Many Roster Builder Bugs

Scoutbook Scoutbook Bugs
1

I haven’t made many Roster Builder reports, but I had tried one today. I noticed a number of bugs. I assume we (as a Scoutbook community) want them confirmed, recorded, and fixed?

If I make a Roster Builder report it has the following bugs:

  • Has the pack in the title and not the troop (I have access to both units, but not admin in the pack). Based on options, I can get it to be wrong and correct. When it changes to pack, I never have any pack checkboxes checked. The title shows “Scouts BSA” even though it lists the unit as a pack.
  • wrong Executive Officer. The one listed may have been the EO 5+ years ago, but is not listed as the EO in my.scouting nor Scoutbook (the correct one is). The person was associated with that school, so the name truly isn’t random. The EO may be the EO of record for the pack (which isn’t correct, but I can’t confirm if their EO of record is wrong).
  • extra blank columns show up
  • Unit tenure is listed wrong (may be the pack’s)
  • Expiration date is listed as 1/1/19. I assume that is when the charter runs out? It should be 1/1/20. It shows the term as 11, I assume that is 11 months which is correct since we were chartered 2/1/19.
  • Shows dash space Unit slash “- Unit /” for unit of the Scouts, but not adults.
  • Shows the title of the report in red as “Roster Builder” even though a title has been put in as “Troop 1401 Health Form Dates” and the report has been saved.
  • If date joined is checked, it shows up under the email address for adults with no heading.

Ugh! Not pretty. I assume it isn’t just me. I would assume others are just putting up with the bugs? Let’s fix them!

2

All of your points have been addressed with an update to Roster Builder. Please try again and let us know your results.

3

Thanks for such quick turn around! Keep it up! Here is my next list. Fix these and we will go another round!

  • I would drop the words “ROSTER BUILDER” from the report title as one doesn’t need to know it was built with ROSTER BUILDER after one builds it
  • Some adult members show up many many times (one showed up for example 7 times) when a report for the pack was created with Cubs and adults with show parents and guardians
  • For cubs with only one parent connected, there is still a line below the Scout.
  • In the email line for one parent it has their email address and “YPT (Expiration Date) - Yes ()” appended after their email address. This is the only parent that has this.
  • The unit tenure is listed as 564. Is that months? So, 47 years?
  • This one could be argued, but it has down “Council: Bay-Lakes Council”. So, I would drop the second council or drop the first.
  • This report was for a pack and it has at the top “Scouts BSA” and the unit is “Unit: Pack 4201”. So, it should say Cub Scouts BSA or something and not “Scouts BSA”.
  • The unit has the F for family appended. I wouldn’t do that, but it is a choice. One could make the argument for boy and girl troops (I wouldn’t do that too), but for packs it seems unnecessary.
  • For the Parent / Guardian column it has “Parent / Guardian / Parent / Guardian”. I would only have it once. I get it that it may show 2 parents, but still. Odd.
4

The B/G for Boy and Girl Tripp’s is necessary because some councils allow units to share the number. The B/G allows the user to know which troop is being referenced

5

Yes, but the F isn’t needed for a family pack on a report.

6

Although there are packs that are not family packs based on the desire of the charter partner.

7

Correct, packs don’t have (and are not supposed to have) the B/G/F designation because they are supposed to have unique numbers. The BSA allowed councils to assign the same number to linked troops which is why the designator is required.

8

Yes, the designation for Packs, though, isn’t necessary for humans. Our pack isn’t pack 4201F. It is Pack 4201, a family pack. Just like our troop is 1401 G, it is Troop 1401 and a girl troop. The letters were specifically for the databases vs. for humans. That is why National won’t allow troops or packs to get unit numbers or flags with the letters.

Like I said, you could make an argument to have 1401 G on a report, but not for the F/B/G for Packs. For packs, it would be better to have a field that said “type”.

9

It is needed generally in scoutbook for troops because it is common for individuals to be involved in the girl and boy troop of the same number.

