Unfortunately, Internet Advancement 2 automatically closed its POs.
Internet Advancement 2 should ONLY be used by units that are not using Scoutbook for advancement tacking, such as those units using 3rd party tacking tools or still using Internet Advancement 1.
Thomas
I am glad you found the items you needed. If you use Scoutbook, you don’t need to use Internet Advancement 2 or the old internet advancement.
I would like to understand this further though, I did just tried entering an advancement and printing a report in Internet Advancement 2 and it worked fine. But again, if you normally use Scoutbook, stick with Scoutbook.
Please send me your contact information to follow up with you on what happened. Please send it to SUACInformation@gmail.com
Bill Nelson
Scoutbook User Advisory Council
Could you confirm whether you normally use Scoutbook or not? Ed and Bill seem to have interpreted your comments differently than I have.
I don’t know what I use since this is the first time doing this. Previous cub master did everything on paper; our council is no longer accepting hand-written advancement reports.
I think advancement was configured through Scoutbook, but I had no idea that meant I couldn’t use IA2. But still, even that was super confusing.
I think the issue is that Internet Advancement (1.0 or 2.0) does not track the “awarded” status of items, but Scoutbook does.
We use Scoutbook, but I was trying to generate a report of everyone who had earned a rank, and wasn’t finding that easily, so thought I’d try IA2. I unselected everything except ranks, ran a report, and what I got was a blank report, and everything that should have been in the report was marked “awarded” and therefore removed from the list that was used to generate the report.
As a Scoutbook user, I realize that I shouldn’t have been using IA2, but it sounds like the same thing happened to the original poster.
Our pack is divided over Scoutbook. Some of the dens have jumped in and are trying to use it as much as possible but others have den leaders who I don’t think have even accepted their invitations yet. Does the fact that some of us are using it mean that we need to force the rest to convert, too?
This is an excellent statement and this statement really should start and be seen first both written and verbally anywhere Internet Advancement is mentioned. It would greatly reduce questions from the “average Joe Scout” that isn’t steeped in deep understanding of these systems. The beginning Scouters need this statement from the get go. It clarifies so many issues with this one statement. Hope this feedback helps.
You can undo what you did in Internet Advancement 2. See the instructions here:
Scoutbook users should not use Internet Advancement 2.
I am not sure what you are trying to do, but Scoutbook has a Cub Scout Recognition Report that you can use to tell you all approved awards within a certain date range.
If you are a Pack Admin, you can Export / Backup the Scout Advancement csv file, and open it up in a spreadsheet. You can sort and filter based on whether or not items have been approved or by date.
I was trying to find a way to get a report showing that the rank patches we need to buy have been approved. I can’t think of any other situation where creating a report would change the database it’s being pulled from, so it seemed perfectly safe to do.
It never occurred to me that I would need to generated a purchase order to get to the report the Scout Shop needs. Since we tend to purchase awards den by den, as needed, and some dens don’t use scoutbook, the purchase order system is always a mess, so we don’t normally use it.
If you are using Scoutbook, then running the Needs Purchasing Report won’t change the database. However, if you mark all of the items as Awarded, they will all fall off of the report (because items that have already been awarded / presented to a Scout don’t need to be purchased).
Your Advancement Chair (if you have one) can use Scoutbook even if some of your Den Leaders do not.
Inside of the POs, you can organize by den, or group by item type or by Scout.
You can also view closed POs, where you can re-print the PO (shopping list) or print the Advancement Report (to give to the Scout shop).
I’m using Scoutbook, but when I went through everything in the Reports list, and couldn’t find what I needed, I tried to create a report in IA2. I’m still trying to clean up the mess that created. Why would running a report automatically mark things as awarded? If it had at least generated a report in the process of doing that, I would have had a reference list to go back to, but the “report” was blank, leaving me trying to piece together who would have been on it as I go back to IA2 to unapprove them. I’m sure the Key 3 are going to be thrilled with that stack of email notifications.
I think I’ve finally got everything undone there, but now I have to go back in and mark everything complete and approved in Scoutbook.
Because Internet Advancement doesn’t really track which items are awarded – it just assumes that they are awarded after purchase. This is one of the differences between IA and Scoutbook.
It sounds like the report that you wanted was the Cub Scout Recognition Report, which will show all Approved items within a specified time. There are options to “Include Awarded Within Date Range” or “Include Not-Awarded Regardless of Date Range”.
You can also unapprove items in Scoutbook. I’m not sure which way would be faster, but Scoutbook will not send out a bunch of e-mail notifications.
If you are a Pack Admin, this is what I recommend: Go to your main pack page, click on Export / Backup → Scout Advancement. Then open up this csv file into a spreadsheet program. Turn on filters. Go to the AwardedDate field and sort based on newest->oldest.
I unapproved them in Scoutbook first, but that didn’t get them to show up in my “needs approval” report, or the “needs purchasing” report.
Once I unapproved them in IA2, they still weren’t in those reports, but that was because they no longer said they were even completed, so I had to mark them all complete again, and approve, and now they’re back in my Purchase Order that I will use to generate the Advancement Report to take to the Scout Shop.
That’s the report I needed all along. I just couldn’t find it since we don’t use purchase orders. It looks like we’ll at least be using purchase orders at least for the Rank Badge purchases now!
Yes if you use Scoutbook, don’t use Internet Advancement 2. It will confuse your tracking. Although it does record dates it currently also marks the advancements as awarded (that may change but that is what it does now) and you won’t be able to review POs in Scoutbook. So if you use Scoutbook, just stay using Scoutbook.
I had no intentions of using Internet Advancement to actually DO anything. Where I ran into trouble is not understanding that just running a report is still doing something.
I see that they’ve started trying to make it clearer that people using Scoutbook don’t need to worry about Internet Advancement 2.0, but this thread is the first that I’ve ever seen anyone mention that doing anything - even generating a report - from IA2 will cause problems.
I would love to see a warning added to the IA2 info saying that if your unit is set up for Scoutbook, you need to pretend that the Internet Advancement link doesn’t even exist.
I never would have gone poking around the old internet advancement, but having it added so prominently to my Scoutbook dashboard made it seem like it was a tool I was supposed to use.
Exactly the sentiments I expressed above. We need this written and/or some type of pop-up warning to make the point crystal clear as @DonovanMcNeil and @WilliamNelson have done. Do not use IA 2.0 if using ScoutBook. With the turnover in leadership, information isn’t always relayed as would be ideal.
Ever since Scoutbook Active Sync was enabled, there has been no reason to ever go back into Internet Advancement. Now that Internet Advancement 2.0 has been activated, they are both using the same database (see the IA 2.0 FAQ), so anything you do in 1 will affect what you see in the other.
Thank you very much.
I have spent the last hour fighting with Scoutbook and MyScouting trying to find where the report went.
FWIW, my unit “uses” Scoutbook, but none of my leaders will enter the Advancement info during the year so it is always a last minute rush to get the badge data entered. Internet advancement 2 was a million times easier to use until it was time to generate the report.
Then how can I print out the advancement report for the Scout Shop? They insist they need one. All my scouts’s rank are correct in Scoutbook and IA 2.0, but no option to print Advancement Report on either platform.
Thanks.
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