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.
Scoutbook encourages us to record our scouting experience. “If you are a leader in Cub Scouts or Scouts BSA use this page to enter all your volunteer positions. This will help others to identify you better on Scoutbook and allows you access to position specific features. This section is also a great way to keep track of your experience in Scouting (tenure).”
As currently implemented, only positions in actively-chartered units can be added. As an adult, I’ve volunteered with multiple units in multiple councils since ca. 1994. As these were all LDS-sponsored units, they are no longer in the system, so there is no way for me to add any of my experience–not even the pack I volunteered with in 2019.
If an end date is entered (signifying no longer in the position with that unit) then there is no need to validate the unit and get added to that unit’s roster.
Also experience is limited to the unit level. What about district or council positions that one has held?
I agree the wording should be cleaned up. It really isn’t the intent of that page to be a “free form” log. It also isn’t used for other Scouters to recognize you as it says. It really is to indicate what roles you have in current units in Scoutbook and then past roles you had that were in Scoutbook. Also, the tenure blank seems to be broken. It seems to have a goal of showing your tenure over time, but mine says zero and then the roles below are in the hundreds.
The reason why this should have decent priority is that for new people it is misleading and causes a learning curve. For those in the system awhile, they just ignore the words.
There is a bit of a back story to the wording. In an earlier time in scoutbook development (private holding) you could go to a council page and if my memory serves me distinct page and see the scouters in that area, click on them and see bio information it still worked that way in the old forums. There was an intent to have a social media aspect to it. So, in this context that verbiage is largely unnecessary. It is however not likely that expired units will be retained in the advancement database as editable entries for this purpose.
If you were a registered leader in 2019, it should show up in your past positions as long as you are using the same bsa member number that you used for your registration at that time. Even if you weren’t using scoutbook at that time, all 2018 and subsequent adult positions and youth membership were added to the database. It’s possible you actually have a 2nd account you’ve never accessed.
