Scoutbook Plus Email

My Scouting Tools
1

I was using the legacy scoutbook email platform (with the BBCode) until the very end. Looks like they discontinued it recently and we now have to use the scoutbook plus email platform. I thought the scoutbook plus client tools were a little clunky, and notice it does not support emojis like the legacy platform did.

I try to automate where I can. The official documentation doesn’t provide much detail on supported HTML, so I tested various formatting options directly in the email editor. After some trial-and-error testing with Scoutbook Plus emails, I wanted to share what I found.

Bottom line: Scoutbook Plus doesn’t support advanced HTML, but it supports enough formatting (bold, underline, italics, links, strikethrough, and simple structure) to create much more readable emails than plain text if you keep the HTML simple and compact. The biggest benefit was improving readability for parents who skim emails on their phones. Note, I had to escape the HTML syntax to post without rendering it in HTML.

What Worked in My Testing

Text Formatting

:white_check_mark: Bold (<strong>)

:white_check_mark: Underline (<u>)

:white_check_mark: Italics (<em> / <i>)

:white_check_mark: Combinations of the above

Examples:

<strong>Bold Text</strong>

<u>Underlined Text</u>

<em>Italic Text</em>

Section Header

Hyperlinks

Both raw URLs and custom hyperlink text worked.

<a href=“https://my.scouting.org”>my.Scouting</a>

Strikethrough

Supported.

Example:

<s>Canceled Event</s>

Separator Lines

Very useful for creating visual structure.

Example:

==================================================

What Did NOT Work in My Testing

:cross_mark: Font colors

:cross_mark: Font sizes

:cross_mark: Tables

:cross_mark: Text alignment (center, right align, etc.) (via HTML; however the in-application tools work)

:cross_mark: Callout boxes

:cross_mark: Most advanced HTML styling

What Technically Works But Has Issues

Bullets and Lists

Lists render, but often create excessive spacing between items.

Example:

<ul>
<li>Item 1</li>
<li>Item 2</li>
</ul>

Best Practices We Landed On

1. Keep HTML Simple

The more advanced the formatting attempt, the less reliable the results.

2. Use Headers + Separators

This provided the best readability for parents viewing emails on phones.

3. Use Inline Metadata

Instead of multiple lines:

<strong>Time:</strong> 6:00 PM | <strong>Location:</strong> Scout House

4. Minimize Blank Lines

Scoutbook Plus tends to add excessive spacing on its own. Keeping the HTML compact generally produced cleaner results.

2

you say you try to automate where you can. I may have missed it but how do you automate making an email with the simple HTML.

3

Oh the most important part I neglected to include. I familiarize ChatGPT with the allowable HTML above and run my email drafts thru it and ask that it use the allowable values to make it optimized for mobile and skimmable…so it spits out the html embedded into the draft that I Paste right into the messaging program without having to do it manually via the browser editor tools. Saves a few minutes every email.

4

Thanks this fixed my sheet

5

@AkashSingh - so this was an issue in your sheet ?

6

Some additional findings on alignment support:

After inspecting the HTML generated by the Scoutbook Plus editor, alignment appears to be supported through paragraph tags:

<p style=“text-align:center;”>Centered Text</p>

<p style=“text-align:right;”>Right Aligned Text</p>

<p style=“text-align:left;”>Left Aligned Text</p>

<p style=“text-align:justify;”>Justified Text</p>

All four tested successfully when pasted directly into Scoutbook Plus.

One interesting note: equivalent alignment attempts using

tags did not work. Alignment appears to be preserved specifically through paragraph (

) tags, which matches the HTML generated by the Scoutbook Plus editor.

7

@MD_Scouter - would it be ok to place your information in an faq or help page?

8

Sure. A scout is helpful, was just passing along findings to others. The retirement of BBCode messed up my workstream a bit, but the above is the workaround I found helpful for me.

9

@MD_Scouter - here is what I have so far.