Let met try to be more helpful. I didn’t get a ticket number for the bug today, but below are the four ticket numbers I’ve gotten in the last few days. I get ticket numbers for about half of my reported problems. And the email doesn’t say which number goes with which problem. (And there are lots.)
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Scoutbook Support Incident SSD-101127: Closed. I think this was correcting spoofing the sender, now emails come from Scoutbook scoutbook.donotreply@scouting.org instead. Great fix!
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Scoutbook Support Incident SSD-101170: Closed. The summary report listed all counselors as new, even if they were previously upload. Fixed 5/7/20. Seems to have re-surfaced the “Error updating Merit Badge Counselors on council upload” bug.
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Scoutbook Support Incident SSD-101648 and SSD-101178: Several other bugs, listed below:
- Member ID’s Scoutbook suggests in one upload are reported as non-existent in the next.
- SSD numbers are sent back without reference to which error report they refer, or when or how to use them.
- MBC upload documentation should omit or explain Akela.
- Drag and drop to upload doesn’t work.
- Documentation says to contact support if a Member ID isn’t in Scoutbook. Experience to date and items in this forum suggest this is not really useful…need a better path to getting these volunteers in Scoutbook.
- I forgot…I got an email as a counselor after the 5/7/20 fix and upload, but hadn’t changed my record. I don’t know whether all 789 other counselors got this erroneous email.
- I asked that admins get some record of how many emails went to whom for what reason.
- I reported today the bug that changes to badges are not taking effect. I didn’t get a number back. So it may be one of the above.
Michael,
I searched the jira database for your name. You only have 1 open ticket and you say there is a workaround for all but one of your issues. This was the ticket you opened on May 8, SSD-101648.
Please see my edit above. I haven’t gotten a ticket back today, but this is a serious issue. Bill said he escalated. If people upload and the messaging says the badges have been updated, they are likely to download the (erroneous) new file and use it going forward.
…I would like to suggest a feature request that the upload files and download files have different names. And people should be encouraged to double-check the download file against their upload.
…there’s also clearly some issues with regression testing. The 5/7/20 fix didn’t fix the problem Bill reports 0n 5/7 and then says is fixed. One suggestion…if the download file is correct, the system could do a test upload. If it comes back with ANY updates, then there is a bug.
There was no Scoutbook.com update on 5/9/20. The last update was 5/7/20. All updates after 5/7/20 have been restricted to scoutbook.scouting.org which is not involved in the MBC process.
I apologize, I was confused by dates. The upload was disabled for about a week while I waited to upload. Then it was re-enabled, and I uploaded a file…I thought successfully. When I went to update it, the summary report indicated all the 789 counselors were new, although I had only changed a few. I waited until the 5/7 upload fix the “all new counselor” bug to enter my updates. I did that, and thought it was successful. I uploaded a few minor changes today, but the summary report indicated my badge updates from the night before hadn’t happened. Spent all day debugging and reporting. Then I found George’s post, reporting the same issue that badges weren’t being updated…then reporting that it was fixed. I don’t know if this is the same bug as George’s or not, but it is certainly not fixed.
Michael,
The problem I was experiencing, of not being able to add new badges to some existing counselors, still existed after the code update on 5/7. I reported that the problem still existed and included the names of the 22 counselors with this problem in an Email to Support staff. On the evening of 5/8, I again uploaded all of our counselors and all of the badges were successfully added. I don’t know if a support person manually pushed them thru, or if they fixed the code, but after my last upload, all counselors had the correct badges…
I have created an Excel Spread Sheet that I use to compare the file I upload against the resulting file I download after the update. It checks for missing counselors, and does a simple word count test on the Badges column to chgeck that all badges were added. Unfortunately, it is not automated, so it takes a bit of Cut and Paste work to set it up after each upload/download. However it is how I discoverd missing counselors, and Counselors whose additional badges were not being added.
Greg
Gregory,
Thanks…I can’t explain your success and my repeated failure. The only way I could find to change badges yesterday (5/9/2020) for existing counselors was to delete them and then re-add them. That means updating or explaining the resulting emails they receive.
The excel spreadsheet you suggest is a good idea. One wrinkle for me is that I know some of the Member ID’s I upload will be replaced in the download. (I documented this bug…the new ones Scoutbook replaces and includes in the download are values that Scoutbook won’t accept on upload…there may be problems with multiple ID’s in ScoutNet versus Akela(?) versus Scoutbook, but some of the ID confusion is wholly within Scoutbook.)
…and of course, Scoutbook doesn’t (yet) commit to a sort order in the Merit Badge list, so a straight-up compare when I’m trying to change or just double check badges is not possible. (Made even more exciting by the un-escaped commas in Signs, Signals, and Codes. Lovely irony that the encoding for this badge is so idiosyncratic!)
Michael,
I first tried a straight String comparison for badges, then discovered they are not in order for ScoutBook. I then added a Macro that counts the number of words in the badge list, and compare that. I realize this is not foolproof, and swapping a one name badge for another would not be caught. But for the most part, this method at least warns when new badges don’t get added. And with over 1200 counselors, I am not really able to scan the lists to find differences. 
Greg
Gregory,
A fine heuristic! I have some excel tricks for turning (Counselor,badge) pairs into (Counselor, list of badges) entries, but I haven’t yet written a parser to go the other way.
…I only have 790 counselors, my sympathies.
BUT…they are all working hard to deliver program in this difficult time! I am thrilled to be working with the Scoutbook team and other volunteers like you to support them.
