I know this has been recommended in the past, and looking at the number of times it was recommended it begs to ask the question of why it hasn’t been implemented yet. I would like to echo the recommendations that all features of other sites (internet advancement, etc.) be rolled into scoutbook. It would be great to have the ability to log camping, hiking, and service hours in scoutbook without having to log into or navigate to a separate site.
3 Likes
Joshua Wow a fantastic idea! BSA in the middle of budget cuts should consider a platform which is loved by Scouters, vs IA2 which has less than the same programming intellect as the new Lion scout with crayons. IA2 pulls information from my.scouting.org the official scouting database. Scoutbook also pulls from my.scouting.org via sync, yet scoutbook is fully editable by Key3. Units in Asia are madly dynamic for instance according to the JTE we lost 85.5% of our unit, and then we rebuilt it in a matter of months with fresh scouts brand new to scouting. We can not edit my.scouting.org and only the Council Register can add the application, but with scoutbook I can assign dens, link parents with scouts, and assign Den Leaders making scoutbook a great tool to further scouting. At one time the scouting app linked with scoutbook and parents could add requirements a big plus to push scouting to younger generations in the middle of the Covid-19 crisis. BSA continuously is shooting its self in the foot applying a tourniquet then amputating the limb of something that was working, thus creating failure. Scoutbook used to track trained leader status, and we were allowed to log hikes, camping, and service hours. Why not just hack off a good working limb?
Excuses are BSA can not find support, BSA can not upgrade this old platform, BSA basically does not want units manipulating records.
Hey I would personally pay over $100 for scoutbook as this software allows me to manage my unit, surely if we all offered donations it could amount to $ millions and with that money they could pay the scouters who invented scoutbook the salary they need to maintain scoutbook, and also save money by double flushing and firing everyone on the IA2 team what an abomnination to scouting!
It is the intent to have all unit administration on one platform… We are moving in that direction, because of financial issues, which I am sure you know about, it is taking longer than originally planned.
2 Likes
Not excuses. Explanations. It’s already been explained clearly in multiple posts why continuing to add new features in Scoutbook is not going to happen. The changes aren’t “hacking off a good working limb”; to continue the analogy the’re amputating a severely damaged limb to save the patient.
I understand that’s not what you want to hear, and you have a pretty unique situation running BSA units in Asia for military kids, but that doesn’t change the issues that BSA IT are working to resolve.
Hey Joshua,
not sure how long you’ve been using Scoutbook, but as recently as 6 months ago, you could do that- add service hours, camping night including frost points, hiking miles, etc. Then suddenly, those features were gone, and you had to go to IA to do any of that. It was cumbersome and not at all user friendly. Scoutbook was incredibly easy to use and keep up to date. I’m not privy to and haven’t followed all the posts to explain the current situation. As a volunteer leader with 3 different units though, it is becoming increasingly difficult to use Scoutbook, and frankly, I’m not surprised that there are issues still 1 week after the domain name change that I still have to do workarounds to get into Scoutbook. I would have much rather seen support thrown into making Scoutbook the go-to online interface and not IA…
1 Like
Honestly, our unit will probably choose to use nothing rather than IA if scoutbook disappears, we can go old school and scouts sign off in their paper books as well. We will go back to using google sheets on a shared drive. Simply pathetic the top-down push on this project it seems like someone is lining their own pockets by pushing embarrassment which is IA2.0.
@ScottMarbut - I have spent the better part of two years reading your non-stop rant against everything that goes against the use of papyrus as the source of raw data. I honestly have to ask if you have ever in your lifetime ever uttered a positive statement. I am actually begining to doubt it possible. I have personally offered my assistance and that was net with another salvo over the bow. What say you. I stand ready and willing to assist you.
2 Likes
Mr. Hornak, Thank You! My positive statements concern my love of scoutbook. As a youth we logged everything into our scouting manual and Councils were poor in maintaining records. I had my scoutbook lost or destroyed three time during my youth, and to discover when I returned as an adult that there was an interactive web based cloud was heaven. Scoutbook is user friendly as I can have leaders learn to use it quickly. Scoutbook depth and capabilities are amazing! Yet in the last few years features that were part of scoutbook were taken away when it seemed to work great for our unit, such as logging and monitoring leadership training. I have no issues to fix nor need help as long as we can keep scoutbook. IA has hard crashed my computers. IA still after months of trying log simple hikes, camping and service hours still pops up RED ERROR messages, so NO I do not nor ever want to use IA. Thank You Stephen you are a caring leader and do appreciate your wisdom and advice. I manage 60+ scouts, plus parents and 20 leaders and we have to start from scratch every year. This year we had 85.5% turn over according to the JTE but still managed to be Gold. What I must have is a simple solid platform that my new to scouting leaders and parents can use. The mobile app was a beautiful thing as everything could be done on a cell phone HUGE win but it originally worked with scoutbook, again all those features are now gone.
IA does not allow units to edit, IA draws information from Scouting.org, which also can not be edited by units, so the solution is to return to old school as our unit is essentially all new in the last few months this year due to COVID. IA will never work for us, because of these conditions, and thus there is nothing you can do to help.
The real-world example I have a Tiger Mom which wanted to add achievements for a beltloop her daughter is working on currently. Last year she could easily add things using the moblie app. She has only a limited amount of time before she has to pick up her daughter from school. We spent three hours back and forth in a Facebook chat box trying to fill in an elective beltloop. The mobile app no longer works, the default then sends her to IA which parents can not add or even see elective belt loops nor their individual achievements. We did not fix the problem, yet this one of sixty scouts in our unit.
Mr. Hornak,
How do you log the individual achievements for Tiger Tales in IA in instructions that a young mother can understand?
I solved the problem by getting this young mother to log into scoutbook via an incognito window, and then she could update both her daughters achievement’s. Ironically National has cut all service and support for all software, yet expects councils, districts and unit volunteers to pick up the slack, we agree but we ask only one thing, the capability to edit. You see BSA can not do both micromanage data, and also not support the data. A decision must be made maybe for cost, maybe for time on how to solve this crux of an issue.
This topic was automatically closed 7 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
