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.
We set up our families in Scoutbook as soon as they sign up so they can jump in, see the calendar, receive communications and get started on their Scouting adventure. The council office takes a bit longer to get the applications into the system (especially in the fall when there are so many).
The applications that council enters begin automatically importing into our roster. However, this results in many duplicate scouts.
Currently, the only way I am aware of to resolve this is to email the Scoutbook support team and have them merge the Scouts. It would be nice if there was a button for scouts that have been imported from Council to “Match to Scout on Roster”.
As long as the full name and DOB (maybe zip code too but cannot recall) on the Application match what you put in SB it matches them when Member Update does run (no dupes). There have been discussions of the other but it is not something National wants to do at this time.
I guess it only checks at the beginning? i.e., now that I have a duplicate already I couldn’t make sure everything matches and run the sync again to combine them?
no you can send email to scoutbook.support@scouting.org and have them merged if you want - but might be easier to just update the new one depending on the number of advancements
He has 2 years of advancement in there. I took over as Cubmaster this summer and noticed he was missing from our charter, so we had his parents fill out an app. I emailed support to merge them last week, but I guess with the holiday and busy time of year they’re swamped. In the past my emails were usually answered and resolved the same day. I’d love to be able to resolve it myself and not bother them, but no biggie. There’s no rush anyway.
Can we get a list of EXACTLY what has to match for these records to merge automatically? We are having the same problem with duplicate accounts for ALL new Scouts because of the delay in processing paper applications by Council and I hate to burden Scoutbook support with simple merging tasks!
Pre-Akela sync, there was an option to go into a Scoutbook record, add the BSA ID & click sync. It was a lot of clicking, but enabled the unit to manage members instead of a computer. It sure would be nice to have a “chooser” where you could click 2 records and have them merge.
We’ve been asking for this for years and would love to use it!
However, school night signups are still done on paper. We find that if we don’t put Scouts in Scoutbook and send a welcome email ASAP, our attrition rate is significantly higher than waiting the week+ for Council to process the applications.
Our DE’s have told us not to use it yet as it isn’t ready for prime time. If that’s not the case and it is good to go, we’d love to know!
LOL. If it’s so great, WHY do they turn it off? We’ve got a generation of folks that LIVE on their cell phones and shake their head when they have to fill out a paper form. I’d LOVE to get away from inputting users into Scoutbook and tracking all that paper!
One more question. If Online Registration is used, do the parents get any sort of invite to Scoutbook automatically, do we need to go into Scoutbook and add them, do we need to click a button to send an email or what? We’ve never gone through the entire sign-up process using Online Registration and I think that is one of the reasons we are hesitant to give it a shot. We don’t understand what needs to happen when.
No the parents the unit still has to put in SB (for some reason) - but it can be near instant if credit card is used. I saw 30 sign up at one cub rally once
Online registration creates a record in BSA’s systems instantly?
Is that information immediately available to Scoutbook, or does it need through an Akela sync first?
If it does need to go through a Sync, do we still have to put the full info into Scoutbook?
If yes, wouldn’t that again create a duplicate record like this thread starts with?
I’m an IT/technical guy and if I’m confused at the entire process, I’m willing to bet that everyone from DE’s to parents to volunteers are as well. Is there anyplace where the entire process of how to sign up online and what exactly happens in what order is documented so that we can figure out how this all works?
We also rely heavily on paper apps. Online registration requires the ability to get online… During our signup events, we do not have access to the internet. No wifi or cell service. Yes, there are places in the world this is situation does happen. We are much more successful having families fill out the paper applications right away.
I also agree that you need to set up Scoutbook accounts right away for these families so they are instantly in the loop. Den Leaders need to be able to contact people, families want to see the calendar, and the easiest way to do it all is through Scoutbook.
Unfortunately, I have a duplicate Scout and emailed support about a week ago. The No Dupes solution hasn’t worked yet. Still waiting to hear back from support.
If the parents pay via check or cash and have Council bill our unit account, I assume that delays the process?
When the Scout gets into Scoutbook, does the parent get an invite email, or does a leader need to go in and automatically send one? (As an aside, it would be AWESOME if any new Scouts in Scoutbook automatically generated an invite email to their connected adult!)
OK. Thanks for the details. As I said, we’ve been told not to even try it by Council. Based on your information, it appears that even Online Registration doesn’t reduce the amount of work that has to be done! It’s crazy for anyone to have to ADD and INVITE parents in SB, when that information is already input into BSA’s systems by the parents themselves when they fill out the Online Registration!
It would be really nice for a holistic top to bottom review of the necessary steps to enroll new Scouts from beginning to end, with the goal being to rewrite processes & systems to make everything as easy as possible for parents, volunteers and BSA systems folks… As I said, I hate bothering support just for them to merge 2 duplicate accounts in Scoutbook.
It seems that there are so many policies, procedures, processes & systems involved from so many different eras, programs and medium that there is a lot of duplicative work going on. I know how many hours I spend grappling with systems each year and doing simple math, that equates into an enormous amount of time spent with essentially busywork.
Victor, in Scoutbook support’s defense, they are normally very responsive. I had an issue go long as well and was told 1) They are buried right now and 2) Some staff have been taken off-line to train new reps. Hopefully, they will get that resolved for you soon.
