Director of Scoutbook - 11/17/2015 Update

I'm excited to be here on Scoutbook; it's my first time, now!! Thanks for your interesting conversation I will be checking your blog, often!!! Thanks again!!!

Thank you for yalls hard work! I'm looking forward to the awards being synced with the new program requirements!!!

I did not notice any lag last night so the fix is working. Thanks for the update.

Thank you Bob for the updates. I'm a little frustrated though lately, as your posts have gone from "weekly" to "mostly weekly" to "occasional" to "not so occasional" and that's not boding well for the future. I'm supposing the next few posts will be "only somewhat occasional" and then "every once in a while" and ultimately "when I feel like it". You were committed to this role by National, and I feel that it is you job, as I do, to get up every day, and ask "what can I do to make Scoutbook better?" Can you please get back to weekly blogs? Can you please get back to fixing the things that people are asking for? Who cares about broken image links and counters in the forums? All that will do is show you how many more people are asking for stuff. Set up the payments log so we can enter a SINGLE payment due from all scouts, like suppose RE-CHARTER DUES? Let us select "all users" on an event, and when we add scouts/parents, make them automatically be added to upcoming events! Simple stuff like that. Program requirements should have been rolled out MONTHS ago! We have NEW parents who are still entering belt loops and pins for Wolf scouts, just because the wording on the page is awkward "these are optional requirements that can be earned until the council shop runs out' WRONG! New scouts cannot earn these awards, and parents should not be tempted to enter them. Even in your post above, you say that you've identified four actions to improve peak usage. What four actions are they? When is peak usage? If I knew that, I would try to offset my usage. Your posts are leaving us all wanting more. Heck, at this time, I'd almost suggest shutting the forums down and going dark until you can process the requests that you've already received. Great, 600,000 users! With another 100,000 NEW users in the last month, all of them are asking the SAME questions we've been asking for months. And so the circle goes around. Power users make suggestions on how to do stuff, people get frustrated that they aren't hearing from Scoutbook, the power users get frustrated with people asking silly questions, and you can't filter through the noise. I actually think this would be a good idea. Shut down the forums, clear everything out that is from YEARS ago or even moths ago that isn't relevant anymore since being taken over by BSA, and re-tool the forums. They've been taken over by people who are trying to get through to you. This is a tool for tracking advancement and managing units. Focus on those features and everyone will be happy. There are LOADS of places on the internet that people can go to figure out how to do a bridging ceremony, or how to run a pinewood derby, or whatever. Please stay focused on what this tool can be used for, provide more relevant and frequent updates, and roll out more useful features.

I agree with everything Craig said, and add that the priority should be:

1) Advancement - update everything to the new program
2) Advancement - move obsolete awards to a dedicated out of the way user interface so that new parents will not try to enter them
3) Advancement - fix all of the broken reports to work with the new program
4) Advancement - etc
...
8) Calendaring
9) Payments

We wouldn't need weekly communication if we had a general long term roadmap plus a speciifc short term roadmap. Then, all you would have to do is post when milestones have been reached, or the roadmap changes.

I have to agree. I can't imagine the forum counters being on anyone's list of top priorities. And most likely not on a list of medium priorities either.

Thanks for the updates, Bob! I did notice improved performance last night (Monday) when accessing Scoutbook. Keep up the great progress!

Is there an inner circle of power users that one can belong to? Is there a customer advisory group that can filter out what the most important (not the easiest) things to focus on are? That would be very beneficial. I am slowly becoming a power user, and am agreeing with a lot of the requests for the core of what scoutbook is supposed to be, and forum counters ain't it.

Figure out what the core 3 things that scoutbook was supposed to do (not the three things that some higher up mucky muck wants to see done) and propose those to the customers. I'm not one to say that any of it would be easy, but at least as long as we know that you are all focusing on the main issues with what we are getting frustrated about I'd personally be willing to have a bit more patience.

The forum counter issue is more than just the forum counters. It is actually all of the counters, including the ones that tell you if there are items that need to be approved, purchased or awarded. The counters worked before the migration to AWS so hopefully it is a quick and easy fix. While the forum counters are not critical, the others are to some users.

I have to agree with Craig Mielke's and Joe McKinley's sentiments. My loss of faith in BSA's ability to manage Scoutbook is quickly reaching an all-time low. I fear Scoutbook has completely fallen into a perpetual fire-fighting mode that they will not be able to escape. Case in point: How many times has Scoutbook reported a "fix" for the problem with event reminder emails? How many times have they had to revisit the problem?

I was very hopeful by Bob Scott's initial blogs, but any support he may have gained, I feel, has been lost as a result of the actual results of his team.

