One of the den leaders in our Pack was, to use his term, “playing around” with the Scoutbook for Den Leaders App to see how it works. He ended up creating several months worth of calendar events that now cannot be deleted by anyone.
How do we eliminate these fake events from the calendar?
you don’t - there is no way to delete them - you can change the date for them in SB or DLE - but you cannot delete. One option is to just make a new den if needed and transfer the scouts
and honestly I will have to play some to see what a new den would do? In theory it would work - the test server is down right now but I will play with it when it is back up
No offense but that is absurd and needs to be fixed. We have created a system that does not allow for the possibility of human errors on the part of the volunteers who we rely on to input information into Scoutbook!. What do you do if you cancel an event?
Where in any of the Scoutbook for Den Leaders documentation does it alert users that if they create a calendar event that they cannot be deleted?
Having to delete the den and then recreate it is not a solution.
Donovan: I have just sent a message to all of our den leaders advising them of the issue and asking that they not use the app to create calendar events until this is fixed.
Chuck Olson
Pack 236
Sandy Springs, GA
at this point it is better to wait for any new scouts - so when the events are created it includes them as well
Within the den leader experience, you can edit events and change the date to the past.
Jacob and Donovan:
These were never real events so changing the date is not an acceptable option. They need to go away permanently.
Again, not being able to delete events created through the App, even when you are in the desktop version is absurd. What happens if a den leader mistakenly approves a requirement using the app. Is it likewise something that cannot be undone?
I’m very close to sending a recommendation to our Council Scoutbook Coordinator that we send out a message to all Cub Scout leaders suggesting that they not use Scoutbook for Den Leaders until these bugs are fixed. I have already done that within my Pack.
Chuck
Chuck, I agree that they need to be deletable. I’m only providing an option to help avoid confusion for your parents until that is fixed.
I appreciate that.
Fortunately, my pack and its dens tend to use other systems to communicate about events so the pack will be alerting the parents not to pay attention to any events they see on the Scoutbook calendar until we are reasonably sure that Scoutbook for Den Leaders is working properly.
Chuck .
Chuck,
My district had a Scoutbook training session a few weeks ago, and I warned everyone there that they should not use the Den Leader Experience. Our Lion den leader logged in there, and it created events by itself and pushed them to our Scoutbook calendar. I was able to go into each event through the Scoutbook calendar, choose edit and then delete it. Perhaps that was because they were no longer protected as they now seem to be. It is my understanding that one will now get a message that the event cannot be deleted, because it was created through the Den Leader Experience.
It is perplexing that the Den Leader Experience had some obvious problems from the start. Since its initial release, there appears to have been something changed in the code, and that is the removal of the escape hatch that allowed one to clean up the mess it made.
If you create meetings with the tool, you will be able to edit the dates and times (e.g., move them to the past or future) but will not be able to remove them, this is by intent The intent is to drive standardization of program, so the 12 meetings the tool puts in will have to be completed by the Den if they want to earn the rank. In the next few weeks there will be a Sandbox environment A video demo of the tool is here: What is the "Log In as Den Leader" For? What is Den Leader Experience? (SB) - Scoutbook Knowledge Base
BSA IT is actively working on a sandbox environment where folks will be able to play around if they wanted to understand this tool better.
Gah! That’s a terrifying thing to hear for me. “Standardization” is something I do for engineered products, not scouts.
One work around is to move meetings into the past if you don’t want that meeting.
Charley:
I agree. Someone has forgotten that Scouting is a game with a purpose.
William,
If this is really by intent, I will likely ask my DLs to never use this tool. I agree with the comment above that standardization is great for engineering and business, not for Scouting.
First, many of the adventures have different options among the requirements. Does standardization mean that the options favored will become requirements, while the less favored options fade away?
Our pack did lots of requirements for elective adventures at summer camp. So, we don’t need meetings to cover those requirements - usually. If I were to backdate that meeting, can I put it into the 20th century, so it doesn’t clutter up the calendar with fake meetings that never happened? I frequently find myself looking back at the calendar and attendance recorded in Scoutbook to make sure we haven’t missed giving a Scout credit for something that was done.
One of my den leaders used the tool, and it polluted the Scoutbook calendar with a bunch of Lion den meetings. Fortunately, this was before the current state, and I was able to delete the events in the Scoutbook calendar. If it were to happen now, I would probably stop using the Scoutbook calendar altogether and just set up a Google calendar. What’s the point of pushing people to do that?
