Scoutbook MBC not in sync with my.scouting / ScoutNet

Scoutbook Scoutbook Bugs
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1

Not sure where this should land but I’ll start here.

I have access to both the ScoutBook detailed MBC download and the my.scouting MBC report. My understanding is that there is an automated process that is supposed to update SB every night. That appears to be broken / not working / not doing the right thing.

I have 975 people listed in my.scouting but only 937 people listed in SB.

Of those 900+ entries, I have 214 that have a different email address in the two systems. Some are single character mistakes (one letter missing), other’s are completely different addresses (something@yahoo.com vs. something-completely-different@gmail.com for example).

I also have two records in the scoutbook data that have the same BSAMemberID. There are no duplicates in the my.scouting data (there is only one record for each of those two member IDs).

This is not a new phenomenon, it’s been this way for months. It’s just that now that I have direct access to the data, I can get reports from both systems at the same time to compare.

Any idea how we get scoutbook to properly update from my.scouting?

2

If it’s handled by what is being synced, YPT expiration is involved. Look up the YPT status on the people you aren’t seeing in Scoutbook and see if expired YPT is the reason. That may not be the full issue, but it’s some of it probably.

3

Annnnnddddd … that’s why the my.scouting report should include the YPT date. So, how do we get that added (along with all the other missing fields)? [see my posting in the scout tools section about this]

This is part of my frustration … round and round we go between ScoutBook and my.scouting / ScoutNET.

I’ll try to pull YPT info out of my.scouting but it’s not a walk in the park.

4

So I pulled all the YPT data and looked up the people missing from scoutbook. Nope, that’s not the issue. There are a 5 that are expired but the vast majority are 2022 or 2023 so it’s not YPT expiry that’s the problem.

Here are the missing people’s YPT dates

129771669,09/30/2018
117995227,05/04/2020
124137784,08/19/2020
116640888,08/29/2020
132444925,10/21/2020

110097586,06/03/2021
131909746,06/12/2021
126944263,07/14/2021
135377877,07/29/2021
12107882,08/15/2021
12222321,02/23/2022
129124439,02/24/2022
111047545,02/28/2022
108272742,03/03/2022
109079347,03/10/2022
131774922,03/29/2022
134320381,04/08/2022
129857366,06/09/2022
129225792,06/09/2022
135392630,06/29/2022
4524184,07/09/2022
112963184,08/02/2022
12333928,08/06/2022
118073254,08/10/2022
4430818,09/11/2022
127475629,09/30/2022
137251285,10/07/2022
109146026,10/07/2022
137253910,10/20/2022
110099639,10/26/2022
4426813,11/17/2022
128624227,11/30/2022
12168757,11/30/2022
107103245,12/01/2022
4411801,12/24/2022
4532452,01/10/2023
4532453,01/10/2023
125484552,01/29/2023
4732946,03/10/2023
118708105,04/26/2023

Anyone else have a guess?