10

Ok. But we don’t need the F for Packs.

11

Matt

I have said several times the B/G/F designator for packs should not be there. We will get this fixed.

12

Matt,

Thank you for more of your Scouting helpfulness. I’ve addressed all nine points with the developers and, in the interests of transparency and expectations, I supported seven of them. I’ve asked that #1 (title) and #6 (council name) to be no-change for standards reasons.

About #4 (email with YPT info), I could not reproduce. If you can discern or discover a way to intentionally make it happen, that would be best. Also, please look in the user’s profile at the email address itself to see if the YPT text somehow accidentally was entered into the field.

JW

13

Ok! Sorry I misunderstood.

14

Thanks! Sounds good to me! The whole council naming thing and the report name are, like you say, standards things. They can go either way.

15

The latest updates to Roster Builder Designer and Roster Builder Report are now available.

16

It is getting better! Some of these are “questions” vs. true anomalies. Take a look, though. Some are bugs.

• Something is still up with the math on “unit tenure”. Our troop started 2/1. It is show as “Unit Tenure: 11d”. I would say do it in decimal years. I think is months and you are assuming years? Not sure
• It says “Term: 11”. I don’t know what this means.
• If you choose Name, BSA#, Home Phone, OA Info, and Unit number, there is a misplaced dash in front of the “home phone” field title.
• Instead of “Expiration Date” I would call that “Charter Expiration Date” or something like that.
• I ran the report for adult leaders. For position tenure, the adults allow show, but they show their positions for other units (and merit badge counselors, nova, etc.). If you show other unit roles, I think it should show the unit. For example, we have someone as Unit Scouter Reserve in Scoutbook from the boy’s troop. They are listed on the roster as “Committee Chair”. They aren’t, for our unit. Is it useful, for adults, to have the person’s tenure? I am not sure. I would swap that for the unit. So, for our Unit Scouter Reserve person, I would have it as Mike Jones, Positions – Unit Scouter Reserve (Troop 1401 G), Committee Chair (Troop 1201 B). Maybe just make the unit as an option under positions.
• If I run a leader only report, it shows parents who are leaders in other units, but not a leader in our unit (they aren’t listed as anything in our unit and don’t show up in the roster view in Scoutbook). Parents that aren’t a leader anywhere don’t show up (like it is supposed to be)
• For consistency, even though I don’t like it, the Unit for troops should show the B or G in the header. Right now it shows G in the unit number next to the person, but not in the header. Maybe it should have a “Unit Type” in the header and have Boy, Girl, or Family.
• Is a parent considered an “adult member”? I would say no. Maybe it should be a “third” section of the report for “parents”. Some people would show up twice then? Maybe not a big deal to have them twice?
• On the Scoutbook roster screen it says “print roster”. Maybe it should say “roster report” or something like that since it doesn’t print when you hit it.
• The report shows the district number (which no one uses to my knowledge). Maybe it shows then show the council number (which is more commonly used?)?
• For scouts, they seem to default to non-swimmer. For parents, it defaults to blank. I guess this isn’t a roster builder issue.
• For OA, should it just say yes? Or show it show what honor the person is? It would be useful for brotherhood conversion purposes to know who still is an ordeal vs. yes/no.
• I assume this is a policy question, but it shows Scout phone numbers and not emails. It seems odd in this day and age of cell phones. Both or neither?
• It has “Talent Release Date”. I think the date is irrelevant, no? It should be yes/no?
• My wife, who is an admin in the Pack and “just” a parent in the troop has the option of both units in the roster designer. She can select “all units”. This includes both units in the check boxes. It only shows our daughter in in the list of “youth members” since our daughter is the only one she has access to. I don’t know what to suggest, but it isn’t correct since it doesn’t include “all youth” and “all adults” from the troop, only the ones she has access to. Maybe she shouldn’t be able to run reports on the troop? Not sure.
o When she runs the report for both units, the headers are “stacked” and the adults and youth are mixed. Maybe it should just have the report for one and the report for the other vs. is stacking and mixing? Not sure.
o At one point, if you choose adult member emails and date joined, it doesn’t center it vertically in the title of that column like the other columns. Not a big deal.
• For some adults, not sure how, it doesn’t have a date joined and defaults to 01/01/1900. Other adults it does just fine.

