I’m not sure if this is the right place to post this, but if not feel free to move.
I’m excited about using the new Discourse tool to communicate! Having a common tool across units, districts and councils is sorely needed.
I see that there is already a section that corresponds to my unit at the bottom of the “home” page. How is this intended to be used? Will there be district-level sections coming soon? (I am a district chair).
Thanks!
This is a great improvement to the Scouting platform.
I see that we have a unit level category. Will we be able to have separate ones for the committee and dens, or how do you see us using this?
Will there be any event calendaring (with iCal/web calendar features) and RSVPs?
Will there be areas where people can have conversations by positions (ie District Chairs)?
If we had our own Council/District level forums, would we be able to tie into the Scouting.org SSO hooks?
Unit categories can be used any way the unit likes.
At this time there are no plans to allow sub-categories for units.
Unit admins in Scoutbook are able to moderate their own unit forums.
There are no short term plans to create categories for higher levels such as districts our councils. There is an item in the backlog to support districts and councils but we do not know if or when the BSA will consider adding them.
Scoutbook already has a calendar with RSVP support.
There are no plans to create categories for positions. You can use the general BSA program categories for discussing program issues.
Thanks! I’ve not seen that yet.
On the calendaring, one of the main features that Units seem to like is the ability for people to subscribe to the calendar(s)(iCal) so that their device calendars will automatically be updated when events are added, edited, or deleted.
The iCal automated notification part seems to be a critical component to that. Is that included?
Does the calendar Include District and Counsel events as well as the unit events? Either together under one stream or under separate C, D, and U streams.
On Scoutbook Calendar page just Click “SUBSCRIBE” (at bottom of this image ) that gives you the ics address to share
Users are able to subscribe to the Scoutbook calendars. On the unit page, click Upcoming Events then Subscribe to get the link. Keep in mind Google only updates calendars once every 24 hours so changes will not be seen immediately. Other system update frequencies vary.
District and Council calendars are not available in Scoutbook. Each district or council is responsible for their own calendar systems.
OK. I guess it’s just confusing that the this covers the top level (BSA) and the bottom levels (Unit), but not the in between (Council & District).
It would almost make more sense for the Units to fall under Council responsibilities also.
It seems we are right on the doorstep of having a singular Scouting communications platform. Can you help me understand the reasoning on how we got this far, but can’t finish out the rest?
One of the things that’s especially nice about having the integrated platform is the SSO as well as the backend intelligence. SB already knows who is in what Councils and Districts, just like it does Units, so it can auto-assign permissions. Same would be true for the chairs at each level. That would allow for building and sharing of best practices for each position.
Over time, that becomes the go-to knowledge-base for not just existing, but new leaders also. Go here, read this, ask questions. These are your people.
This is awesome! Perfect, just nobody knew about it. News to even our District Chair. 
Thanks.
Not sure if this offers any insight to the topics but as a SB user admin for several troops, (and a heavy utilizer n promoter to record, organize, n communicate w parents n other leaders), it was thought by our users that integrating district n council varied meetings/random events/training/side opportunities into our troop calendars quickly became a distraction, cluttering & sometimes (depending on how users choose to view event calendar) overriding (or covering up) the important troop level events parents need to have in priority view. I learned some users became confused between proper unit outings and optional events.
So my next addition to our quarterly troop newsletter is to promote all of these enriching district n council events n opportunities as a separate n optional entity geared toward the individual for growth through training, certifications, n events.
But i also intend to search other ways to list n promote using our units’ SB calendar system if i can clearly differentiate as a separate n optional calendar (or something to that extent). 
I agree. Council calendars have a lot of training geared toward leaders and likely include items across all programs. As long as I have a say, it will not be automatically added to unit calendars. Units would at least need a way to approve whether the event shows up on their unit calendar or not.
You could make up a leader patrol, and use that patrol’s calendar for Council and District events. That way, they stay off the main calendar, but they’re still visible to anyone that’s interested in seeing them.
Now, what I would dearly love is to get someone to train my Council, District, OA, and unit people that they don’t need to schedule everything in one weekend… 
Next weekend is our normal troop campout weekend (third week of the month, rain or shine), the Council’s Annual Recognition Dinner, the OA Lodge’s Spring Induction, Council’s Day of Service, and a service weekend at one of the Council reservations to get it ready for summer camp. I can’t believe that all of these events were scheduled without anyone talking to anyone else…
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