Below, one of these is a boy troop, and the other is a girl troop. The My Recent Tools feature doesn’t clarify that. (Talking about what you see in the menu at my.scouting.org.)
When one has access to a B & G troop of the same number, My Recent Tools becomes useless for them.
@ArenCambre having two units with the exact same four-digit number is unusual. Normally G troops were all given a prefix number (say “9” for sake of argument) so that they were 9861 in the system, but still would wear the unit number 861. [We see multiple units with the same number most often after council mergers. I know one council in New England that has 24 Troop #1’s!]
“Recent Tools” was only meant to be a “quick” way to look at previous unit info - not as a main navigation system. I will report this to IT, but, since it is not an error, I don’t expect this will be a high priority item.
In my area (Circle Ten Council, 571), it is customary for linked B and G troops to share a number. There is no prefix for G troops.
Out of curiosity, I would love to see a dump of BSA data that includes council number, troop number, and B/G columns. I wonder if there is a pattern to our mutual observations?
Ronald: I would have to disagree with your statement “having two units with the exact same four-digit number is unusual.” In our Council, about 40% of the boys and girls troops that have the same Chartered Organization use the same unit number.
Chuck Olson
Atlanta Area Council
unfortunately having the same 4 digit number is not uncommon at all - national did not anticipate it but national also did not prevent it
They did provide “guidelines” - of course, those weren’t requirements…
And the plethora of units with the same 4 digit numbers is why Scoutbook and parts of my.scouting.org have a B or G designation for all Troops. This is a simple solution to the complex problem of units with the same number.
If you try to add Greater Hudson Valley Council Troop 1 to your positions in Scoutbook, you will notice the unit dropdown that contains the Charter Org has 18 boy troops with the 4 digit number 0001. This is not a problem that is unique to boy vs. girl troops but I suspect the majority of cases where a problem exists are with linked troops since they frequently share some leaders.
Just to be clear, the error has been reported to the developers.
[puts away the torches and pitchforks]
Interesting discussion here. Our unit (and Charter Org) opted to go with the same number which we used as a marketing tool, i.e. “The 624 Scouting Family:” We share a common Charter Org Rep, Unit Committee, weekly newsletter etc. and market that we have Scouting for everyone in the family. We use Troop 624G, Troop 624B, and Crew 624 and have the Committee and certain leaders registered in all three units. We haven’t had any issues with my.scouting or Scoutbook. As a sidenote, Pack 624 may standup this fall as we are exploring the logistics of creating a designated “feeder” Pack.
It’s not just with linked B/G troops where this happens. Our council has had a few mergers over the years which has led to several units with the same 4 digit number.
In that case, dup-number units would be in separate districts (unless they moved COs and jumped into the same district as a dup-number unit, which seems like it would be a rare exception). As long as that is true, since the district name is included in the information presented to the user, the current configuration is fine.
The request has been submitted, and placed on the enhancement list.
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