Hi all,
The new Commissioner Tools looks great and should be very useful. Question: the Superactivity fields on my district are all showing negative, suggesting no long term camping by the troops. Where is that data pulling from? I know that’s not factually correct as many units went to summer camp in 2024. Many thanks! Jack Dean DC Lenape Trail Dist. Northern NJ Council.
Hi @JohnDean4,
There is a new tab on the left side of the My.Scouting Unit Dashboard called “Unit Data Metric Entry.” This has the date field for units to enter the date of their outdoor activity (I’m going to assume start date for long activity for older youth units), as well as, the date entry box for unit elections of youth leadership for Crews and Posts. This is a brand new field and just went “live” with the release of the new Commissioner Tools. I would suspect a good deal of press and training will be forthcoming to Commissioners and then units on how to make this simple entry.
Here is an example from a My.Scouting unit page for reference:
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I’m curious about that, as my own troop attended summer camp, and was marked appropriately in the Activity Log in Scoutbook Plus
Unfortunately, my understanding is that the new Commissioner Tools is not pulling any data from the Scoutbook activity logs, only this data field for activities in My.Scouting.
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Does that mean that units will have to enter activity logs in SB+ and commissioners will have to also enter activities in unit tools to ensure that the scouts are getting credit in their scouting records and units are getting credit on their dashboards?
There seems to be a “Metric” toggle basically for SB+ Calendar Events (not logs) 5+ days that asks the question is this for this purpose. SUAC had not heard of it but noticed it today. It failed in some tests so we are asking questions. When YES is clicked it is supposed to push data so Commish can see. There are or will be other things like this but we are in the dark right now.
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I just tried this and I get a “User not allowed to use this API” error. I am the unit advancement coordinator and the unit commissioner. Is this potentially not baked all the way through or is this a permissions need to get fixed issue?
I will simply restate - we found issues and have asked some questions. This is a story that came from Commissioners so I imagine, they said who could and could not use it. But it did not go through SUAC testing either until today.
@JohnRennpferd the metric is one long term activity for a Troop (a year) or one outdoor activity for a Pack. On the basis of this measure, it is expected that the field will only need to be completed once either in My.Scouting or in Scoutbook+ at the event level. I had heard (again no direct knowledge to SUAC) that it would be limited to Key 3 making the entry and not to Commissioners or other positions (but that could always change).
This is the way! I tried for my unit - set it to date we left week-long summer camp 2024, and after an hour so the new Commissioner Tools picked it up and changed the Super Activity icon in the Unit or District Commissioner “View Units” and Dashboards for the particular unit. Thanks!
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I guess structured process that means less work for me as the advancement chair. I’ll have to let my key 3 know that one of them will have to enter activity logs from now on.
@JohnRennpferd as a clarification, this discussion is about a field that requires a one time input per year versus activity logs (which haven’t changed) that can be used by units after every event.
Are we sure about that? My pack has had 15 outdoor events/campouts/service projects in the past 12 months and none of that is populating to the dashboard.
Yes @JohnRennpferd, as one of the posters above said, he made one population for the activity in the new field and his unit dashboard populated and counted the activity (as far as My.Scouting unit dashboard is concerned). Just understand, the intent of the new field is different then the intent of the activity logs in Scoutbook+. Again, as Donovan said, the new field was not requested by SUAC and is being used for a different process.
And this item is on a Calendar Event - it does not touch the Logs and you cannot access it in Logs. Seems Only True K3 can use it - others can see it but that is being dealt with…
@JohnRennpferd Are you talking about a question about whether a long term campout of 5 or more nights has been held in the last year or something else? Donovan and Zachary were referring to the former. Since you reference a pack, I assume you are talking about something else. (I don’t actually know what the metrics are. So, please forgive my ignorance.)
It looks like it only pulls data from the current year, so if a unit did a long term camp in 2024 and is scheduled to go to summer camp in 2025, the matrix doesn’t count the 2024 camp. The same seems to be true for short term camping.
I’m guessing that units that track their camping, etc using Troopmaster or another program will always have “0” in the report…
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Am understanding these two issues correctly. An outdoor/superactivity is considered something different than a campout or hike or service project and logging one of those 3 will not autopopulate an outdoor/superactivity? Associated but a second issue, the dashboard has no capability to look back in the past 12 months to look at the camping, hiking, and service activity of a unit?
I raise these questions as units will need to know if they need to double enter their outdoor/superactivities, and units will need to know if there is no way to correctly show their past 12 months activity until Feb 2026. Specific to my unit, the new dashboard makes my unit look completely inactive and non-compliant to the best methods of running a pack level program when in reality it has been overachieving, and reporting said achievements (which have difficult visibility now).
@JohnRennpferd again, only one activity needs to be entered per year per unit for this new date field. All other activities should be logged as usual in the Scoutbook+ activity logs. Unit dashboards in My.Scouting will still display the activity information for units that make use of this (because not all units log activities into Scoutbook+).
Here is the specific metric that this one field that requires one entry per year is looking at (found by clicking the blue “i” button):
My understanding is that because not all units use Scoutbook+, this one field at one time a year, was made manual entry to capture the information (even if the data was already available in Scoutbook+)
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But what about the rest of the program category of the dashboard? Why is that not populating with any of the campouts, hikes, or service projects? Will those only populate if a key 3 member enters a superactivity?
