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I had a Troop Advancement Chair asking me about Eagle Palms and when they can be earned. When looking at the Scout in question, Scoutbook had allowed a Palm to be entered before five merit badges were earned after earning Eagle (time was not an issue with this, just the number of MB). Later the TAC was then able to add two more Palms on the same date. It is my understanding that after Eagle, there must be three months between earning each Palm. Scoutbook should not allow Palms to be entered before five badges are earned or before three months have passed.
It seems this may be an issue with rank advancements, also, such as not having six months between Star and Life but still being able to enter the rank into Scoutbook.
A scout can earn as many palms as they have merit badges for at the EBOR - so if they have 20 extra MBs at EBOR they at that point have earned 4 palms on the same day
So, if I understand this correctly, this issue is related to < 5 MB completed, but the palm was entered. What do you mean by entered? Marked Completed? Marked Leader Approved? Marked Awarded?
What is the date that was used? If it matches the date of the Eagle BoR, then @DonovanMcNeil’s point is key. There is no limit (AFAIK) on the number of palms that can be granted as long as the merit badges are already earned as of the date of the Eagle BoR.
Have you been able to demonstrate this issue, or are you speculating that it might be broken as well? I have not been able to replicate this issue when I fiddled with it for one of our scouts.
My apologies for not being clear. Let me try to do better.
The Scout earned Eagle on 5-23-19.
Earned Palms through +30 on 5-23-19.
Earned Palm +35 on 9-8-19 (earned 4 MB 6-28-19, 1 MB 6-7-20).
Earned Palm +40 and +45 on 8-4-20. (For +45, the final MB was earned on 8-22-20.)
These were all entered Akela Sync. I hope this better shows what I am seeing. Thanks for everyone’s help.
I’m a Council employee so I don’t know how they were entered except not by an employee. I was told Akela Sync meant Scoutbook, but it could also mean IA 2.0. Either way, unit entered.
He wasn’t being sub-honest. The TAC didn’t understand the procedure for Palms. I was just hoping SB could restrict a Palm being earned in the same manner a merit badge is earned - verifying that all requirements (time and MB) were complete.
So, for the palms through E+30, those all look correct, assuming that those MBs were earned prior to the date of the EBoR.
So, 9/8/19 looks OK for time since previous palms 5/23/19, but possibly missing a MB. I’m wondering if there was a 5th MB that was previously marked as “Leader Approved”, that was later removed (e.g. erroneous entry) or if the 5th MB was originally credited in time for the 9/8/19 date to have worked, then later changed for some reason.
So, this one is a bit confusing. It seems like the date earned would have to be different for these two, since it seems unlikely that a scout would complete 6 MB all on the same day (except maybe after summer camp?) It seems kinda like a data entry issue by whomever was marking the palms as earned. That is, the scout might have completed all of the requirements for palm E+40 three months prior to completing the requirements for E+45, but they were marked with a Completed date on the day that the AC logged them, rather than on the day that the requirements were actually completed.
I can see some value to trying to straighten out the programming logic on this (e.g. prevent identical Date Completed for multiple palms except on EBoR date), but I’m not sure how high this would be prioritized, since it seems like an issue that can be controlled by properly implementing advancement policy. Also, it’s not clear how easy it would be to capture changes in the rules, if there are some coming down the pipeline.
If a user enters the same completion date for 2 Eagle Palms (not the Eagle BOR date), Scoutbook will allow both to be marked complete, however if they have completion dates that are 1 or more days apart, the 2nd palm will fail with an error saying the Scout must wait 3 months between palms.
If a Scout only has 4 MBs marked complete for an Eagle Palm, Scoutbook will still allow the Eagle Palm to be marked complete.
I have added this to the backlog and asked the developers to scheduled it for fixing as soon as possible.
