Hey there, we’re entering fall recruiting events and signup season and I would love it if Application Manager would start sending emails within minutes or hours of new applications.
Right now grownups who submit scout applications aren’t getting a good experience - they pay their fees and then don’t hear anything from our Pack - because we have no way of knowing their are new applications pending. Our Pack has our own website and I got the following email today, and I have received messages like this before:
”Hi! I just put in an application for my two boys. I paid the fees and I’m not sure where to go from here. I also went to the scouting site and don’t see their applications. Can someone please email me and explain the next steps. Thank you!!”
I’m Committee Chair and in the Key 3 role so I do get the “Take Action on Applications in Application Manager” emails from emailreply@scouting.org - but in my experience and from reading these forums those emails are sent 1-2 times per week, which is really inadequate for giving new Scouting families a good experience. The same applies to emails with new inquiries from BeAScout, but we don’t get as many of those now that we push those users to our website.
Anyways, thanks to the team who is working hard on the Scouting software, I appreciate you hearing me out! If there is a way to configure this already please let me know.
Unfortunately, the only way that the team that supports/develops the my.scouting platform takes feature requests and bug reports is from council staff. You’ll need to circulate this request to your council professionals and request that they pass it along to the national staff via a MemberCare support ticket.
The more clear your recommended modifications and justifications are (e.g. “Provide options for unit leaders to receive digest emails for new online applications on a 2x daily, 1x daily, every 2 days or 1x weekly frequency to permit units to more rapidly respond to submitted online applications.”), the more likely you are to get any kind of traction on the issue.
It’s effectively making a business case argument justifying the overhead expenses to develop and maintain/operate whatever the developed modifications are.
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Thanks Charley, I will pass it up to my Council membership coordinator.
For anyone who might see this… there are extensive statistics around the impact of lead response time in sales and business, and the business case for providing a good experience for families who just decided to join Scouting should write itself, but please reach out if you want help writing a longer version. =)
And on the engineering side, the overhead expense to sending email batches every minute instead of twice a week should be a relatively simple cronjob change but even if it isn’t, the effort is worth it.
@KaneJamison- there is nobody from the my.scouting team on these forums so you are showing this to the general public and other volunteers. Beyond that you should be reaching out to District or Scout Executive
Thanks! Have forwarded along to council level and will keep pursuing through them.
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I get 1 email daily for any applications or invitations that are currently in my unit’s queue. Even if it’s been there for days or weeks, I still get those emails for every day it’s there. Not sure where you saw 1-2 times a week for a notification from my.scouting.