17

I think this may be a jurisdictional issue, @Matt.Johnson. Some jurisdictions require renewal of permissions on a set basis (calendar year, 12 month cycle, etc). I think the date is useful for some, and represents a “Yes” for everyone else.

I think this is key, as well. I would probably condense the field output, though: “T1401G” rather than “Troop 1401 G”.

The only issue I could see would be in cases where a leader serves in more than one council, and has the potential for overlapping unit numbers. Unlikely, I suspect, but an edge case that should probably be included in the programming story. Maybe as “T1401G-###” where -### is the council number and only displays when two identical units (e.g. both T1401G) exist for the same user in different councils. At present, I believe that different councils means different BSA IDs (and possibly different Scoutbook logins for that reason?), so this may not be an issue until the BSA goes to a central BSA ID system rather than blocks assigned to councils.

I suspect that the district number is included for the benefit of district/council personnel who would potentially need this information. I can see benefit to including both, unless district numbers are unique nationally (e.g. council 049 might have a district 01375, but no other council would have that district number).

I can actually see some value to this, but possibly as a selectable option. For example, if I have an adult in my unit who is a registered leader with another unit, that person counts for 2-deep leadership (at least from the BSA side of things). A given chartered organization may require that they vet all adults in contact with scouts (and I know of at least a few that do), even if the direct contact leader is already registered and vetted by another chartered org. In those cases, it might not be as useful.

The chapter adviser in me says we definitely want to see Ordeal/Brotherhood/Vigil, and possibly even the dates but at the same time, I’m not sure that’s terribly relevant at the typical unit roster unit level. We can retrieve that information more accurately from LodgeMaster. I’d rather see it, because it would make life easier for the average OA Unit Representative to be able to ask a unit leader for the data rather than pinging their chapter chief/secretary who then asks the adviser to pull the data down, but it’s not a deal killer for me either way.

A separate OA report pulling from Scoutbook could handle the Ordeal/Brotherhood/Vigil status and dates questions for OA reps, but I can see how the developers would rather create and maintain one UI for roster-type queries.

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18

Greetings,

The following include some Roster Builder explanations and things that will get attention according to your suggestions in the new year, immediately after the holidays:

  • Unit tenure is a known issue and appears to be based upon when the unit was “setup for BSA Advancement Sync,” as you may find on the Edit Unit page. We were already looking into this, and how to make it more what you might expect.
  • Term is the number of months for your charter, also referenced by the Expiration date.
  • Will fix Home Phone dash
  • “Charter Expiration Date” gets a bit wordy for a title and lengthy for the PDF, though it might fit. Will test.
  • Let’s see if adding suffix “(TxxxxG-###)” to position solves that issue. (Thanks Charley).
  • Leaders and parents already have a Unit Number column, which should help identify who isn’t a leader in your own unit. Please let me know if you don’t see multiple units listed for those who are members of multiple units. That said, how about this rule: If only leaders are selected (no parents), do not print parents who are leaders in a unit that is not included under “All Units.”
  • Will add B or G designator to Unit number in heading. F by policy is not printed - only B or G for troops.
  • Parents who are not leaders are not (paid) members, so only leaders are adult members. The selection only says “Adults.” If a parent is also a leader, they will appear only as a leader and should not appear twice as a leader and parent, even if you select to print leaders and parents.
  • Print Roster appears on the unit roster and Den/Patrol pages. They are legacy and remain in place with the same wording to not confuse long-time users. I understand the new Roster Designer offers the same functionality.
  • Will add council number to header.
  • Profile defaults to Nonswimmer in the Scoutbook UI, which must be set to one of the three choices.
  • The Scouts BSA History Report shows more detailed OA information.
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19

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