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.
I am a registered ASM with our Troop. I also fill our Eagle Coordinator role, and am a registered MBC. When I log in and go to leaders under My Units > Troop and look at myself, I see ASM and the green checkmark. No other roles are listed there on the roster (should they be?).
Under Quick Pick Edit for MBCs on my Dashboard, I can see all the merit badges I’m registered for, but no Scouts to select.
If I go to the troop roster, it shows me all adult leaders. And it shows me all Scouts, minus their last names (except my son). But then it says I am not connected to any of them (again, except my son); I cannot click on any of the other scouts to try and add myself as their MBC.
Does the scout or another leader have to add me / send me the invitation to be an MBC? Why cannot I do this myself?
Why am I “not connected” to the Scouts in my own troop at which I am a registered, fully trained adult leader?
Bottom line – how do I get added as an MBC for specific merit badges for individual scouts, so I can sign them off?
NO ONE in our troop or committee knows the answer. Their suggested “solution” has been to just tell the advancement chair to do the sign-off on my behalf. That is a huge problem though. For one, I counsel for 30 different merit badges. It is unfair to him to place the burden of managing incremental progress or total sign-offs every time I’m counseling a scout. I also worry that when that scout goes up before a board of review for Eagle, they’ll certainly conduct an audit of their merit badge signoffs and would see that these badges are signed off not by me but by someone who is not actually a registered MBC for that badge. I make scouts use blue cards for backup, but I’d just assume we find a real solution here so the scout doesn’t have any issues in the future.
Can someone help me understand what is going on here and how to get this fixed?
If you look at your My Positions under your account, it should show the MBC role. However, it won’t appear under the troop roster since it’s not a troop position.
That usually means you’re not connected to the scouts. One of your Unit Key 3 or Scoutbook Unit Admins can connect you as appropriate. Not all units assign the same permissions to ASMs, so there’s no default access.
Yes, under my profile, all merit badges are listed and I’m showing as an ASM and MBC, plus my past positions from Cub Scouts.
Would you happen to know how/where in Scoutbook our unit admin can connect me to the Scouts? Doesn’t seem to be a lot of understanding of SB here in the unit. Would be helpful to tell them specifically where to go or what to look for. I’m not the only one with the lack of connection.
(I’ve watched the video at the link you shared. Helpful for one-offs. I guess I’m trying to figure out what to tell our unit admin to change in SB, so SB automatically connects me to all the scouts in the troop. Tedious and seemingly shouldn’t be necessary to do it one by one for every individual scout.)
I appreciate that link and the effort to help find an answer, but I have read through it. I have also read through the Granting Roles and Permissions page, and the Using Connection Manager page.
Let me try this from a different angle:
I see where the unit SB admin goes in Connection Manager to set the connections between an adult leader and the scouts in the troop. This seems like the manual way of doing that.
Is there a role or permission that can be set on an adult leader’s profile such that that leader is automatically connected to all Scouts in the unit, including any added in the future? Or does the admin need to manually add the connection in Connection Manager between the adult leader and each scout, and then rinse & repeat any time there’s a change in the unit roster?
Troop admins are automatically connected with full connections to all scouts in the troop. Patrol admins are automatically connected to all scouts in the patrol.
In connections manager, they can click on your name to set the connection to all scouts at once instead of each one individually.
So only the unit’s SB admin will automatically get connected. For everyone else - SM, ASMs, etc. – they have to manually do so in connection manager?
And do I infer correctly from that that they must go in and do that manually once again for every leader they want with the connection, for every new scout that joins in the future?
I concur with @edavignonexcept that Unit Key 3 (SM, CC, COR) should automatically be Unit Admins as well. In addition, anyone assigned as a Key 3 Delegate at my.scouting (up to 3 individuals) should also be a unit admin automatically.
