Yes… the calendar needs a serious overhaul. It doesn’t account for holidays, pack meetings or other times a den would bot be holding a meeting. It doesn’t account for doing adventures out of order if needed. The calendar is not truly editable or user friendly! I have no control, that I can find anywhere, over what is on our den calendar.
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Michelle
From you comments I believe your calendar was setup use if the Den Leader Experience (DLE). Unfortunately when DLE is used, you get a program proscribed by the BSA National Council in Irving with little flexibility. You can change the dates of meeting but you cannot delete meetings. If The calendar entries created by DLE do not meet your needs you can hide the DLE events by going to the Scoutbook calendar and selecting HIDE DLE then entering your own meetings via Scoutbook.
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Ok, thanks so much!
I will look at that. Wonderful!
The login screen has issues still. I use Chrome browser and if you type the wrong login/password the first time, you need to X the screen(close the login window) to try again or all subsequent attempts will be invalid as well, even if your credentials are correct.
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I’ve had the same experience. I’m not sure why that happens, but I think it’s already been reported somewhere.
It should be a number 1 priority, can’t imagine the number of tickets they get on that issue. Login problems are forcing me to look at other options for parents. The session variable needs to be reset after the error message is displayed or have a Try Again button to close and reopen the login screen for the next attempt.
I think it might be related to recaptcha on the login page.
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Can we add the training reporting back. This was simple and easy to read to determine required trainings for each leadership position. I’m open to a redesign on how this should work but it was a better option than the current slog through my.scouting to get to this info. Especially since I currently have to “print” a pdf file to get useful info on what trainings are missing. I shouldn’t need a college degree in course numbers to figure that out on the spreadsheet my.scouting report
The BSA has already refused to restore the old training interface in Scoutbook. Their argument at the time was that they don’t want to support two different interfaces on the same data.
I proposed a while ago that they modify the my.scouting interface to be more like the old Scoutbook interface, so that it’s more user friendly. Not sure if that’s ever going to make it far enough up the list to get rejected, though.
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@RobertBailey Here is what I recommend:
- Go to the Training Manager at my.scouting.org (my.Scouting Tools).
- Click on Search Training (icon looks like a magnifying glass).
- Select the adult(s) that you want to appear on the report (or Select All by clicking on the green checkmark icon).
- Click on “Print Member Training Report” (icon looks like a document page).
This will give you a pdf report. Page 1 has an overview. After that, adults are listed with their Training Incomplete / Training Complete.
Yep that’s my point. Why do I have to download a pdf to figure out what is missing. Its extremely unfriendly especially on a phone where I now have tons of downloaded pdf. Scoutbook showed a grid and was easy to tell what was missing.
Robert Bailey
865.474.0749
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I like the pdf report better, because it’s easy to tell exactly what a leader still needs to take in order to be trained, and because the pdf can be e-mailed to the leader.
I didn’t like the grid, because it got too busy / cluttered with all of the added training (some leaders have 14+ required courses). But YMMV.
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There are also major flaws (limitations) in Scoutbook is the emailing capabilities.
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There does not seem to be a record of what I have sent. I cannot review previously sent messages. I am sure a record is saved b/c of YPT, it is just not available to the user. This is not ideal. As SM I often refer to previous emails. Competitor software keeps/maintains a log of all emails sent by the user.
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The email reveals your personal email address which opens possibility of scouts contacting you directly and violating YPT. Using a competitors software, a scout or parent simply needs to email you at: FirstNameLastname.troop identifier@competitor.email. This is extremely convenient for parents or scouts to email leaders.
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Although I understand the goal is to maintain YPT, but not having the ability to add a scale email address is quite frustrating. Parents will provide such information on an information sheet we provide however getting them to login to scout book create an account, connect your child to the account, is quite frustrating and daunting for the scout leaders. In the end this results in scouts not getting information in a timely fashion without creating email lists through a third-party service— Completely avoiding the YPT security issues scoutbook has in place. Since scoutbook already will send an email to the parent if a youth is emailed, what’s the point in preventing the leaders from having the ability to input that email address?
I have been a big fan of scout book for several years, even before it went prime time. However it does have room for improvement.
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I’d like to second the gripes about the default landing page being nearly useless. Optimize the common case. The developer should be able to tell what the first thing clicked on is once logging in and I’d bet that it’s dashboard.
Report builder is functional, but not optimized. One optimization would be pre-built reports for specific roles. This is already done essentially for the advancement chair, but additional reports could be tailored specific to den leaders. I have several den leaders who barely understand how to use scoutbook at all and additional frustration does not help me with volunteer buy-in and engagement.
For that matter. We have online training courses for several other topics, can I get a Den Leader in Scoutbook 101? Focus on most common tasks for a Den Leader.
The Calendar… oh, the Calendar… Let’s just say that my preference is to have a google calendar on our website subscribed to the feeds and to use that interface for deconflicting dates. Entry is a whole other matter as the options for event type are not as intuitive as they could be. We end up using “Other” a lot. Also, I’m not really sure how to best use individual den calendars, so we don’t. If we do then the upcoming events list is just unmanageable with 12 dens. This is more a data model issue than a specific implementation - I think this was meant for packs with more independent dens rather than one where everyone meets on the same night in the same place.
Getting to see the backlog as well as the scrum for current development sprints would be interesting.
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Regarding your first point, the Feature Assistant Extension will let you update event invites quickly. Given that other, much more polished calendar-only applications don’t do what you’re asking, this is a pretty solid work-around.
Regarding your second point, everyone in a unit can see all the calendar events by default. What, specifically are you looking for there?
I second the issues with calendar invites. New scouts have to be manually invited to existing events. A scout has to be invited in order to RSVP, receive reminders, and be marked as attended. There is no way to track RSVP for guests either, other than maybe a comment. Marking attendance does not automatically add the event to the camping log or provide any sort of indication the scout worked on the requirements that were attached to said event. For these reasons, we’ve actually decided to stop using the Scoutbook calendar and use our troop website for events instead.
I’d be happy if Scoutbook would just list everyone on the roster alphabetically by last name.
My troop just renewed Troopmaster for another 3 years and I’m currently tracking stuff in both SB and TM. I don’t know if we’ll ever make the leap to SB for record keeping. That will be a decision for my successor. There’s just something comforting about having all your records saved on a hard drive instead of in a cloud.
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@JimDreyer - one thing I can say about cloud storage is that unlike the average person at home with a pc or other device is that cloud storage is backed up on a regular basis. There is also a failover in place that few even notice or know that it happens.
@JimDreyer Scoutbook does have an Export / Backup to csv file option.
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Keeping things positive and consructive…
I think it would be very helpful to be able to identify the Patrol Leaders, Senior Patrol Leaders, Assistant SPL’s, and other boy leaders. It would be even better if this was stored in a Leadership log for each boy and have it applied to their rank advancement requirements.
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