Your only option at this point is to convince your council staff to open a ticket on your behalf and ask that it be prioritized, however, ultimately it is up to BSA IT to decide the priority.
@edavignon - sure I can ask but typically in software development a regression bug should be fixed ASAP (especially a full feature break) as soon as possible and not require a ticket externally. Where is the pride for this engineering team?
@AmandeepBawa - you do realize that scouts and parents can access scoutbook without the need to export the data to another provider. Additionally this is only an issue for large units.
All of us that help on the forums are volunteers, just like you. The only way for members to contact BSA IT is via a ticket opened by the Council. The BSA does not have an unlimited IT budget so they must prioritize fixes. As Stephen has pointed out, families can access Scoutbook themselves to see the progress of their Scouts. Since this issue only affects large units and the Export/Backup file is not critical to track Scout advancement, I suspect BSA IT has prioritized it behind issues that affect more units and do not have any workarounds.
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Hi @Stephen_Hornak ! Good morning. Thanks for pointing this out. I am aware I believe of Scoutbookās functionality and we have a need for more community type of functionality. I can walk you through it on a web conference (or in person if you are in the bay area). We have email groups for everything from patrols to the troop, to special groups to event based groups. We do event sign ups. We manage a paypal integration for troop accounts, etc.
@edavignon - good morning, thanks for pointing this out and I should have started the conversation with the fact that I appreciate these forums and all your and @Stephen_Hornak 's efforts to answer. I do suggest that anyone running a service should respect itās users and larger troops may be fewer in number but do provide significant positive benefits to BSA. I will chat with our council and see if I can get a ticket logged. As you may have guessed, I am in tech and have tremendous pride in my work and that of my teams. I expect BSA IT to have the same and either prioritize the fix or give a reasonable workaround (one example could be to provide an advancement file export once manually to unblock us).
@AmandeepBawa - I still do not follow what the advancement file has to do with communicationsā¦ can you not export the other files ? Mind you that the export of data is a legacy function from when you could upload files to scoutbook.
oh yes, I apologize, let me explain. We manage our Troop community in a SOAR website that has a scoutbook import function. The import function requires 3 export files to be present to run the import - scouts, adults, and advancement. I tried running it with just two and will not allow it.
I thought I heard SOAR was ending?
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As I have already addressed to your unit. This functionality goes back to the early days of Scoutbook before the BSA purchase. At this time its only use is for supporting 3rd party websites which BSA is not going to iniate a fix for. The system is going through a major upgrade and when completed I believe this functionality will either be fixed or eliminated. Your software vendor needs to figure out their data stream issues. In addition as also pointed out we strongly urge units not to share membership data to 3rd party systems as any privacy breeches would not be covered by council and I assume National but will be borne by your Chartering organization.
Ron Fedele
GGAC-Assistant Council Commissioner for Technology
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For a short time, then they found a partner company who purchased them. It is running as it did before the crash. We use it as well.
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@AnneWhite @AmandeepBawa - please read the feedback from Ron above. Beyond that the 1980ās look and broken links are something to behold.
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I just wish Scoutbook had the same functionality and ease as other programs.
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@AnneWhite - what functionality are you looking for ? And I can say that in a decade of using scoutbook I have never had to show anyone how to use itā¦ that has been for the Troop, Pack and Crew.
We use it more like a troop website. We post announcements, it auto sends an e-blast every week, we collect money for campouts, calendar, etc. Itās a great way to keep the troop organized and a place for parents to check for events. Parents still go to scoutbook for requirements, merit badges, etc.
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SOARās messaging capability is far superior to anything in Scoutbook.
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So, if the parents arenāt using the advancement aspects of the website, can you not use a previous version of the exported advancement files as a dummy in the interim, presuming that the BSA eventually updates the export functionality? That seems like a functional work-around for the time being, if the advancement data isnāt actually being used in SOAR.
Yes, thatās what Iām doing currently. It is linked to the scout rank, so any rank advancement or new scout wonāt show their rank. So a new scout for example shows: Joe Scout, No Rank Even though heās first class. Not a deal breaker, just confusing for scouts and parents as I havenāt told anyone this issue yet.
Understandable. I guess I read this
to indicate that the parents are not relying on the information in SOAR related to advancement.