Matt the Power User desigantion was something the scoutbook team came up with when they wanted to beta test the cloud servers before moving all of scoutbook to them. Shawn Jackson the man who created scoutbook selected a dozen or so users (including yours truly) to beta test the functionality.

The users were selected based on length of time using scoutbook (I started in 2010) and frequency of forum posts and helpfulness of the users.

Several of the power user crew (but not all of us) are working with Bob and Shawn on a Volunteer basis to shape and direct scoutbooks future.

98% of the 600,000 users are not power users. They are parents who need to be able to easily enter and see their son's progress in a system with advancement tracking that they can trust to be accurate.

That 98% should always be the top priority. Clearly they are not currently the top priority, or we would not be 6 months into the new Cub Scout program with broken advancement logic, awards with old requirements, obsolete awards coming up as the first thing the user sees, etc.

With the new Boy Scout program rolling out in January, it is just going to get compounded.

Why is it so hard for the Scoutbook employees and/or volunteers to give us a roadmap? Is it because they fear that everyone will take the next available exit once we see it?

I used to be the Scoutbook evangelist for my Pack. Now I am the Scoutbook apologist.

Here is my question once again and yes I have posted this in the lone scout forum as well as sent a message to ScoutBook through the message us link. I'm not a power user and my request doesn't even effect 99% of scouts or scouters. Again I know I keep repeating this but im hoping to hear an official answer... Preferably from the ScoutBook director.
Request: I would like to find out if Lone Scouts and their Counselors will be able to put their information in correctly. So they will be recognized as lone scouts and reflect correctly on the dashboard (i.e. no need for a link to a pack or troop). Also is there anything in the works for us to use scoutnet?

2015-11-17. Thanks Bob for the update.

For blog readers, please be aware that "current development activity" is a report of the moment. If an addition or fix takes one day to do, tommorrow it is no longer the "current item" being worked on.

Scoutbook is releasing bug fixes (and now some updates) almost daily (Mon-Thu). Which I believe is great progress.

I as well, have been one to shout SB praises to the masses, and now most of my answers begin with "I'm sorry, but...."

The one that has hurt me the most was when I had to say it to our Scout Executive. I would love to see some road maps as well, please!!

We need more than the "not so occasional blog" from the gentalman who is being paid with our registration fees to get this boat sailing straight and true!

I apologize if this doesn't sound the most scout like, but I have been with Scout Book for quite a while now & it has been an absolute roller coaster of promises and deliveries followed by errors and temporary fixes. Followed by responses from SB, then silence.

Then, we get Bob and a weekly blog that doesn't exist anymore followed by these "power users" that have no direct say whatsoever about the program. Bob could you please commit to a new entry on your blog posts instead of answering questions from a week ago in the thread, it is difficult to know when things are answered unless we go thru each and every posts to check and recheck.

What as paying customers are we supposed to do? How long should patience last?

Just thought I'd throw out a vote of support for the BSA team for continuing to improve Scoutbook. It's not easy to build a plane while in flight, especially with so many passengers complaining about the lack of freshly squeezed orange juice in the beverage service. Yeah, there's always things to improve, but Scoutbook is so much better than any other advancement tracking program I've tried. For me, it has lived up to the goal of making my life as a den leader easier to track advancements and communicate with the parents, and I'm continuing to promote SB to our parents, leaders, and other units. Let's all continue to be "courteous" and "helpful" in the suggestions.

Bryan good point and thanks for reminding us all what this all about. That being said, I also agree that there needs to be a clear focus on some priority and more critical issues. As a project / program manager by trade, there needs to be a clear end state and a path to get there. 600,000 users may have 600,000 issues, but that are not all critical. As one of the power users and one of the earlier troops to migrate to Scoutbook, I am a fan and have seen progress, but we collectively funneled several suggestions through a single POC in the Troop and I do not think I have seen a single suggestion implemented. Again, lots of users, lots of "good idea fairies", but the lead sled dog needs to lead and make some critical decisions to continue to have this tool live up to its taunted capabilities. I am not ready to throw in the towel, but I would agree that a more consistent comm dialogue would go a long way in placating the frustrated. Most of us just want to know if our suggestions are helpful and will be implemented. If not and there is a good reason, so be it. If it was a good idea - when are we going to see it? Comms ALWAYS go a long way in keeping expectations in check. Thanks for the hard work and keep it up - but let us know what is going on to remedy our issues.

@Bill Wells, as you say "Scoutbook is releasing bug fixes (and now some updates) almost daily (Mon-Thu). Which I believe is great progress." Where are the updates to the Change Log forum to let us know this?

Bob thank you so much for the update!

