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.
So frustrated…my calendar entries using SB IA calendar get created just fine…in SB IA. But nothing is actually being sent to any of the invitees (I’m having to create separate email invites via Gmail, which is a huge waste of time).
I thought selecting “ASAP” in the reminders section might help, but I’m still not seeing invites go out.
If there is a delay, like a nightly batch, this is incredibly risky - without knowing/seeing invites go out when created, there is a huge risk of people not even knowing a major event is happening, and nothing I can do about it.
Certainly we don’t expect parents to log in once a week to look at a calendar on a website…what am I doing wrong?
Yessir - I’ve added my work email as an “outside” email, and added my wife, who I can select, as she is the fundraising chair. Neither email receives any communication whatsoever, even after 5 hours to allow for batch cycling or delays or whatever nuances there might be.
I’ve sent 4 such “test” invites using various combinations of RSVP, reminders “ASAP”, no reminders, etc. Have also checked both of our spam/junk mail filters (her Gmail, my Outlook) and nothing there.
I’ve also sent another batch of non-test invites to the entire pack and no one is receiving any calendar invites - even folks who have confirmed they are receiving emails and text messages from the Scoutbook site.
Is the expected experience that these go out to invitees when I “Save” the calendar entry? Not seeing a “Send”…
Thoughts?
Update: the “old” calendar sends emails indicating the event (no calendar entries/files though, unfortunately). This tells me there isn’t a fundamental problem accessing and sending to these emails and that this nuance is specific to the new calendar functionality. Still totally at a loss…
I’ve reviewed this repeatedly…what exactly is supposed to be in here that resolves this issue?
On the surface the interface isn’t complicated - these instructions are intuitive, however I’ve read them repeatedly just in case.
Even Lotus Notes sent calendar invites to people…are we expecting folks to subscribe to the calendar in order to know an invite has been sent out? This question still hasn’t been answered…is the expected user experience that nothing actually gets pushed out to peoples emails to draw their attention to the invitation?
@CharlesFrank - the reminders are what sends the event info out. No reminders then no email sent. If folks subscribe to the calendar then the subscription will update with changes and adds. There is no notification to invitees when an event is created without reminders.
So this one still has a reminder pending…I invited my personal email, my work email, and my wife’s personal email…
I’m also subscribed to the IA calendar on Google calendar (I know because it wont’ let me re-add) and none of these are showing up there either, even if I set a reminder.
Is there a chance there is a 24-hour delay on these showing up?
OK, fair enough. So does the system not actually send out invitations? Is “Subscribing” the only way to actually get an actual calendar entry to manifest for an invitee, and the rest is dependent on reminders that are defaulted to not send? I really hope this isn’t the case, because it’s incredibly passive and error-prone.
There is no way all of our parents actually know how to “subscribe” to calendar URLs…is this the expectation outside of them receiving reminders?
Guys, I think I understand the situation, and the system is operating how it was designed, except for the “Reminder ASAP” which apparently is broken.
I know everyone is doing the best they can, but I’m gonna be honest - this SB IA calendar functionality is absolutely abhorrent.
The calendar needs to operate as close to every other internet calendar out there…send an invite out with full information in it, that can be accepted, with reminders within it.
It is unacceptable to turn this inside out and expect people to “subscribe” to calendars, and it’s unacceptable to ask us parent leaders with limited time and mental bandwidth to reverse engineer when people need to simply be AWARE of an event via counting backwards to when a reminder should go out.
Scheduled events should go out IMMEDIATELY - as soon as they are created.
“Subscribing” to calendars is a neat trick, but we can’t be expecting people to do this.
I can set aside the “ASAP” defect (which is a CRITICAL defect and should have been the first response on this thread) but relying on reminders to go out at some future date to inform my pack of events I’m working very hard to plan creates massive overhead.
Unless I’m totally missing the point this is fantastically disappointing.
@CharlesFrank - well the scoutbook calendar never notified anyone when an event was created. The only way ANYONE GETS NOTIFIED OF AN EVENT IS VIA THE SCHEDULED REMINDERS. There has never been an invite on the calendar…there are invitees but never been an invite.
@CharlesFrank - what is ridiculous ? The other issue is that units using huge amounts of reminders kept placing the BSA email systems on spam lists. Beyond that, I can send a message out via scoutbook with a list of upcoming events
To be clear, the calendar is designed to send emails to invitees when the event creator tells it to. It doesn’t do it automatically, because you may not be ready for that (ie, just created the event as a placeholder).
Send asap reminder emails were indeed going out to most users, but there was a bug that left the description off. That bug has now been fixed.
