Welcome! This forum has a treasure trove of great info – Scouters helping Scouters! Just a heads up, though - all content, information, and opinions shared on this forum are those of the author, not the BSA.
This is the straw that’s breaking the camel’s back. Unless someone can explain why we should stay, our Crew will be abandoning Scoutbook.
The only thing we needed from the tool was email list management. Scoutbook may be great for Packs but it fails for the youth-led arms of BSA. Even more than in a Troop, Crew youth leaders are responsible for planning and communications. We successfully worked around Scoutbook’s restrictions by creating a dummy “adult leader” called VP Admin and gave that youth leader the log-in and password necessary to do her job. She used the account to manage the calendar and to send messages to Crew members. I really liked that all messages would be copied to parents and used the links to ensure that I was also automatically copied on all messages.
But that dummy account does not and never will have a BSA ID number. When that account is removed from the system, we’ll lose the ability to give a youth a “leader” account. The only remaining workaround would be to give the youth my user ID and password - and that would be astonishingly bad security.
I saw the rationalization that this about Youth Protection. You’re not solving that problem, though. In fact, you’re making it worse by driving us off this platform. My youth leaders are already researching Google Groups and other much less secure communication channels. To be blunt, you are not giving the youth-led programs the tools we need to run our programs.
Our SPL hasn’t required any special permissions to manage emailing folks. It’s convoluted to get to the messaging interface, but he’s never had an issue emailing from his own account.
I agree with the calendar issue, but I understand that there is a calendar access feature in development (as noted here). Hopefully that will address the issues we’ve had to work around.
How does your SPL do that, please? I ask because every test I run with a youth member account shows the ability to email to the unit leaders only. Does the SPL email directly or does an adult forward the messages along?
From My Dashboard, a Scout can click on Message then Send Message to send messages to other youth, parents or leaders in any unit where they are a member.
I have requested a Send Message link also be placed on the Scout’s My Account page.
That’s a lot cleaner than it used to be, @edavignon. I feel like the scouts used to need to click on the breadcrumbs at the top of the page or something to get to a location where they could send a message.
I’m confused. My Crew President follows the same path but can only address the message to adult leaders or his own parents. No other parents even show up in the list.
@MichaelRossander - I just tested with my son’s account. He is Crew President and QM in the troop. The send message shows all of the parents, leaders and connected scouts in both the troop and crew. I would make certain that the leadership position of Crew President is approved, although a connected scout should be able to message out to parents leaders and scouts. Seems to me like something is afoot with that scout account.
To edavignon’s question, I don’t think any of the parents have a View Profile connection to all scouts. I thought that was a permission reserved for adult leaders.
To jacobfetzer’s question, I’ve experimented with it both ways, moving the President leadership position to both my sons (one over and the other under 18). We see no difference in either the interface or permissions.
