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.
Pay Attention to the Yellow Notice - " * The Scoutbook team is excited to announce the upcoming release of Activity Logs, a faster way for units to track the progress of Service Projects, Campouts, Hikes and Long Cruises. This update will replace the current Hiking Logs, Camping Logs, Service Logs and Long Cruise Logs with Activity Logs hosted within the Internet Advancement platform. All logs will be migrated to the new Activity Logs tool. Please be advised that log information will be unavailable from 10 AM to 7 PM on Wednesday 5/6/2020."
The new system is nice and much easier to use - a use video is almost ready for release.
The only thing to note - The official Eagle Project Entry will still be at Servicehours.scouting.org - although there is still a way to record individual Scout Service Hours for an eagle project in the new system
Why does it feel like Christmas Eve as we wait for this improvement to logging?? The direct logging for JTE will be the feature for the win!! I know others ask for more, but this is a BIG step. Even though the video is for IA 2.0, I assume we will see similar changes for ScoutBook (or will we need to go into IA 2.0 to update logs post this update)?
I’m not sure that I’m pleased with this decision by BSA to push logs into IA2. I find the IA2 interface in general far less than intuitive, and I am not sure that telling scouts/parents to connect to one thing (Scoutbook) to track advancement and another thing (IA2) to track participation in events like hikes, camping, and service is going to work well at all. It’s been difficult enough getting folks to start using Scoutbook itself. More likely than not, this means that the burden is once again dumped on a very limited number of leaders to manage two different interfaces. IMHO, bad decision, BSA.
Thanks for passing this along, @DonovanMcNeil. I wish I could say that I feel similarly excited, but I feel a lot more like I invested an inordinate amount of time and effort in converting folks over to using software that is being obsoleted out from under them.
@CharleyHamilton, but haven’t they been saying all along that IA2.0 will be the “new” ScoutBook?
ETA: it’s been said that IA2.0 is being developed in a more modern programming language to allow faster development and greater capabilities, so eventually, this will replace ScoutBook and become the “de facto” ScoutBook. I’m sure we are several iterations away, but think that focusing development to place this tool into the future platform, rather then retrofitting it into ScoutBook seems to be a wise decision. I’d rather resources be deployed on the future product and this gives us a way to start that transition. Besides, one of the BIGGEST complaints I have heard about service hours is the double entry required. If they had to go this route to make JTE populate with just one entry (AND allow adult logging, another often seen gripe), I can handle taking the time to show people. It’ll help start the transition.
Wait, moving activity logs out of Scoutbook is supposed to be an improvement to Scoutbook. Two steps forward, three steps back. Shouldn’t the work be spent on improving one product instead of spreading it out. Sounds like BSA is competing against itself.
So, no, I don’t agree that IA2 was advertised as the “new” Scoutbook. In fact, it has specifically been billed as “you can either use Scoutbook or IA2, but not both” repeatedly throughout both these forums and various help documents put out.
While I acknowledge that the BSA has the absolute right to develop as it sees fit to advance the scouting program, keeping the leaders in the dark about what’s going on has been an absolute failing that I have been rather loud about from the beginning. If scoutbook.com is only the placeholder while the BSA develops IA2 as the flagship product, then make that abundantly clear to the users. They will spend their time where it’s valuable. I’m sorry for the degree of rant here, but it’s mighty difficult to remain cheerful when something is represented as an improvement to a program but is actually the removal of features and insertion into another program. It’s clear that the BSA wasn’t listening to the uproar caused by the change in how the training records were being interfaced. They’ve elected to do the same thing with the logs.
I see your argument about moving to a more modern back-end programming language, @ZacharyMcCarty, but removing features from one interface to put them in another is, as @JamesSoltysiak pointed out, going backward. We used to have highly fragmented interfaces for logging everything. Then, Scoutbook was purported to be the replacement that was going to unify them. Now, it’s IA2. No matter how good the back-end to IA2 may be, the UI/UX is arcane at best for the average user. Respectfully, there’s always going to be a new and hot programming language/UX/etc. Arguing that the back-end language requires wholesale revision of the UI/UX seems more like poor programming and/or management decisions.
