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 the Advancement Chair for our Troop. Our SM wants the Scouts to have blue cards for each merit badge earned, so when we get to the Court of Honor I print out blue cards for the merit badges that were tracked in Scoutbook.
When I print the blue cards, some print the MBC’s name, some say “Approved in Scoutbook” and some leave the “signature of counselor” line blank.
Can you explain the logic tree that ends in these different results? It’s more than just the switch that says “print MBC’s signature” because that is turned on for all the cards. They were all generated at the same time in a single report.
If the MB was marked Counselor Approced in Scoutbook, it will have the MBC’s name and say Approved, otherwise it will not.
Once the MB is Leader Approved in Scoutbook, a Blue Card is not needed. You are just wasting paper printing Blue Cards for a Board of Review as they are not needed. The BOR should NOT. E requesting able cards because you are adding to the requirements. Once the MB requirement is signed off, like any other requirement, it is done and the Scout cannot be made to prove the MBs were earned.
@LynnCrochetiere - the only thing that would be appropriate for CoH would be the cards for rank and awards and merit badges. The Blue Card is not really a part of the CoH.
I said nothing about presenting blue cards at a BOR. Please reread my post. The BOR is a different animal than the COH. I suggest you reread the G2A to understand the difference.
I understand that the Scoutbook record is the equivalent of blue cards. We are gifting blue cards to the Scouts at the COH because several parents and/or volunteers have had issues with Scoutbook in the past and prefer to keep hard copy records. It’s not a fight I’m interested in engaging in or would expect to win until Scoutbook demonstrates a lot more robustness for an extended period of time.
We are in no way levying new or additional requirements on the Scouts. We are handing them a piece of paper that they can hold on to, or not, as they wish.
These are all merit badges that are marked Counselor Approved in Scoutbook. Some of them were marked approved by the MBC. Some were marked approved by me, in my role as Advancement Chair, either when the Scout presents a signed blue card or on occasion when a MBC asks me to enter the completed badges for them. It sounds like you’re saying that if the Advancment Chair enters a merit badge, the system will not generate a signed blue card. Which is an clear answer you could have provided without the unnecessary and incorrect editorial comments. (I thought SUAC was prohibited from proving process or policy guidance? Aren’t you out of your lane by quite a bit?)
Isn’t that up to the Troop? The ones I work with give the scout their part of the blue card back with the MB card (and patch) so the scout has a record that can be placed in a sleeve in a binder.
And given the many threads started on this forum, I’m guessing Lynn has a point about many Units not trusting Scoutbook. I know some near me that refuse to use it.
I recommend folks review the current Guide to Advancement. There’s language in the MB section that talks about how to handle the Applicant Record portion of the blue card and when it’s returned to the scout. Hopefully I’m only up to my ankles and not my neck on that wading. :^)
All of that aside, it looks like Lynn’s original technical question about how the system is deciding what to print on the cards (when printed from SB) in terms of counselor signatures was answered. It seems like (from her second post) there might still some confusion as to the use of the term “Counselor Approved” as it applies to Scoutbook/SB+.
Emphasis added
A MB is marked “Counselor Approved” in Scoutbook/SB+ only if the MBC themselves signed-off in Scoutbook/SB+. If a unit scouter marked it “Leader Approved” in Scoutbook/SB+, but the MBC did not mark it “Counselor Approved” there (i.e. the counselor signed a physical blue card or it was completed as summer camp with no physical blue card, etc and the unit scouter is just “recording” the MB in Scoutbook/SB+), then the system doesn’t “see” the counselor’s approval directly, and therefore does not print the facsimile signature on the Counselor Signature line. It sounds like you correctly understood the outcome, so maybe it’s just me being a phrasing nerd.
It’s also possible I’m confused about there being confusion. It wouldn’t even be the first time today. :^)
