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.
Leadership positions are being credited to the current rank and not to the rank being worked on. I have an Eagle candidate that earned Life on 06/07/2021 and the Instructor position that counts toward his Eagle requirement started 01/02/2023 and ended 07/18/2023. This position is being credited as a Life position in both Scoutbook and IA2. This issue is holding up his Eagle application from being processed in the normal way. There seems to be a backend process that my Council can use to get around this, but this definitely needs to be fixed ASAP.
It is, but the positions are not being credited to the correct rank for advancement purposes. This is coming from my Council as they are entering the information into the system for Eagle requirement verification which is tied to SB and IA2.
I just generated the Eagle App for this Scout. The app looks correct to me. The POR on the app are:
Patrol Leader - 6/7/21 to 9/13/21
Instructor - 1/2/23 to 7/18/23
These cover more than the 6 months required and in fact only Instructor is needed for Eagle.
His life date is 6/7/21 so even if PL started before 6/7/21, he only gets credit starting that day.
My local council staff member that is tasked with entering the data from applications told me that there is an issue and asked me if I could correct it. She has been doing this entry for many years. She said that their are multiple applications with this same issue and she can’t get in touch with anyone at national for assistance.
Maybe it is only on the backend where the local council has to enter the information. It just didn’t seem to be clear how it was crediting the POR. The application was not the issue, it’s how the software is reporting the POR as it relates to the rank requirement. It could be that the data being read from SB by this other system is being misinterpreted.
It is a little deceiving that in IA2 the POR states “Credited to: Life Scout” when in fact it should say “Credited to: Eagle Scout” since it was not for credit towards the Life Rank.
Where Internet Advancement says “Credited to:”, I think it means is “While a _______ Scout”. And it seems to be using the start date, so you might have a position like Den Chief that goes on for a while.
Your council if they think there is a problem needs to turn in a National Membercare ticket. But there would be a much louder cry if the system was not working
There has been a glitch with getting POR from SB to Registrar tools. This is a known issue and has been communicated to councils. SB is correct and the council needs to address with a help desk ticket if it is not moving over properly
Agreed, why isn’t it just using data entered on the Eagle App? There are too many units that don’t use SB, don’t track POR via SB or don’t validate that the dates in SB are correct.
If there is a requirement that SB have correct POR records for Eagle, then that should be added to the Eagle requirements so that all units and Scouts know this must be done.
I recently had the same issue. Rank entry in SB was correct. Leadership showed correctly on the Eagle application, but I received 2 or 3 calls from the council saying we needed to fix what rank our candidate’s OA Representative time was attached to. We kept trying to explain that the dates were correct and fell during the rank that needed the leadership credit. I don’t know if they ended up adjusting the dates to only fall during the rank that needed the leadership time or if they used some other way, but he did eventually get approved for Eagle in the system.
I wish that they had an actual bug reporting ticket system for SB for issues like this (like Jira). I also think it would be amazing if they could open-source SB. There would be a lot of work up front to make sure the code and secrets are all cleaned up then to make a small test data set with fake info, but then you could have hundreds (ok maybe dozens) of developer scouters helping with making a product that continues to evolve with changes in the field. This would free up their developers to QC check the code getting checked in and focus on big picture directions of SB. I do want to say thanks to the developers at national though! They do a great job all things considered. There are many aspects of SB and Internet advancement that I love and work beautifully!
SB will NEVER be open sourced. The BSA has made this clear in the past.
Councils should be opening a JIRA ticket with National Member Care when these issues arise. We have been told there is a known problem and that National Member Care is correcting the Eagle POR entries so that Eagle validation can be processed the within one business day. The BSA is working to correct the system so that these POR issues with Eagle validation do not occur.
Not sure exactly how to take your reply (if I said something wrong or if this is a fight you tried to fight and lost). Either way - it sounds like a dead horse. I am glad they are using Jira internally. I just wish those of us in the field had a way to have more of a direct impact on the systems we have to use almost as much as systems we have to use at our daytime jobs. I typically bring issues like these to our council, but they are often overwhelmed with a multitude of other things that go along with a tiny crew trying to bring scouting to the masses. Sounds like it’s all under control and I’ll go back to reading these and not piping up. Thanks!
