Welcome! This forum has a treasure trove of great info – Scouters helping Scouters! Just a heads up, though - all content, information, and opinions shared on this forum are those of the author, not the BSA.
Lake Erie Council MBC list uploaded to Scoutbook 11/5/2020 is neither correctly displayed nor functioning in Scoutbook. I am a registered counselor and appear as such in the LEC MBC list, and in my.scouting.org.
I received an email from [scoutbook.donotreply@scouting.org] stating, “Your council has recently updated its list of approved merit badge counselors and shared that information with unit leaders on Scoutbook.com. Your approved badges are now:
Merit Badges:
Since you already have a Scoutbook account, there is no action that you need to take at this time. Thank you for everything you do for Scouting and for your support of Scoutbook.”
As written above no merit badges are listed. I am not listed in a Scoutbook search for any of the eight merit badges for which I am approved. As Scoutmaster my connection permissions are set to full control for all Scouts. My Scoutbook profile does reflect both registered positions, but lists no merit badges for the MBC position.
Email exchanges with members of the LEC Advancement Committee indicate there are ongoing issues and my situation is not unique. Please advise when Lake Erie Council may expect resolution.
That is not a Scoutbook issue it seems your council has you as a MBC but is not listing your badges in Scoutnet (the registration database used by councils). They may choose to upload badges separately but it looks like that has not been done.
You do not have any MBs listed in Scoutbook. Have you verified with your Council that they have uploaded a MBC list to Scoutbook with badges listed for you? If they did not and they have not listed the badges in ScoutNET, then Scoutbook would not have any way of knowing which MBs you counsel.
There are currently no open issues with MBC upload. If your Council has uploaded a list that includes MBs for you, ask the Council Admin to reach out and we will help determine what is happening.
I have verified with LEC that I am on the published MBC roster with all approved merit badges listed. The problem is much broader than my specific case.
In Scoutbook a Find a MB Counselor search for Cooking MB with criteria: zip code 44101 (council office); 50 miles; Both yields 5 counselors. The LEC approved counselor roster uploaded November 2020 lists 166 Cooking MBCs. Only very limited areas of LEC’s boundaries extend beyond a radius of 50 miles so the difference in the number of counselors between the lists would be small, not two orders of magnitude.
A search for All Badges under the same selection criteria yields 550 counselors. Of the first 100 listed (10 screens) only three counselors are described with approved merit badges. In this case I am not included with those listed in my zip code.
The two examples I have provided suggest over 90% of LEC MBCs have no associated merit badges. In an earlier upload version the search functions yielded correct results. I have reviewed the 9/26/2020 Council Merit Badge Counselor Upload Instructions (SB) and related guidance provided by Scoutbook (https://help.scoutbook.scouting.org/knowledge-base/council-merit-badge-counselor-upload-instructions-sb/). Guidance indicates if the uploads worked the first time subsequent revisions should work as well.
In the interest of time I would ask the folks at Scoutbook be proactive and review the input received then contact the LEC administrator. It would be a quick evaluation as the fourth column in the source csv file would be blank for hundreds of lines. As suggested I will forward a copy of this post to the LEC Scoutbook administrator.
The BSA does not monitor the forums. The SUAC are all volunteer Scouters. The LEC council admin can contact BSA IT through internal channels if the admin is council staff. If the council admin is a volunteer, he/she needs to post in the forums.
Have you verified that you are are listed with all of your MBs in the file uploaded on 11/5/2020? This is the last time your council uploaded its MBC list. If they do not store MBs in ScoutNET then they must upload a new, complete list any time they want to change MBs in Scoutbook.
A closer read of my last post will indicate I have verified my listing on the council merit badge roster. The real issue is that hundreds of counselors have no merit badges associated with their listings. As I understand it, the council Scoutbook administrator is a volunteer. While not serving in that position my post may not constitute proper notice. As a Scoutbook customer my post should serves as a strong indication there is a problem bearing some investigation.
Hey Eric, Ed’s question has to do with the file that was uploaded, not whether you are on the approved council roster. If the file uploaded did not have all the information needed, then that would be the problem.
I believe the approved council roster would need to be edited to get the correct formatting for an upload file, with the possibility that not all the needed information was included.
An email exchange with the LEC volunteer administrator confirms the Scoutbook and National IT teams acknowledge the problem is within the Scoutbook and/or ScoutNet systems, not the specific LEC upload file. I was advised the IT teams have begun work on a solution.
I look forward to the return of a fully functional Scoutbook customer interface.
