We have recently started using scoutbook in our Scouts BSA unit and have seen that parents (even if they are not leaders) are able to mark requirements and rank advancement as “leader approved” I have confirmed that rank marked as approved appears in the “needs awarded” report.
Is there a setting that we can change to alter this or does this need to be changed within the scoutbook software?
are the parents committee members?
That’s certainly not the way it’s behaved historically at the Scouts BSA level. It may be a bug in the way that the changes made to permit Webelos and Cub Scout parents to Leader Approve advancement, based on the COVID-19 guidance from the BSA.
ETA: There isn’t a user-side setting that differentiates Full Control for parents from Full Control for leaders. It’s internal to the software, AFAIK.
Maybe the programmers took advantage of the fact that parents have irrevocable “Full Control” by default in order to implement this feature quickly, with the intent of rolling it back after the temporary rules are revoked?
Nope. I created a separate testing account that is marked only as a parent for my son and am see this behavior on that account.
This change was pushed to Cub Scouts as National instructed for the virus issues and lock downs - SUAC is investigating this
Simple solution for now is an email to parents telling them that it might mess up Eagles in future if they mark approved (it won’t - but it is enough of a scare it usually works.)
Better to just be honest
Yes. My current thinking is that we will catch these in preparation for the requisite BoR but it’s obviously less than ideal if a scout ends up having to redo something because their parent made a mistake.
We have reported the bug to the developers.
In the meantime, it’s probably better to catch the issues sooner rather than later. One way to catch these issues is to have a Troop Admin Export / Backup the Scout Advancement csv file. Open the file in a spreadsheet program, turn filtering on, and you can use the “LeaderApprovedBy”, “LeaderApprovedDate”, “AwardedBy”, and “AwardedDate” fields to keep an eye on things. A Troop Admin can also use the Audit Log Report.
Looks like a fix for this was pushed yesterday. Thanks!
I threw together a quick script that will cross-reference leaders with ApprovedBy entries. You can find it here though it may take some tweaks to match your unit’s approval policy.
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