The Scoutmaster has a responsibility to provide the Scout with contact information for an approved counselor. Nothing in any BSA policy gives the Scoutmaster the authority to delegate this.
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@EricAugustine bingo. And when the Scoutmaster is using Scoutbook, with the recent changes, when searching for a merit badge counselor, they can be assured the MBC meets those criteria (as only Registered MBCs now show in Scoutbook searches as they pull from ScoutNET which is the registration database).
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Er, sorta. The MB process starts with 7.0.0.3 The Scout, the Blue Card, and the Unit Leader. That section does contemplate for large units the ability of the SM to delegate some functions.
*Because of the counseling opportunity involved, it is the unit leaderās responsibility to sign blue cards. In the role of giving leadership to the delivery of the troop program, a Scoutmaster, for example, has a better opportunity than other leaders to get to know the youth. This background with the Scouts allows a unit leader to add greater value in the discussion and counseling intended to take place with the signing of the card. However, in circumstances when this may be impracticalāfor example, in large units or when the unit leader may be absentāthe unit leader may delegate authority to sign cards and conduct the discussions. This authority should be entrusted to a knowledgeable assistant unit leader.
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And one way of detecting such issues is for the advancement chair to confirm MBC status as they process blue cards.
Here are a couple of scenarios that happen frequently in my neck of the woods.
- SM is using the same counselor for a common badge and that counselor is no longer listed for whatever reason (YPT expired, etc.)
- The scout goes āoutside the wireā and picks a counselor other than the one the SM suggests, as is his right per GtA 7.0.0.3, (ācanāt my PE teacher sign off Personal Fitness?ā) and the SM didnāt check MBC status (since that functionality isnāt supported by SB [hint], [hint]).
The purpose of having the advancement person confirm MBC status is not to punish the Scout nor to try to deny the award. It is to help correct adults (SM and/or MBCs) who are not following the proper procedure. āTrust but verify.ā
Correct, it is not a GtA requirement, just a ābest practiceā per our council advancement committee.
Hence my use of āSUPPOSED to beā vs āREQUIRED toā verify ā¦
I guess I could have been more clear about this. Ed was just looking for some use cases and this one came to mind first. The SM attempting to verify a Scout-requested MBC is another use case for this same functionality (search by name).
Ahh, but that IS the functionality supported by Scoutbook. SM can search MBC in Scoutbook (previous screenshots provided above) and by virtue of being in Scoutbook, MBCs are already vetted (since it is a sync from ScoutNET based on the recent changes). That is the exact intent of the MBC search feature available in Scoutbook today. It just isnāt the District or Council access you have requested, but already previously addressed. The current access is meant to facilitate the flow you just described within a unit. The only exception, search doesnāt have a āby nameā component, but can search by MB type. I can see where a search by name might help (although that raises another whole host of issues if the name wasnāt spelled right in the search, etc.).
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How does one search for āBob Jonesā from the middle school? In what city (ZIP code) does Bob live? Right!, it doesnāt have this functionality, as you quickly admit ā¦
While it is āpossibleā to maybe find Bob somewhere in Scoutbook, the likelihood that a SM would go to the effort necessary to find him, given the current interface, is quite low.
For example, in my area when I search for Personal Fitness I get 9 pages of names. Since SB also doesnāt allow me to sort the list (instead, assuming they know best; that distance is the right sort criteria) nor does it allow me to put more than 10 people on a page; I now have to page through all 9 pages of names looking for Bob (or Robert Jones, or Bobby Jones, or R. Fredric Jones or ā¦).
And that, of course, assumes that Bob is within the distance I specified. If not, I have to open up the distance and search through the same people again, plus others.
Not something a SM is likely to do while trying to have a MB discussion with a Scout.
And yet the answer is so simple and incredibly easy to implement. SB needs to add a couple of lines of code, taking perhaps an hour or two of programmer time, to solve this problem. Or, better yet, let some volunteer write the code and SB simply has to accept the pull request.
