more official communication will go out to help educate leaders.
I’m sure it’s not all up to you… but I think it would have been better to make sure Scoutbook Plus was fully up and running before moving people off the classic system onto the new Plus system. Confusing for some of our parents and volunteers about what tool to use, etc. Well just my thoughts. Thanks for the help.
These seem to be at cross purposes. If one can’t keep up with the change logs, how could they keep up with “more official communication to help educate leaders”?
Hi Matt. Personally I wouldn’t consider a change log on a Scouting Forum to be an official wide communication out to parents and leaders. Many of our parents and Scout leaders would not understand all that is in those change logs and I don’t think we should ask them to have to keep up with those to know which tool we should be using for our normal Pack/Troop functions. If we are supposed to be migrating over to a new tool (Scoutbook Plus), there should be emails from Scouting America or through local councils. If we should not be using Scoutbook Plus yet… then I guess I was misinformed. But I thought I saw some things posted that said we were supposed to switch over to that since Scoubook Legacy was being retired (it seems some functions are retired already with that tool). If there are things that we can’t yet do in Scoutbook Plus due to tech delays (which are totatly understandable), then it would be nice to let Parents and leaders know that. Our advancement coordinator in our Pack has been pretty frustrated and confused about how to use Scoutbook Plus (since he has some issues creating the monthly reports that are needed for picking up belt loops for the kids). I guess I should not told him to use Scoutbook Plus and just stick with Scoutbook Legacy. That information was not put out to us (as far as I’ve seen from our council or from Scouting America). So that is where the frustration is coming from. Hopefully you can see our perspective on that. This Scoutbook Plus roll out just has been confusing for us. I would suggest for things like this in the future, to not tell folks to switch over to the new tool until all the functions are working. Maybe ask a smaller group of tech savvy leaders to test it and be part of a ‘Beta’ program so we can work out any bugs before releasing it to the wider group. Just a suggestion. Thanks.
@PeterBerg - I think you are conflating a number of things together. The cub scout advancement was moved over to scoutbook plus linked to the program changes. The advancement reports HAD been in scoutbook plus, but it was noted that there were issues so it was rolled back to scoutbook classic in September. The troop advancement in scoutbook plus is only working for final completes and not individual requirements. I would think that changes in scoutbook are noted to local councils and it is up to them to make that known. I would not expect that the overall org will email every parent and leader about the incremental changes in scoutbook as that would be a bit much.
I’m really not sure who’s saying that there should be a wholesale change-over for all programs (I haven’t been given that instruction as a unit-level volunteer). As Stephen noted, Cub Scouting advancement moved over wholesale, and units who use a third-party platform that has upload agreements with the BSA have always been using what is now Scoutbook Plus, but used to be “branded” as Internet Advancement 2. Aside from that, all of the messaging that I’ve seen has been that other types of units should still be expecting to use classic Scoutbook (or whatever other tracking solution they have been using). One concern I would have with councils pushing information out to individual users is the potential for even greater confusion than simply having unit scouters – whether that’s the Key 3 or whomever the unit’s tech-savvy scouters are – subscribe to the changelog threads (and/or the BSA Announcements category, which tends to carry the broader-audience announcements) and disseminate that information to the scouts and parents the way we do with scouting program changes (e.g. updates to requirements, etc).
I think part of the problem is that there’s always something that isn’t working (or interacts poorly with a local system), so there isn’t any realistic ability to wait until everything is 100% functional to release. For example, in the pre-Scoutbook Plus (aka Internet Advancement 2) days, when the BSA had just purchased Scoutbook, there were bugs in the system at the time. As those got squashedm, new ones cropped up or new features were added that introduced some undiscovered issue. No software is ever 100% bug-free, which I think you already alluded to in some of your posts.
In addition, though, there are other aspects of the BSA program that (likely) impacted this particular change-over. As Stephen noted, there was a wide-ranging change in how the Cub Scout advancement program was structured. Rather than building that into both classic SB and SB+ (thus having two platforms to make mistakes in and beta test), the BSA made the decision to build it out on the SB+ platform only, since SB is (as you noted) being retired once all of the functions move over to SB+. I could see that contributing to the confusion as to what platform should be in use, and maybe there was some difference in how it could have been messaged that I’m not seeing (because I’m sufficiently familiar and active here that it came across pretty clearly to me).
As to more broad beta testing, there are already unit-level scouter beta testers for the systems, based on what has been posted publicly by the SUAC volunteers, as well as having internal testing by the development team (professionals). I can’t comment on how the beta testers are selected, since I don’t know. There has been some discussion of this recently by @edavignon from the SUAC on another thread, so you might be able to glean more insights if you can traack down that post. SUAC has also noted that the BSA doesn’t have the kind of resources that big-name development companies have to throw at software development. So, it’s probably not a reasonable comparison between large entities whose sole (or at least primary) function is software development and the BSA which as an organization either retains a small outside development firm or hires their own in-house developers to do their software work. Also, while we as scouters may consider the software mission-critical, it’s definitely not life-safety critical, so I suspect that the degree/rate of testing prior to release likely reflects that.
That’s not so say that we shouldn’t expect better long-term stability, or even that there might not be a better job to be done of communicating things. I"m not sure what that solution looks like, but I know that the volunteers on these discussion groups are not the folks making the decisions, so while they may or may not agree with you, they have no ability to alter the process one way or the other. You might be able to get your council professionals to advocate more directly with BSA national for a clearer communications strategy, but you probably need to have a sufficiently detailed explanation of what you think is wrong and how to address those shortcomings to motivate your council to carry the torch for any such changes.
My hope is that the info I’ve shared provides some degree of context (even if it’s largely just extrapolation from information that’s been posted here over the years) for where the BSA is in terms of why some things are happening the way they are. I say that as a fellow unit-level volunteer, since I’m not BSA staff, one of the developers, or anyone particularly “in the know” and probably couldn’t provide further insights at that level even if I had it (NDAs, etc).
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