Where can I find help with the new forums?

Click on the three line menu in the upper right, then click on FAQ.

A direct link is here.

Is there a way to enable notifications for folks on the Unit forum? That would enable us to use it as a push rather than a pull (folks now have to know it exists, go there, turn on notifications to know when something is posted… many won’t).

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See the Notifications section of the FAQ for New Scouting Forums

Each user must enable their own notifications. There is no ability to set this for others.

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@DavidO
,…

Several people have already expressed the need for this option, in the very short period of time that these forums have been live. Can something like this be implemented?

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We are trying to find out for you.

What about users who don’t want to be automatically opted in?

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All of us have opted into scouting. I would expect to receive updates as a member, unless I opt out otherwise.

It would help if the forum automatically created subcategories within the units also. One pack, one per den, and one committee. Then you could just opt people in to their specific den subcategory and and unit-wide updates. Then people that hold a committee position could automatically be subscribed to the committee subcategory also. Then they’re automatically opted in to specifically what they need and nothing that they don’t. A visual mailing list, that stores the data as a knowledge base over time. The best part is that Scoutbook already knows all of that info about each user.

I assume that every email that goes out has an opt out message attached to it, so that covers that end. It’s easy to exit.

Issue with not automatically adding people is that they don’t know what they don’t know. If they’re not aware of it at all, it’s much more difficult to find and opt in, than it is to just click the link on an email that you received, to opt out.

Unsubscribing is ubiquitous these days. Most know how to do it. Subscribing specifically to Dicourse is not familiar to everybody.

The flip side right now is that the units are using Facebook, WhatsApp, GroupMe, etc, and everyone gets everything anyway… or nothing (off social media). With the internal knowledge of this platform, we are finally in a position to have a singular platform that all Scouting communications come through, in a more refined manner than social media can do.

This is why I’d also like to see us work towards all District and Council communications being on the same communication platform. Single tool, single stream. Turn up the signal, turn down the noise, for everyone.

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More on that conversation here…

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Similar to what @DavidO said - asking folks to log into my.scouting to get trained, then log into my.scouting once council accepts them, then log into scoutbook.com with their new ID, then go to forums, find the unit forum, then click ‘subscribe’ puts an awful lot of gates in their way.

For the unit forums to be useful (&used), I think they could be the more permanent equivalent of an “all-hands” email that we can already send through scoutbook. Most folks don’t know the unit forum exists (who was it that said “If you tell them something 7 times, 1/2 will say they heard it once”?!)

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Is there a location for support with the new forums, not just the FAQ?
In particular we want the ability to pin topics to our unit forum. It seems discourse supports this, but perhaps as an admin only function? Without the pin function the forums are a lot less useful for us.

The actual need here is to pin a “Documents” and “Photos” topic to the top of the forum for easy/quick access for all, rather than getting lost as other discussions happen.

Hi, Alfred,

There’s some information available here about the various Trust Levels that Discourse uses. I know that I can pin and unpin topics for myself, but not for others. It appears that “permanently” pinning a topic for yourself and others is a Trust Level 4 (Leader) privilege. There’s a discussionhere about some of the issues with not having the ability to create unit-specific Discourse “Leaders”, so, if I understood correctly, anyone who is promoted to Trust Level 4 effectively becomes an admin for all of the forums.

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Thanks Charley, it sounds like the problem is understood.
As a temporary work around I’d love the ability to request a topic be pinned by an admin.