In case anyone is interested (although that doesnāt appear to be the case), hereās a demo of the tool I built. This is all completely āfakeā data so donāt expect things like state, city, and ZIP code to align properly. No MBC PII was harmed in the making of this demo. 
I put in 5000 fake counselors for this demo. Iāve tested with 10000 and it is still quite performant so it should work just fine for even the largest councils.
Demo: Merit Badge Counselor List Demo (v20210226.0137)
Project: GitHub - jbrown123/mbclist: Merit Badge Counselor List
BTW, Iām still waiting for my council to produce an export from either ScoutNET or ScoutBook. If anyone knows the magic incantation necessary to extract the following information, Iād be happy to pass the hint along to my council professionals.
name, address, city, state, zip, array of [phone type (home, work, cell), phone number], email, district, BSA ID, works with (all, district list, unit list), array of merit badges.
In this case, I would recommend adding a connection to Bob Jones from the scoutās connection page. To do so, first make sure you have started the merit badge for the scout. Then, click the add connection button. You can then search by name, email address, or member number. You select the MBC connection type. At the bottom, youāll have a choice of MBs that are the intersection of what MBC counsels and the scout has started.
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Well, actually, no. Scouts can work with any approved Merit Badge Counselor, not just with anyone.
Edit
We actually had to deal with this a couple of years ago. We had a Scout that wanted to work on the Theatre MB with his high school drama teacher as the MBC. The teacher wasnāt a Counselor, though.
The options we gave the Scout were:
- Ask his teacher to register as an MBC.
- Work with another adult that was already registered as an MBC for this badge.
- Wait for summer camp, where they were offering the merit badge.
At NO time was āgo ahead and work on the merit badge with an unapproved counselorā one of the options.
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I never suggested that āwork with an unapproved counselorā was an option. I said the pain for the SM to attempt to locate a counselor that the Scout chooses to work with rather than whomever the SM found was unnecessary. My point being the SB should provide an interface so the SM could search by name for a specific counselor.
@edavignon @ZacharyMcCarty @jacobfetzer
I asked about the disappearing reply options over on the discourse.org site. After providing them some dumps of console messages, their observation is
Hereās a link to the discussion thread over on discourse.org.
Any chance you can reach out to the discourse administrators here on scouting.org and have them try safe mode. Maybe get them to engage with the folks over on discourse.org to solve this issue.
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I have added a request to the backlog to add an optional name field to the MBC Search. I would not expect it to be scheduled for implementation for the foreseeable future.
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I passed the Discourse thread on to IT.
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Thank you for both the backlog item and for passing along the discourse thread.
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@edavignon or others ā¦
According to my council, they can no longer export MBCs (with list of badges) from ScoutNET. Apparently BSA turned off this functionality when they started the automated sync with SB.
Is there another way to expert MBCs from ScoutNET?
Does the admin export of MBCs from ScoutBook still work? Per this site / video: https://help.scoutbook.scouting.org/knowledge-base/council-merit-badge-counselor-upload-instructions-sb/
As I understand it, ScoutNet access is limited to only authorized users, and if you subtract your Council staff/registrars, then the only remaining authorized would be at the national level.
So, effectively, no. If your Council canāt do it, then National level is all that is left and I suspect they wonāt.
I would think that few folks would know how to expert MBC from scoutnet. I would suspect a typo there. So this is my understanding of the MBC world. Scoutnet holds the role and the specific merit badges. My.scouting only holds the role of MBC. The approved merit badges show up in scoutbook based on the scoutnet entry of merit badges approved. My council distributes the list via smoke signals and when available papyrus scrolls.
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The export of MBCs from ScoutBook still works for Council Administrators, just verified it. We get a CSV that includes only BSA Member ID, First Name, Last Name, and a list of Merit Badges for each person. This is the same format that the council can upload if they do not choose to maintain their list of approved badges within ScoutNET.
They really should move up to semaphore and lambskin scrolls.
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