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.
The Scoutbook app gives me notifications when the rank and merit badges get entered. This is a great feature. At least I know that the information has made it into the system. It is a pleasant surprise considering Scoutbook does not support Lone Scouts. Please find the bug and fix it so that it stays as an intended feature.
The Scoutbook app does not show anything for Lone Scouts, because that is unsupported–known and disliked. However, there is a bug with it. I have a scout that was in a Pack through AOL and is now a Lone Scout. Two of the scout’s six merit badge approvals show up in the app’s Notifications page. Maybe more, but I can see only 9 1/8 notifications on my phone and cannot mark any as read. This is probably directly related to what is happening above. I wish I had the notifications in regular Scoutbook. Again, please leave the listings in Notifications as a feature. But fix the bugs for scrolling and marking notifications as read.
Action does need to take place with the Notification listing in the app. The Lone Scout is not the only scout that I am connected to. I cannot mark any notifications as read and cannot scroll to see all the unread notifications.
Councils, with a few exceptions, do not have the professional staff to support Lone Scouting. Although entering the data currently needs to done by the council (usually the council registrar) my understanding is that the data is stored in the same advancement database used for Cub Scouting and Scouts BSA. Professional staff time needed to support Lone Scouting could be reduced by having an app that at least allows individual advancement reports based on council number and BSA member ID (or in the future on a universal BSA member ID)
SB and IA have never supported Lone Scouting. It would take a major change in Scoutbook to support Lone Scouting (SB requires Scouts to be in a unit and in CS a den to understand what kind of advancements to process for the Scouts.)
Lone Scouting may be supported in the app some time in the future although it is not on the schedule.
“One step at a time”. I just want BSA IT to keep what is needed to support advancement for Lone Cub Scouts and Lone Scout in mind. If system design paramenters are not defind, then tools may continue to be created or updated that provides a lower level of service to Lone Cub Scouts and Lone Scouts. The first step we are waiting for is the implementation of one national membership number for BSA members. Hopefully coming soon. What is needed to suppost Lone Scouting has been discussed before and should continue to be discussed in a separate discussion.
Agreed. I did not start this thread for it to be a discussion on Lone Scout support in SB or the Scoutbook app. The fact that the Notifications are happening for Lone Scouts would be considered a bug since Lone Scouts are not supported. I simply wish for it to not be considered a bug and not fixed. Let it remain an undocumented feature that provides for the benefit of some.
That is separate from the bugs not letting me mark notifications read even for scouts in a unit and not allowing me to scroll beyond nine notifications.
Are the notifications anywhere in Scoutbook or Internet Advancement? I have not found them. They seem to only be in the Scoutbook app.
