@RyanHendrickson - i do not think any amount of pushing from any direction will move them toward a public release of a timeline, roadmap, street sign, smoke signals or anything of that nature. These forjms have been active for a while and i even think it was asked on the old forums. So i think the answer will remain a solid no.
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If not a roadmap, can we at least get the backlog? I did a bunch of updating yesterday to close out the year and the only way to efficiently traverse my den and close requirements was to bounce back out to the mobile version of scoutbook (I was on desktop) after each edit.
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@CharlesBabington - I am not certain that will be published or made known… as it has been asked many times with the same response
here it is from 6 years ago:
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It’s very clear that they don’t really care and are just kludging along.
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Do we know if the person or persons responsible for the development of BSA’s tech products reads these forums?
They do not. That’s why we suggest you talk to your council about things like this.
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I’ve reached out to the District Exec in BAC to see what Baltimore Area Council can do to assist in providing greater transparency here.
The developers are providing official SUAC members with some (minimal?) amount of information because @edavignon was able to publish that he was aware that “Photos are still not working properly [and] the developers are investigating” (June 7, 2024 Scoutbook Plus Updates - Cub Scout Comments) I’m not sure what makes profile photos rise to the level of announcing that the developers are working on it vs. other known operational bugs that have been reported.
That’s simply not enough communication to the volunteer base that is Scouting America. We need to be winning hearts and minds with major updates like Scoutbook Plus. Part of rolling out major software releases is the increased engagement with the user-base to ensure stakeholder buy-in.
I will continue to applaud the efforts of those who have helped me here in these forums though. I highly suspect they have “insider” information to the product, but are likely under agreements of what they are and are not allowed to publish to the wider community here. We need to tackle that as a community and open their ability to engage with us and for us to the developers. They are Scouting America’s front-line support to Scoutbook Plus.
Be very carful in what you are pushing for. You may end up causing BSA IT to release LESS information.
BSA does not have the resources (dollars) to publish information with level of detail you are asking. I was able to say the photos are not working because there is a link to add photos to comments in SB+. We were announcing the comment function was released because it is important. IT could have asked me not to announce the fix to comments until the photo issue was also fixed.
Scoutbook and Scoutbook Plus are the only systems in the BSA that have any level of transparency. Most systems get changed with only a statement that there was an update. No list of changes and no support outside of council staff.
Be thankful for what we do have as it could be removed by BSA IT at any time.
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A few requests as kinks in SB+ are being worked on:
Summertime Fun Electives - create activity 1, 2 & 3 requiring dates of completion, this will make it easier for advancement chairs to mass enter completions, and will ensure all 3 activities are tracked. If this is not possible, allow mass entry of comments, without selecting a completion date so activity or advancement chairs can easily enter attendance tracking to the elective.
Two questions:
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How to I go back to using the old Scoutbook? I find this new and improved version to be clunky and not too user friendly. Yes the graphics are nice and updated, but data entry is a pain. Who cares that you can see visuals of every award if it takes twice as long to enter the data.
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Where is the user guide? I have not come across a simple guide or an area to type a question. I just want a simple Q and A section so I can figure out how to map my way through this.
This should help with the new process. As far as going back, the old scoutbook is written in legacy code and will be retired in stages.
Why in the world would they want to be so obscure about this? It’s not like it’s a trade secret and they’re selling it and they’re going to lose tons of money if they don’t release information to us.
National catches flack all the time for not communicating. I really don’t understand why they have such a problem with it. It doesn’t cost anything to communicate in the forums as everyone here has said this is the only place they would.
They really need to rethink their priorities. This whole endeavor is for the youth of America not for the adults of America not for national but the youth.
Without the help of your volunteers you’re not going to get this program to the youth and without the tools necessary to track the advancement it’s not going to happen.
I could go back to using spreadsheets to track advancement because that would be a lot easier in my opinion than some of this stuff that’s out here now.
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There are ongoing discussions to improve the Summertime Fun adventures but this is not just a Scoutbook Plus issue. Because it requires changes to the requirements, it must be approved by the Cub Scout program office.
I was not aware a completion date is required to add a comment. I’ll pass this on to the developers as one should not be needed. Thank you for letting us know.
I just tried to add a comment on our test system without a completion date and it did save. Can yo please try again as there was an issue with comments that was fixed yesterday which may have fixed the issue you were seeing.
It allows individual entries, but if you are attempting to batch enter an entire den’s comments to reflect they all attended an event it didn’t allow batch entry.
@LeslieSobotka - i think the logic on batch entry is that it would have a complete date
I don’t see this as a change to requirements. The requirement is attend 3 cub activities in the given summer timeframe. Instead of requiring one completion date sign off couldn’t it be input as activity 1, 2 &3 completion dates? Same requirement just 2 more fields for tracking available in the system to reflect the date of each of the 3 required activities? I realize this is a change to the coding, and may not be able to be addressed now, but a suggestion for consideration going forward.
We agree with you but chaning the way the requirement is presented in Scoutbook Plus such that it differs from what is in the handbook requires the approval of the Cub Scout program office.
Thank you for clarifying the comment issue. We are looking into it.
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