YiS,
Michael
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the member id number issue has two problems (i have been playing this one for a while). Some were due to my registrar assigning two numbers to a one person for their different positions. Sat down and we eliminated all of those but still couldn’t find the number but found the person. The majority of those seem to be old other council numbers that the person still has attached as the primary number on their account.
Ron
The comparison is rather simple in Excel. With both your upload and the downloaded list open, add a column in the download list and use the VLOOKUP() function to retrieve the list of merit badges from the upload file. If it returns an error, then the BSAID in Scoutbook was not found in your upload file. You can then compare string lengths with the LEN() function. No difference is a match regardless of sort order. Differences of one character will point to either Communication or Motorboating merit badges and can be ignored. Differences of 2 probably have both, and anything more than 2 or less than -2 means a surplus badge on one side or the other.
Unfortunately I have to go to work right now but I can post example formulas if needed tonight.
Kenneth,
Great suggestions…I love the LEN() hack! I agree that is close enough for government work. (No disrespect to our hard working bureaucrats!) Thanks for taking the time to help.
…the VLOOKUP() will mostly work, except for the Scoutbook bug that replaces my upload ID’s with alternatives that Scoutbook won’t accept as input. (I grudgingly admire that bug.) It means I have to retain the upload ID’s each time…but there are only 3 out of 790, I can live with that.
…still hoping for direction on the six ID’s that are ScoutNet-valid but not accepted or replaced by Scoutbook. These volunteer MBC’s languish in the 20th century world of paper blue cards, peering hopefully into the Scoutbook future.
YiS,
Michael
Michael,
Your problems with missing ScoutNet IDs may be caused by the registrar having Merged two separate ScoutNet records for the same person, into a single record. The merged MemberID is erased from the system (as far as I can tell). So if they merged the number used by ScoutBook, suddenly your person doesn’t have a matching ScoutBook/ScoutNet MemberID. In the past, when I see that problem, I have sent an Email to ScoutBook Support asking that they change the ScoutBook BSA MemberID to the surviving ScoutNet BSA Member ID.
Greg
Greg,
Thanks for your suggestion. Unfortunately, your explanation doesn’t match my experiences. I am getting two kinds of errors:
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I enter a record with ID “X”. I get this message:
“Unable to find BSA #X in Scoutbook. The closest match is BSA #Y will update that record when processing.”
Next upload, if I use “Y” for that counselor, I get the message:
“BSA Member ID does not exist.”
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I enter a record with ID “Z” and get the message “BSA Member ID does not exist.”
Clearly, in the first bug, neither ID is “erased from the system”. Both are there somewhere.
The second bug, there is no second ID to merge.
I have sent requests to Scoutbook support to address these, I don’t know if they will be among the fixes being worked on as of 5/11/2020 while the upload link is disabled.
Thanks again!
Michael
Michael,
When a person has two ScoutNet MemberIDs, the Registrar can merge them into one. One of the numbers is chosen to be the surviving number, and the data from the other is copied over to the surviving record. Then the second record is removed from the system.
At least that is how it appears. The net result is that the number merged into the surviving record is removed from the system. As far as I can tell, there is no way to recover that number, or even see if it existed. So for all intents and purposes, after the Merge, the second number ceases to exist.
Now if the removed number is the one they had linked their ScoutBook account to, suddenly the ScoutBook account reports the" BSA Member ID does not exist" error. At least that is what has happened in my Council, more than once.
The way I have cleared this up in our council is to send an Email to ScoutBook Support, identifying the counselor with the problem, including their “New” ScoutNet Member ID and asking support to relink their ScoutBook account to their retained ScoutNet MemberID. I don’t believe that the counselor can do this from ScoutBook. I believe it throws an error if they try.
Greg
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Greg,
Thanks for the reply. Alas, the same errors persist. I will try submitting them again.
…I am really puzzled by the first case, where they tell me they are going to use a different number, but later deny it’s existence. I had really hoped this would be cleared up.
Yis,
Michael
i have been told by my registrar they can only due this for dupes we issue and need to reach out to national for old numbers from other councils
Ron
This is consistent with my experience. After Scoutbook was first purchased by the BSA, I ended up with a duplicate account, because my BSA ID from my troop when I was a scout was also in the system with the one I was issued as an adult leader decades later in my current council. I ended up on the phone with member service to get it straightened out. Once they associated it with my account, however, I was able to make the correct one primary. Theoretically, one can do this in my.scouting, but it requires you to know your “other” BSA ID. Which most folks likely do not. Even member service needed some guess as to which council issued the “extra” number.
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Thanks for everyone’s input. I am accumulating more and more ID’s that elicit the unhelpful “BSA Member ID does not exist” error. I have asked for help with my specific ID’s. In addition, I’ve asked that this mysterious error be replaced with something like "This BSA Member ID is not in Scoutbook please [do what?]
I am most charmed by the error encouraging me to use a nonexistent BSA Member ID:
I enter a record with ID “X”. I get this message:
“Unable to find BSA #X in Scoutbook. The closest match is BSA #Y will update that record when processing. [Grammatically, should be "Scoutbook will update that error when processing.]
Next upload, if I use “Y” for that counselor as suggested, I get the message:
“BSA Member ID does not exist.”
This error persists past the 5/18 update, which Ed claims (hope springs eternal) resolves the
“Uploading a MBC list that was just downloaded generates errors.” Nope.
Appreciate all the advice and the programmer’s efforts!
Greg,
In a closed topic you averred: I have created an Excel workbook that compares the uploaded to the downloaded file. It uses a WrodCount macro to count the number of words in the Badge list and compares that against the number of words in the downloaded file. While that is not sure to find any differences, it catches most of them.
Please share!!!
YiS,
Michael
