I submitted an email that didn’t seem to get sent out. I would love to be able to look at my sent mail so I don’t need to recreate it. This is such a basic feature - am I missing it? How can I see who I might have sent mails to?
There is no way to do this. Unfortunately, the bsa doesn’t have the storage space or budget to store every sent message.
I also tried to send an email today. Is the system not working today?
It is is working. Unfortunately, one of the major spam filters used by certain email providers is blocking the messages.
All messages? I didn’t even get my own BCC message
Hotmail and Comcast in particular are blocking all emails from scoutbook.
Is there a workaround
I don’t accept that answer Jacob. You don’t have to store every message. There are cost effective ways to do something at least. For example, use AWS Glacier storage and store things for 7 days ( or 3 days). Lots of ways to do something - which is better than nothing.
@StaceyLevine - but scoutbook is not using an email server it is an smtp daemon
We are all volunteers and just passing along what BSA IT has told us. If you want to see something different done, you will need to lobby your Council to submit a ticket with BSA IT. My gut feeling is there is not funding to change the e-mail system at this time.
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@Stephen_Hornak - sure. Save the email as a text file then for a small period of time. I would actually think this to be a compliance thing even more. Ie… how do you have auditability of who was sent what in case of the need to follow up. I am just saying that there are technical solutions that don’t cost much.
The only workaround would be sending something outside of scoutbook or get your entire unit to change their email addresses to one that isn’t currently blocking scoutbook emails.
To answer the original OP - the Feature Assistant Extension automatically copies you on all the emails you send. See Feature Assistant - What is it? - #4
The lack of three features - a “Sent Items” folder to see who sent what to whom and when, the ability to see bounced messages, and ability for unit admins to correct email addresses of our members - are what keep us from using Scoutbook for any communications. Google Groups is not perfect, but it gives us more of that auditability while still limiting access to the addresses of individual members to all but a few admins. We have also looked into Remind and other communication tools to strike a balance between youth protection and ease of communication and administration.
The cost of storage is negligible for text-only email and metadata - we are talking only 23 GB for a month worth of data across all 150K units (assuming a daily 5 KB message) - so storage cannot be the primary motivator. Coding a mail client is not easy, so that is far more likely the issue. However, I suspect that integrations exist that could leverage free Gmail accounts for the storage. This really should be prioritized because good communication makes or breaks units, and mishandled communication can lead to abuse opportunities.
Funneling prioritization requests through councils sounds great conceptually, but realistically the council professionals have limited technical skills. They do not know what is wrong, how it could or should work, and how to communicate that. They also do not use most of these features themselves, so they cannot speak to the importance or usefulness. They are not trained in risk or change management, so their ad hoc requests are not part of a strategic plan to mitigate risk and empower units and councils to succeed and grow.
Really, we need a simple form of a git repository where unit leaders can report bugs and request features, and other leaders can vote to prioritize them. BSA IT can then estimate the time and cost to implement the top results, and place those onto a published roadmap alongside requests by professional staff and backend infrastructure needs. Maybe even a GoFundMe style system where leaders could put real dollars behind requests to show their support, and help fund the work.
Modern organizations thrive or fail in large part based on how they leverage their IT assets, and the BSA is no different. We all want to see it succeed (and we really appreciate the communications from Scoutbook User Advisory Council volunteers!), so whatever we can do to advocate for additional IT resources is something we would all like to help with. We can make a pitch to our council for them to make a pitch to BSA, but hopefully there is more we can do.
@BrentWest I like your ideas. I would even suggest just going open source with it and letting other volunteers who might be in IT help fix/improve.
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