5 
126944263 - is fine and in SB correct

```110097586 - might be the expire date of the one missing MB in SB - not sure

131909746 - looks to be lapsed somehow

No time to dig through all now - but we will see

6

I know it’s possible to be in Scoutnet as a merit badge counselor with no merit badges. Those may not sync into Scoutbook at all. I presume you ruled that out, but I know that’s a thing since there’s definitely one in my district that somehow got registered but has no merit badge approvals.

7

Donovan,

I appreciate your efforts. However, 126944263 is NOT showing up in SB. I searched using his zip code for an obscure MB (Scouting Heritage) he’s listed for within a 10 mile radius. Shows ZERO MB COUNSELORS for that MB in his zip code. He absolutely is NOT “fine and in SB correct”.

I double checked the download (downloaded 5/15/2021) from Scoutbook (detailed merit badge counselor). He is NOT listed in that download AT ALL.

I don’t know what arcane magic you used to confirm he’s in SB. I sure wish us poor volunteers who desperately need such functionality had access to your ‘juice’. However, whatever you did is demonstrably not reporting what is actually in SB.

8

@JamesBrown13 It looks like that particular MBC has a duplicate Scoutbook account. I can merge them, and see if that helps.

For troubleshooting purposes, if he could set his availability to “Any Council (Worldwide)”, that would help us see if we can search for him.

9

I have no way to change his status. In fact, I can’t even SEE his status. The MBC report from scoutnet doesn’t include that info. Just a troop only yes/no column which is marked ‘no’ in his case.

What scoutbook user id is a duplicate for this user? I don’t see his BSA member ID in the dump I get from scoutbook so I’m wondering what council that ‘other’ user is in.

10

I don’t understand this comment. Expire date of what? His YPT is current through next month. He’s only listed for 2 MBs (cooking, camping), neither of which “expire”.

11

“Lapsed” how exactly? The YPT is good through next month. Still shows up in the YPT and MBC list for the council. What’s “lapsed” about this user?

12

James,

We have asked the developers to investigate why some MBCs are not appearing in the search results.

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13

Have me your registrar check for expiration dates on both the merit badge counselor and also on the badge a on Scoutnet. We had issues with my both.

14

Yes, they have MBs listed

15

What I was they msg show the MBC or badges, but make sure there are no expiration dates. We had people not load due to incorrect dates.

By expiration we are not talking YPT, but each position and badges in ScoutBook have an expiration date or better yet good until. It would be like a District Member-at-Large they have to be elected in and their term expires and the end of the district charter year.

16

Ed,

Can you also ask them why I have different emails in the YPT report, council merit badge counselor report, and scoutbook? And, more importantly, which one I should believe is the “real” email? And how I go about getting SB to have the “right” email (since it obviously isn’t syncing from my.scouting / scoutnet since they are sometimes different)?

Sometimes 2 out of the 3 are the same and the 3rd one is different but it’s inconsistent which ones match and which one is different. Sometimes scoutnet = ypt != scoutbook; sometimes scoutnet != ypt = scoutbook; and sometimes scoutnet = scoutbook != ypt. I have some cases where I have 3 different emails for the same person. One in each of the reports (e.g. x@scoutbook.com, y@hotmail.com, z@gmail.com).

Here’s where I’m getting each report, just to be clear:

Council MBC report: my.scouting.org | menu | (council) | roster > reports | council merit badge counselor listing | run > export to CSV

YPT: my.scouting.org | menu | (council) | training manager > reports | YPT council member report | run > CSV (details)

Scoutbook: scoutbook.scouting.org | my dashboard > manage approved merit badge counselor list > download the current mbcdetails.csv file

17

JamesBrown13 : Based on my experiences wtih registering Merit Badge Counselors, I think I can shed some light on the multiple email addresses for the same person.

The data you look at in those three reports are pulled from different data bases. Unfortunately, the Email addresses are not usually synced between the three. So if a person has Email1 in their ScoutNet registration record, but adds a different email, Email2, to their My.Scouting information, and a third email, Email3, when they created their ScoutBook account, they will show up with three emails.

But beware of a lurking significant problem. ScoutBook does not allow two users to share the same EMail address. ScoutBook cannot handle this, so it changes one of them to “changeyouremail@scoutbook.com”. I have spent many an hour trying to clear duplicate emails from the 1000 Merit Badge Counselors in my Council.

Greg

18

It’s obvious that they are different DBs, otherwise you couldn’t possibly have different info for the same user.

My biggest complaint is that SB is “supposedly” synced directly from ScoutNet. The fact that I have users with different information in SB vs ScoutNet tells me that either 1) that’s not actually the source of the info, or 2) the sync process is broken, (or both could be true I suppose).

That’s good to know! I do have some users with various versions of “@scoutbook.com” accounts. Interestingly, not all are “changeyouremail” though. I have several that are “changemyemail” instead.

Too bad SB doesn’t share such useful tidbits. Maybe in the form of error messages, rejecting duplicates or some other way of indicating that this is a problem. Also, WHO CARES?!?! if two people share an email!!! What a pointless rule!

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19

The rule originated back before the BSA purchased the software, and based on various comments appears to have been hard-coded into the back end. It’s not clear to me why it matters, per se, or why it would be difficult to change the coding. But everything is “Dilbert easy” from a user perspective who hasn’t seen whatever spaghetti is behind the curtain.

At the same time, arguably two people with the same email could be one person with two accounts (possibly bad) so it could have been intended as part of the error-checking process early on that was simply never removed. In principle, it is still working, since the duplicate email issue should be prompting whomever is creating the duplicate account to search for someone (rather than brute forcing a duplicate account creation).

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20

The e-mail address was originally the username in Scoutbook, so that is why different people (users) needed to have different e-mail addresses.

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