I have seen several posts about using extensions to make Scoutbook more user friendly. This is a little sad that the application needs third party software to make it usable. My main complaint is with Merit Badges. Even for a small troop, having to individually enter scouts starting a new merit badge, approve it to start as the Scoutmaster and then assign a Merit Badge Counselor is both tedious and time consuming. I will try and locate the extension, but this is a basic concept of Scouting that really should be native in Scoutbook to make a merit badge entry more simple. This equates to three separate tasks for each Scout for each Merit Badge just to start it.
I agree. Scoutbook needs a full re-do. Until that happens my troop will continue to use troop web host. Check that out. It does exports to Internet Advancement!
Tommy,
It is all a matter of development resources. The BSA does not have an unlimited budget for IT development. We are fortunate to have a volunteer with the skills and desire to create the the volunteer written and supported Feature Assistant Extension for Scoutbook for Chrome and Firefox. See Feature Assistant - What is it? for details on all of its features.
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Thanks for the response. I understand the competition for resources, especially when looking at new capabilities in software development. I also think it is wonderful we have a talented volunteer willing to create the bridge between Scoutbook and easy use. What I think could be done though, is to better embrace the Feature Assistant Extension for Scoutbook by including some reference to it in Scoutbook and including a link to get it. My observation is new users have to discover it by accident and then try and find it. I would think it would be a minimal impact on resources to at least reference it and to make it easier to find and use.
The road to embrace the feature assistant is to enable a (documented) API that such volunteers could write to that. It would also allow other software to better integrate.
The BSA has stated they will never release an API that allows writing to the Scoutbook database. There were plans to release a read only API to allow 3rd party reporting, but that has been put on hold. At this time we do not know if the read only API will ever be released given the IT resources that would need to be dedicated to produce and support it.
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HI Everyone,
I am new to this forum. Is there someone I can “speak” to regarding Merit Badge input pages?
Can we volunteer to help develop Scoutbook to be what we need? I helped my son submit Merit Badges for the first time last night and it is not intuitive and very cumbersome. I have personally built a database in Google Sheets that captures the data for individual requirements in a more user friendly way. We are making a very concerted effort for all of our Unit to be on Scoutbook this coming year, and i want to help it to best it can be.
Thanks so much!
I find with the extension it is super easy to enter anything i need to.
I think they could do a better job and update the workflow so that all 3 could be done in the same process. This would proably reduce the amount of time and possably few screens you need to go thought to complete the entire process.
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