Our Troop is about to transition to Scoutbook and want to understand the email function for Scouts. Will they be able to email each other and are there limitations. It isn’t clear to me 1) if a scout must have a leadership position to email other Scouts 2) if a Scout can only email those in his patrol. Preferably we would like scouts to be able to email their PL and SPL with questions.
Scouts must be invited to connect to their accounts by a parent. They can not be connected by a leader, nor can they connect on their own without parent action.
I’ve had scouts in the unit email their patrols, the entire unit, and other scouts. I’ve also received emails from scouts via Scoutbook. I don’t believe that they need to have a leadership role in order to do so, but I’d have to go back and check everyone who’s sent an email to make sure.
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Thanks Charley - I have to make a presentation to the Committee and we like that the parent maintains the Scout’s profile and invites their scout to Scoutbook - We were hoping Scouts can send emails to other scouts because the parents will receive drop-copies and it is an easy way to have them connect with the SPL/ASPL.
Scouts can email others without restriction, once their parents have invited them to activate their accounts.
Also, I think Scouts mailing other Scouts will automatically copy the receiving parents as well.
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That’s been my experience. I’ve gotten copies of scout-to-scout emails sent to my son through Scoutbook, at least in the past.
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Be careful with this. There is an issue that I believe needs to be addressed right away:
If a Leader emails a Scout (or vice versa) through Scoutbook, the parent(s) do automatically receive a copy. The problem however, is that cc’d addresses are not on the email, so if the recipient simply replies to the sender from Outlook, Gmail, etc., parents are NOT automatically copied on the reply. “Reply All” does not address this either, as the cc addresses are not there. When replying to emails between Scouts and Leaders, everyone must understand the need to copy a parent or second leader on the reply.
Question - We are looking to better understand (and control) who can send email/text messages to the entire Unit. It seems currently Scouts can send email blasts to the entire Unit and we would like to understand how we can manage this better.
This is an artifact of using bcc to communicate. One option is to turn off bcc in the initial email, which makes it possible for reply-all to catch the parents. I regularly have to remind scouts to cc a second adult, with or without Scoutbook.
ETA: @MichaelMyers1, there is not presently a way to limit which recipients a scout can email. They are either connected to their account by a parent (and can email everyone) or they are not connected.
I agree that granularity in email permissions would be good, bit it’s not clear exactly how that could be implemented that would be sufficiently generic. For example, I could see permission states like emailPatrolYouth, emailPatrolAdultLeaders, emailPatrolParents, and analogous permissions at the troop level. That said, I think it would be difficult to administer that way, as different scouts could have different access levels, which could impair their ability to execute whatever task they are assigned.
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