The developers are working on the access issues. Watch the change log for announcements as changes are released.
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Not to only cast stones, butā¦ Do the devs have a group of users to test things with, or do they (as they often do in my industry) just assume things are gonna work?
Part of the role of the SUAC is to do testing in addition to what the BSA does. We are just volunteers so we canāt test every scenario but we do quite a bit.
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One question I have with the new activity logs, will there be any view only abilities within Scoutbook or IA2 for Leaders(say ASMs or MBC) whom have View/Edit Advancement Connections to Scouts within SB but are not Key3 or AC, or K3D? So for example Camping log for rank advancement or Camping MB
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Dave,
The developers are working on increasing access so activity logs can be accessed by more than the Key 3. Watch the Change Log category for release announcements.
Internet advancement is not a user friendly site. Iām sorry they decided to move those off of Scoutbook. Scoutbook is easy to use and manage, why make it more difficult. Makes no sense. Not happy with the move at all.
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@ErinBringman - The move is one of on-going code support and the ability to have that data utilized in other areas such as JTE. Providing better code support and the ability to automate the otherwise manual processes is a valid reason to move.
We are working with the developers to improve usability of the new logs. Watch the Change Log forum for announcements.
From my experience most units put in only what they must put in the system. The more sites you make them go to enter data the less overall information you will get from them. BSA already has too many sites. This just adds to the difficulty of getting out the information or getting it back.
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The fact that more than 3 people can be added to do data entry into IA2 would be great as many hands make light work. Like someone else above mentioned that with large groups having 1-2 people documenting all of this is TEDIOUS and will eventually get dropped. thank you!
This is a TERRIBLE change! Linking the information is one thing but taking away our ability to see the hours directly on Scoutbooks main Scoutpage is the worst idea ever! Forcing a relocation to a separate page is horrible and not user friendly. This just doubled the workā¦ not to mention it doesnāt work on a mobile device; with is a lot of peopleās soul source of inputting. One of my FAVORITE things about BSA was Scoutbook!!! Doing away with it for IA2 is the worse decision National could have made. Donāt try to fix something that isnāt broken!
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@Stephen_Hornak Well Iād love to know what kind of magic you are working with because I canāt add or do anything other than run reportsā¦ maybe itās a glitch that will get fixed
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I totally agree with you. I have been fighting a losing battle with getting attendance and activities recorded into Scoutbook for a long time. Now that this has been implemented, the calendar feature and entering activities have become obsolete. Hopefully the scout shop will start selling the tracking books for the youth, because this has made it not worth the little bit of time I have left during the week. I understand that nobody seems to care at the SUAC or National level, but you are upsetting the very few volunteer leaders you have left and it is only making us less interested in the program.
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That was the big selling point for some of my parents and scouts. You could visually look at your scout homepage, see what was earned, and mouse over them to get the āearnedā date.
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Can someone give us an idea of who made these decisions? Scoutbook has been a great tracking system for years. IA has always been clunky and only enticing to programmers who are not interested in the end-user experience. What I have been through in the last 3 days trying to figure out this mess has me looking to making contact with national at the misappropriation of my dues.
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Jonathan,
This could not be farther from the truth. The SUAC members have been working countless hours to try to answer questions the best we can and relay messages to BSA IT. Keep in mind we are volunteers, just like you, and spend much more than 1 hour per day helping users, testing releases, relaying complaints to BSA IT and trying to improve Scoutbook.
There are bugs in the new log system that are being worked. See todayās Activity Logs Announcement for additional details.
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Sorry, I am just tired of the BSA right now and all of their decisions. I jumped on board with Scoutbook in itās infancy, and have been a cheerleader the whole time. I was stoked when the BSA bought the rights and told everyone that this was the future. Now it looks like they just wanted to get a competitor out of the way. IA was a thing of the past, now we are being forced to use it when our current system was working well for us long time users. I understand you are all volunteers, but if they bought the system, raised my dues 2x over the last year, maybe they should make this a paid position. Looks like we are going back to paper advancement forms and only tracking in our scout handbooks. Tired of trying to keep up with the changes and having to go into 4 different programs to say a scout hiked a mile. Seriously, this is going to cause more people dropping the tracking systems and maybe even the system as a whole. Good Luck
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I have to agree with a lot of your feelings. I donāt feel like they are making the changes robustly enough or fast enough. Then everything seems messed up vs. a cohesive plan. It wouldnāt be as big of a deal if they integrated IA2 and Scoutbook more or when a change was made it actually worked well. When the dues went up we got nothing for it other than to keep doing what we were doing. They could have used $1 of the dues for over a million dollars of development and most of this could happen faster.
I feel like the SUAC is trying, but the system is such a mess now, it is hard for everyone. It is not a good system to have 2 different interface paradigms or iconography mushed together. That is just very very poor interface design. It is a mess.
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