I think what everyone is discussing and what they are asking for is an update to the "Coming Soon" forum found in the change log. This was last updated 10 months ago and many things changed. This gave a road map with changes to help people have realistic expectations. Unfortunately it appears that many individuals do not have realistic expectations or are focused on small features they are interested in and through out the big picture. I will past a copy f the most current roadmap below from the last post. Is it possible to have this updated for 2016?

Start of post:

a year ago
Scout Book
While we cannot guarantee these features will be implemented, we want to give you an idea what kinds of features we are planning to bring to Scoutbook in the future. We will keep this list updated.

LDS Faith in God, Religious Knot Award completed
Purchasing Report completed
Messaging completed
ScoutNET integration completed
More Reports, enhancements to Report Builder completed
Events and Calendaring beta launched
APO FPO Address Support completed
Backups and Exporting completed
New Venturing program & subscription option pre BETA launched
JTE Reports & auto scoring 25% done
Payments Log 60% done
District and Council positions, admin roles and reporting
LDS Stake admins roles and reporting
Photo Galleries / Document Storage 60% done
Transfer Scout Module
Varsity subscription option 60% done
Patrol Method Features (inventory, website)
Public Den/Patrol and Unit websites
New Cub Scout program early access (preview only)
Offline access
ScoutNET Internet Rechartering Module
updated a year ago

Bob, thanks for the update.

As to the complaints, I'm content to use what works and keep using my work-arounds/old methods for the functionality that's not in Scoutbook yet. As I've spent most of my working hours lately untangling, debugging, and re-designing some data analysis tool code that seems to have been written ad hoc, I find Bryan's analogy of building a plane while in flight, quite apropros. I'd rather see the bugs and new features implemented correctly rather than quickly. It was doing it quickly the first time on these tools I'm working that sacrificed the design, making every change after that lengthy, difficult, and buggy.

Bob, Thank you for what you are doing, and we want more of it.
In August I moved back to the states after 7 yrs in Europe. In Sep, I was selected as the Tiger Den Leader. Three months later I am also the Scoutbook Pack Admin, and Asst Cubmaster (and all in just 1 hour a week <wink>). I am sure this is a tale similar to many who are posting. It is easy to become passionate about Scouting and developing the youth of our Nation.

The point is, you have possibly the largest base of high achieving volunteers on the planet. You have already moved to the cloud. Now consider using your crowd. What would it take to create a forum where we could help you? YIS, Castle

I am also the Venturing Crew Advisor, on top of being a Webelos One den leader. When will Scoutbook have Venturing Crew so I can utilize it? This appears to be quite unfair that Crew has been left out. thanks!

Thanks guys! Massive scale is always a hard thing!

Still too many things wrong and/or missing that should have been resolved long ago. I'm getting concerned that this whole Scoutbook thing is damaging the BSA brand. The lack of any proper documentation. Leaving customer service to volunteer "power users" instead of professionals with a direct connection to the development team.. Not even supporting all of BSA's own programs (Venturing, Lone Scouts, Sea Scouts, etc) or awards (Cyber Chip, etc.) The byzantine permissions structure. The lack of transparency and communication. The list goes on.

1- THANKS for adopting Scoutbook as our nationwide kit of online unit management tools!
2- THANKS for committing to continually maintain & extend its functionality!
3- THANKS for the new Report Builder - beta!
Please add a report printing function, such that we can print-out (effectively) a spreadsheet of Advancement progress for our Troop, using Tabloid 11x17" (B-size) paper, which I can do @ work.

Doug and Lawrence,

I recognize the challenges that you've seen over the past going into the changes with the BSA. I've been on the front lines and I have felt the pain (often magnified many times over). I am not a betting man -- BUT -- I will bet (my standard is 50 cents -- heh) with confidence that the development that is "holding up" Scoutbook will reach a point in time where the biggest doubters are pacified and even more likely IMPRESSED.

Not all of the Scouters/Users on Scoutbook are as dedicated and committed to being ON SCOUTBOOK much of the hours/days/weeks. For some, this is an extension of the Social Network of Scouting. Some use Facebook for a "Social Fix" and we use Scoutbook. Even Facebook's BILLIONS do not provide programming momentum that would be quick enough to appease some of the Users on Scoutbook. We CARE about Scouting. We CARE about our Scouts. Therefore, we CARE about Scoutbook.

Again, I've got no magical glimpse behind the curtain -- BUT -- I am very perceptive and in the Scoutbook and BSA "marriage" I see unified resources that will soon be VERY IMPRESSIVE. Takes time to build a house with a strong foundation though. (And foundations are NOT very exciting to look at while being built.)