I suggest that the BSA be more upfront with the boots on the ground about what their actual development intent is on these platforms. If it’s the wholesale obsolescence of Scoutbook for IA2, say so and the leadership can start investing their time in learning IA2. If not, quit re-fragmenting the system.
So now I have to do and consult my.scouting.org in order to deal with training. I now have to go to Internet Advancement to deal with activities and I currently have to go to Scoutbook to deal with advancement. Don’t see that as an improvement.
As was said above, Scouting should be forthcoming about what it plans in the long-run.
In fairness, the Key 3, K3D and Unit Advancement Coordinator can currently manage advancement in IA2. It puts an awful lot of added work on the already very busy folks at the top to manage the system, as opposed to being able to more readily delegate those tasks to other leaders in a functional role as in Scoutbook.
Honestly, given the lags in updating/processing recharters that are common, I’m concerned about what happens when units transition leader roles as part of recharter. The Key 3 must re-designate any K3D and AC after the charter expires and is renewed (at a minimum). Presumably IA2 will be similarly impacted by this issue. That was one saving grace in the mess that was this year’s recharter: at least we were able to continue tracking advancement in Scoutbook because the positions there were not locked-out by delays in processing (re)charters. I can only imagine the havok that will result when it takes until March to process recharters and from 31 December to the end of February units whose Key 3 have changed can’t log advancement in the system. I would like to think it was hyperbolic, but having watched it happen for other units who were “locked out” of IA2 that I coached through getting stuff up and running in Scoutbook, I know it’s not.
This honestly sounds like software development without having a Project Manager that is concerned about the customer. They are more concerned about “developed in a more modern programming language” then end user. Customers DON’T CARE ABOUT THE BACKEND. They only care about their user experience. Backends can easily be changed without changing the user experience. If you don’t develop that way, the next time the new flashy backend comes out, you don’t have to do a slash and burn to the previous product. Instead BSA seems to like a slash and burn experience. Let’s find a new forum software and ignore the old forum instead of finding a method for exporting it. Let’s get a new activity log and throw out the old mechanism, instead of having a way to merge the old data in. Not only that, don’t have a way to seamlessly integrate it into our current platform, let’s make them log into a new platform, oh wait we were more concerned about Single Sign On, but let’s give them lots of different platforms to log into.
Instead we get a bait and switch experience. Everyone time to move to Scoutbook, it is free now and the best method for doing it. Not only that you have to move there because Internet Advancement is going away and Scoutbook will be the only thing, if you really don’t want to move we will have “Scoutbook Light” Move everything to this new environment now. Oh wait, we now want everyone to go back to Internet Advancement and we want to throw out everything you merged into Scoutbook.
My understanding is that
a. Internet Advancement 2.0 and Scoutbook Lite are the same product.
b. Scoutbook and Internet Advancement 2.0 are two different unit-interface products (FRONTENDS) using the same database (BACKEND).
c. BSA national does not require Scoutbook or Internet Advancement 2.0 to be used. I suspect many councils want (or are requiring) units to use Scoutbook because they believe doing so with reduce the council’s registrar’s data entry workload.
d. Units using Scoutbook (for detailed advancement tracking) should not be using Internet Advancement 2.0 for advancement tracking. The one exception I can think of used to be data transfer between Scoutbook and third-party software. THIS IS NEW CHANGE ADDS DATA ENTRY OF SOME LOG DATA VIA INTERNET ADVANCEMENT 2.0.
e. The Scoutbook frontend for detailed advancement tracking is not going away.
f. Scoutbook does not provide advancement tracking support for Lone Cub Scouts and Lone Scouts because they are not registered in units.
@JamesSoltysiak Internet Advancement 2.0 (formally know as Scoutbook Lite) and Scoutbook.com are all the same database. Record an advancement in one and you can see it in both. All existing Scoutbook Logs are going to merge into the new Activities Logs in IA2 and become hidden in Scoutbook. This is going to be much easier for the unit to now control. Being able to record for youth AND Registered Adults. AND now being able to approve logs.
@CharleyHamilton this was the discussion and small disclosure last year about IA2 and ScoutBook in the threads (granted, this could change as it is over a year old):
