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’m looking for a feature along the lines of SOAR/myPack EBlasts: a weekly (or bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly) summary email which lists the next few events. It would highlight events in the next 7 and 30 days and any RSVP deadlines to all unit members. Including the details of the event would also be required to be useful to members. Ideally this would default to always show unit events and show relevant events for the youth’s den/patrol. Adult leaders should receive the same plus any leader/committee set of events. We find this helpful to those who primarily interact with emails and don’t otherwise login to Scoutbook Plus or want to subscribe to another calendar.
We also use groups to organize different types of events (leaders meetings, reminders for booking outings, training opportunities, etc.) which shouldn’t otherwise be included in the ‘eblast’ unless a user opts-in. I wonder if a ‘fake’ den could serve a similar purpose to member opt-in management, then the system would only need to configure to match selected dens.
This lacking feature is currently discouraging me from moving our calendar management into Scoutbook Plus. Is there any possibility for this feature please?
The current solution is to use Send Message in legacy Scoutbook and click the Include Upcoming Events button. There is currently no automated message capability for blast e-mails like SOAR has.
That is a less than ideal alternative. Especially since the list of members (leaders, parents, youth) aren’t grouped or otherwise organized by den/patrol. So we’d need to include every event for everyone or send a similar message multiple times with the correctly filtered groups and events.
If Scoutbook features are still being ported to Scoutbook Plus, is there a plan to port this “Send Message/Insert Upcoming Events” functionality forward? Or better still to allow for a more automated semi-frequent e-blast emails/messages?
I’m going to start with a disclaimer that I don’t actually know what the BSA’s position is on automated mailings. That said, I would be surprised to see a structure for automation of messaging. Part of the trouble the BSA had recently with Scoutbook emails being blacklisted was likely due to the volume and frequency of emails (particularly similar emails) going out. Third-party anti-spam service providers blacklisted the Scoutbook mail servers, leading to long durations of scouts, scouters and parents from entire domains not getting emails from Scoutbook. Since the anti-spam service providers don’t disclose exactly what puts a system in their blacklist, it’s reasonable for the BSA to be wary of frequent (particularly automated) mass mailing. That’s one reason we’re now limited to three pre-set reminders for any given event in the new calendars.
@SeanDooley - i think it would be madness to have an email spew from any organization. I subscribe to the calendar, i know when the meetings are…dont flood my in box with junk
Our boy troop has troopwebhost and they like this feature. A monthly “newsletter” is auto generated that has:
-ability to unsubscribe from the newsletter
-scout account balance
-upcoming meetings
-upcoming campouts & other events (it shows your RSVP status of each)
-status of your AB & C health forms
-I assume they could put in free form text (to make it newslettery, but the unit doesn’t).
@Matt.Johnson - a monthly newsletter is good… I do not think that would ever come about in scoutbook/SB+ but it should not be hard to generate with links to things.
Call it a mass email, eblast, automated mailing, newsletter, whatever name you want. But these things already exist, even from Scouts. I have three weekly ones right now: Scouting Wire, my council’s newsletter, and even these Scouting Forums Summaries.
I’m not saying everyone wants them or finds them useful, but thankfully Scoutbook Plus already has the out-op feature per-user to set if they want to receive unit communication in that manner. I would propose that feature then be connected to the newsletter-like proposal of upcoming unit events. Units then decide how frequently they want their newsletter to be for their members.
I just want to meet people where they are with the way they like to work. That and to move away from needing to organize on two services (mysoar and Scoutbook Plus).
And since Scoutbook has the ‘upcoming events’ feature and Scoutbook Plus has the opt-out communication feature, it seems reasonable/possible to request a mildly configurable newsletter fcuntion.
Setting this would not only opt them out of receiving the auto generated emails, but it’d opt them out of all messages and calendar reminders (for all units they are in). That is not a reasonable thing to encourage.
@SeanDooley - I understand what you are stating and indeed I receive emails from Scouting Wire, my council and district along with the BSA Marketing Hub. Our council and district use Constant Contact, Scoutingwire is from scoutingwire.org, and Aaron on scouting is from scouting.org so not exactly a unified system of notification. And I will echo Jacob in that the Opt-Out is a total opt out so they will receive nothing from the unit. That would completely take them out of the loop. I am not certain that the BSA would bolt on a newsletter system to what they want as an advancement system in scoutbook plus. It is an ask and I dont recall if it was listed as something in new feature requests.
I’m not suggesting it’s the exact right method, only that some precedent exists for user-based configuration of notifications in Scoutbook Plus. And perhaps that idea could be extended into other areas like a unit newsletter.
I suppose I had a different perspective on the goals of Scoutbook Plus. With the inclusion of a calendar, custom reports, etc., I assumed it was meant to be more than just advancement, hence my request. If it’s only meant to handle advancement and anything immediately around that, I’ll re-frame my outlook.
I believe there is an item in the backlog to add an automated monthly event summary email. This is at best behind migrating the message system to SB+, however we do not know if or when the BSA will implement it.
As long as it’s in the backlog, that’s wonderful. Thanks for checking.
I certainly understand it’s behind migrating existing functionality, but I do think it would be a useful options for units, especially if it helps us consolidate our workload onto a single system instead of multiple (e.g. mysoar, troopwebhost, etc.).