DLE set up a Lion den meeting to do the Protect Yourself Rules Adventure. That’s a great thing to do, but we don’t have Internet access in our meeting space. This is something that is best done at home. As CM, I encouraged every parent in our pack to do this adventure with their child at home over the summer. To set the example, I did the Wolf version with my daughter on June 15, the day after she finished first grade. The bottom line is that our Lion den will never do this during a den meeting, because there is no Internet access. Since it is an elective adventure for Lions and will not even progress them toward their rank, why is it there in the first place?
Our pack is chartered by a Catholic church, but Scouts practicing Catholicism are in the minority. We have a wide variety of both Christian and non-Christian Scouts. The way in which these Scouts understand their relationships with God and how their faith mirrors the Scout Oath and Law varies greatly. For this reason, we regard all the Duty to God adventures as something that the Scout should do at home. While doing them during den meetings would expose the Scouts to the diversity of different faiths being practiced - and that would be a good thing we are giving up - it also would eat up lots of time and perhaps be confusing to younger Scouts.
Where appropriate, we encourage our Scouts to earn the religious emblems of their faith. In some cases, this is impossible, because there is no religious emblem for the Scout’s faith. This is true of my daughter. These emblems require varying levels of time and work from the Scout to complete. There are also some faiths that have two emblems a Cub Scout may earn and others that have only one. A Catholic Scout who earned Light of Christ as a Tiger may not do so again as a Wolf. A Catholic Wolf who didn’t earn Light of Christ as a Tiger or joined as a Wolf may earn the emblem. So, some Scouts may complete the Duty to God adventure requirement by earning the emblem, and others may not. Therefore, those who may not need to do another optional requirement to compete the adventure. It is hard to see how this can be standardized within den meeting plans.
I encourage anyone reading this who has influence over how the Den Leader Experience is being developed to take into account how different situations are from one pack to another. Not every den will fit into the box with the shape the DLE is developing. Dens come in all different shapes and sizes.
Standardization also discourages Scouts from advancing at their own pace. In our pack, if a Scout completes his or her rank a month earlier than the rest of the den, the Scout is recognized right away. I’ve seen posts in this forum from Cub Scouters who gave out all the badges of rank at the May pack meeting, when the entire den is finished, and I disagree with that. One Scout being recognized earlier than the others serves mostly to inspire and encourage the rest, not make them feel left out. That’s how we use the advancement method in our pack.
The ability to delete standardized den meetings and even to edit components of them is crucial to the usefulness of the DLE. One can create a very good Lion den meeting while satisfying Fun on the Run requirement 1 and On Your Mark requirement 2. The circumstances may call for this. If the meetings cannot be edited to do this, why would someone tie their own hands by using DLE at all?
Bill:
Again that is, in my opinion, an absurd work around.
This program assumes that no one ever makes a mistake and that the programmers have the “perfect” solution. One of the great things about Scouting in the US is that the program is adaptable and allows for an almost limitless degree of creativity by both Scouts and leaders. Instead of providing a tool that accommodates adaptability and creativity, this is a one-size-fits-all, “we know better than you do” method.
One of my growing concerns about Scoutbook is that the direction it is going suggests that the IT types are wanting fundamental changes in the methods of Scouting so that it fits into their engineering model.
Charles,
You’ve hit the nail on the head many times. I am THAT den leader in my pack. For being a Beta program, one would think there would be at least a disclaimer “Use at your own risk.” However a little tutorial with any of these Scoutbook websites would be great. I’m just learning now after reading this forum and going back to scoutbook, that not only can I not delete those posts and start over, but that all those erroneous dates have been sent out to all the scouts’ parents and are supposed to be accurate. The beta version needs a lot more testing and should not send live data to the regular scoutbook page. I’m sure BSA is paying a lot of money to some software designer who is laughing all the way to the bank!
Here’s a tip: if a Den cannot complete the content of a meeting in one sitting, they can take attendance for that meeting after the second meeting for the same content is done. With the drag - drop functionality they will have access to shortly, this will be easy to do. In general, if a Den meets every week, they can space their Den meetings by 2 weeks when they setup so that they can get a little breathing room to cover content carryover situations…
@PeterHopkins, I think this hits the nail on the head. There are some aspects Of the DLE UI that are beneficial, but there needs to be the ability to either select “default” meeting or a more advanced option to adjust the meeting schedule and requirements/activities worked on based on the differences in the program as you so elegantly stated. I hope these recommendations are being passed along from volunteers that are truly in the trenches and see the program as it’s implemented in the “real world.”
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