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.
Let me start off by saying I am the spouse of an active-duty service member. We have moved A LOT! With moving comes a new BSA ID for each new pack/troop we have been with x2 (my son and me). Of course, back when we started in 2016, we were still paying for Scoutbook and could create profiles ourselves. Somewhere along the way between someone potentially creating a new profile for me and the single login being made mandatory, it has made this last week chaotic.
I had 4 member ID’s that I had to get merged or whatever it is they did with them because I was no longer able to sign in on scoutbook. Once they got the ones from overseas dealt with, I was able to log in to Scoutbook but rather than being able to use the login I had always used (MrsDanielK which I assume has an entirely different sb user number) I now have to put @gmail.com behind it and a temp password was created. I was finally in and redid my password.
When logging in I noticed my profile picture was gone and the Member ID under my profile was now the one they issued me for my daughter’s newly established troop. Which is different than the one that used to be there for my son’s troop as he has been with BSA since 2016.
At this point, I now apparently have TWO BSA IDs for the same council and I have been unsuccessful in getting them merged.
Well, here’s where it gets interesting. I went to internet advancement and noticed not only was the picture gone, my service hours, camping hours, and everything were gone. I want to believe that it is because my account is now reading off what is on my new BSA ID for my daughter’s troop but everything I had ever logged was on my other one.
So, I was told that maybe if I could get my Scoutbook IDs merged into one that it wouldn’t matter which BSA ID was on my Scoutbook profile because the info would all be merged together. I do not currently know what that prior SB user number was because they merged everything before I was able to get logged back in. I am hoping I can recover all of my service/camping hours with this merge.
Please message or email me for the info I do have and I hope that it helps find that user number to merge these profiles together. Another thing to note is that a previous chairman when I started out in 2016 I think accidentally put in my nickname as my name so these profiles might be under two names even though all my applications have always listed my legal name.
I am so sorry if this is a nightmare. I have never had an issue using Scoutbook until I registered my daughter with a troop now that we are stateside. She used to be in cub scouts while overseas and this wasn’t an issue. I do not know if I will ever understand why we must get a new BSA ID every time we move or change groups. Seems silly to me.
Just as a heads-up, this is a world-readable (not just BSA-readable) forum. You might not want all of your contact data out there for all and sundry to read.
ETA: The Scoutbook User Advisory Council folks can create a private chat to get that sort of info from you if they need it. Generally, they only need BSA IDs to get things rolling.
The SUAC folks can likely help with locating your prior BSA IDs and getting your current BSA ID/Scoutbook account situation straightened out, but there is some history to this particular issue that, while the BSA is working on addressing it (or so I hear), it hasn’t been “fixed” yet. Maybe it’s pseudo-history, but it’s the explanation I got when I asked. :^)
In the olden days (when BSA records like mine were chiseled on stone tablets before being shipped off to nationals for record-keeping), each council was issued a block of BSA IDs so that no BSA ID would belong to more than one person. Thus, the “unique non-overlapping BSA ID sets for each council” was born. As things started to become computerized, the internet wasn’t yet a thing, so the proprietary computer code was written and continued to work this way. Now, with Scoutbook and other user-visible interfaces to the membership data system, some of the flaws with this process are becoming more obvious to those of use not on the “inside” trying to manage the system.
In principle, the system is supposed to be smart enough to search for a person and determine if they already have a record in the system. However, it’s only as smart as the input data it gets. So, if an end-user registers with a nickname and correct date of birth in one council, registers with their full legal name and correct DOB in a second, full legal name but there is a keystroke input error for their DOB in another…pretty soon, the number of IDs starts piling up. The automated system can’t tell they’re all the same person, so new IDs get generated each time.
One strategy to mitigate this is to ensure that prior BSA IDs get included on each application, but given that they have historically been invisible to users (I had to call national BSA back in the day to get my records straightened out) it can be tough. I recommend that all of our families who are leaving keep a copy of their scout’s BSA ID and advancement records so that they have it to hand when/if they join another BSA unit later.
You are right. I didn’t think about that. You never can be too safe I edited out the info.
Being a military family there has been many struggles with how this system is evolving. I do feel fortunate that I am only now having issues after 8 years. So many have had problems every year. l hope after 8 years there is not a big mess to clean up that I don’t know about
Do you know if the missing service history (camping/hours) will show up? As of right now, I do not see them which is why I was thinking my two SB IDs needed to be merged. I assume you found the other ID?
I edited out the info.
