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.
Our units use the COMMENTS at the bottom of calendar events to add relevant information for an event. “john at b-practice arriving at 10”, dietary issues, someone is sick last minute cant attend.
Will the COMMENTS be added in the new IA calendar options. I note there is no COMMENTs currently in the feature.
We have used comments on 1-2 events a year. For example, a family event. We asked people to RSVP and then note how many were having dinner. It worked well and people used it. We have used it about 6 times between 2 units.
Ditto. We use comments so we know who is RSVPing for events that require payment, how much they will be paying (for those who will be attending in the family who are non-scouts, and how those people are making payment). It is a record for our treasurer for accounting purposes as well as a record because of the date/time stamp on when people said they will be attending an activity (for example, one that requires a payment up front to register). RSVP is great, but the comments catch so much more information that is invaluable.
Looking at IA it looks like we are dumping a more user friendly Scoutbook for IA Calendar. Can you advise to as why? And point me to some training I can watch to understand how to use the IA system. Please and Thank you.
This has been explained many times. Scoutbook is written in classic ASP which is obsolete technology. In addition to being obsolete, it is difficult to find classic ASP programmers. IA is being written in a modern language with improved architecture.
Out troop utilizes public Comments for questions from families about the event and to track attendees who are not formal troop members. The example would be “Smith family of 5.” I would strongly suggest adding something like this feature to the Internet Advancement Calendar.