Director of Scoutbook - 5-6-2016
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Director of Scoutbook - 5-6-2016
Welcome to May! Time to get outside and enjoy Spring and Scouting outside!!
The Scoutbook team has been working hard to improve the tool over the past thirty days or so. Some has been catching up to issues reported in the bug forums (thank you for all your feedback) and some has been stepping forward into new territory.
Before getting into the update I want to make you aware of a group of volunteers, called the Scoutbook User Advisory Council. The Council works behind the scenes to represent the user community’s needs to the development team and by helping to test new functionality being released. They also work in front of the curtain responding to forum posts, preparing local presentations and working with other volunteers to spread the word about Scoutbook. If you meet any of the following in the forums, thank them for their service:
Jim Brown Ed D'Avignon
Scott Fisher Stephen Hornak
Matt Kreps Ken Morgan
Bill Nelson Jennifer Olinger
Bill Wells
April
Late March and April were busy as the team was very focused on catching up to bugs reported previously in the forums, primarily ones associated with catching Scoutbook up to the changes made in the programs last Fall thru this Spring. The following were released to that end:
- Updated the BSA Advancement Report (34403) to include the new Cub Scout adventures and overflow onto a second page as needed
- Electives applied to Webelos or Arrow of Light rank requirements appropriately
- Cub Scout NOVA Award requirements updated
- Outdoor Ethics Guide was added as a Boy Scout leadership position
- Resolved issues with some ScoutNet imports timing out
- Released updated merit badge requirements affecting 19 merit badges
May:
The following were released this week or planned for next week:
- Upgrades to web and database servers to support increased subscriptions (released)
- Updated Report Builder, allowing reporting both current and past versions of merit badges and rank requirements. (released)
- Note that this increased capability is not without its opportunities. Large units running a report for all Scouts, all ranks and awards and asking for requirement level detail MAY run into the max limit on report size (20,000 "cells - the result of Scouts X data requested at its most detailed level).
- Because the outcome of a report setup is difficult to anticipate, a preliminary screening tool has been developed which will evaluate the report selections before processing and alert the user if the report selections are going to exceed the maximum capability of Report Builder.
- If alerted, the user should consider reducing the number of Scouts in the report (maybe running by den or patrol), the amount of data requested or the level of detail requested.
- Fixed bug in how optional merit badges are applied to Eagle requirements 3 h, i and k
Coming Soon:
As I began discussing in my last blog, Scoutbook and BSA’s database are becoming closer together with the ultimate goal that there will only be one database for a Scout’s (and Scouter’s) history in Scouting. We will shortly be beginning development on two major steps in that vision:
Automated sync of Scoutbook advancement with ScoutNet/Akela
- Scheduled to begin development in mid-May with a 60-90 day development calendar
- Should be in place by beginning of new Scouting year
- Will eliminate the need to export advancement files and upload via internet advancement
- Sync will pick up the most recent information from either Scoutbook or ScoutNet/Akela and represent it in both databases
Functionality to resolve situations where there is more than one unit with the same unit number in a council. This situation sometimes results in new units not being able to begin their Scoutbook experience or users seeing units to which they do not belong.
When completed, units will have the opportunity to validate their unit versus the database BSA maintains on units so that future connections between Scoutbook and ScoutNet/Akela will be more easily implemented. Once units have selected their unit’s match with ScoutNet/Akela, that information will be used for the charter organization name, address, etc. on the unit profile page.
More details on how this will look will be posted prior to or as the stories are being released.
Lion Pilot (Kindergarden Scouting)
As many of you are no doubt aware, the Boy Scouts of America is piloting nationally a program for kindergarden age boys called Lions. For more information on this program contact your local service center. Scoutbook will support the new Lion program beginning with the new program year (August/September). More details will be released as the work is completed.
The team hopes you enjoy the enhanced features of Scoutbook. As alway, your comments and feedback are welcome.
Advancement is not the world of Leaders (well, it should not be), hence the name SCOUTbook and not TROOPbook or PACKbook. Fortunately, we progress closer and closer to NOT having to kill a bunch of trees with hundreds and hundreds of reports as in the "old days" of Advancement Tracking. Having had a Pack/Troop/Crew on Scoutbook for a long time, I know that it is the continued prompting to track yourself (your Scout) on Scoutbook that has reinvigorated our Leaders and our Scouts. Moving away from one or two people holding "the Advancement Keys of the Unit" is long overdue. Empowering more and more of the Unit to rely on oneself to track one's own Scouting creates more bench strength in the Unit of having people to rely on for the more important aspects of Scout PROGRAM.
This update (and future related updates) in Scoutbook will move our Scouts and Units even further along this positive path. There may be a few select things that will be designed for printouts -- BUT THANKFULLY -- there will be less and less need for hundreds (or even dozens) of paper reports that become outdated nearly as fast as they are printed.
The mini-report is simultaneously one of the most useful and most useless features: It is the *only* efficient way to navigate between the advancement pages of the scouts in a den (by clicking on their profile image), but the contents of the report are meaningless, because they don't reflect the real data.
Thanks for all the updates these were needed and I am glad you all heard our concerns. Feedback is important and lets make sure we give it. We can only get better! I am very impressed
Your hard work does not go unnoticed.
Great job team!
With the revisions to Report Builder, you can create something that replaces the mini report (and is IMHO better) by selecting "Show Rank Requirements" under the relevant rank, and selecting "Show % complete", "Show Dates" and "Show Requirement Descriptions" under settings. You can jump to the individual Scouts' pages by clicking on their photos in the Report Builder reports as well.
In addition, I've played with the other settings (for Webelos only) and this appears to do just about everything I've asked for (except native export, but I'll learn to use the chrome extension for that). Thanks, development team!
I wanted to compliment the transparency that Bob put into his blog regarding the upcoming plans. Obviously, the site is under ongoing development, but it's nice to have at least a near-term moderately detailed description of what's planned, as well as some of the "blue sky" plans as well. Also, even though Scouters don't lead for the recognition, it's good to make sure those volunteers who are helping with the development get recognition. Thanks for all of your help, especially given that I am usually one of the loudest folks banging on the table for more official feedback from the development side.
Please keep the feedback and suggestions coming.
Note these steps can only be done by a unit admin.
Again, thank you.
I have been championing the use of Scoutbook within my unit and council for 2+ years with mixed results. The sync feature will be a huge step forward and will help us sell the use of merit badge tracking much more successfully. When you add the merit badge counselor improvement you suggest, it will become obvious to all of our counselors how conveniently they can work with the scouts.
SPL and PL access to and approval of their scouts will be fantastic. Now, just put payment log links to camping logs and calendar events high in the priority list and I'm getting very excited!
- Being able to create/maintain Groups
- Unit Awards for our troop
- Allowing Patrol Leaders, Assistance Senior Patrol Leaders, and Senior Patrol Leaders view/edit access to scout advancement
Any idea when these features will be available?
Just a couple of quick questions and not sure where to ask them.
1st: Do we have an expected date for the Lion Dens to be incorporated into Scoutbook. I saw the note for Aug/ Sept. but wondering if we had something more solid so I can get my leaders in and trained before our much easier charter time.
2nd: When it comes to chartering (at least for us) I have noticed scout book and to some extent scout net still has the tiger den leader and the webelos leader training, but there is only one "den leader" training on the training site. we had trouble with this last year at charter time as we could not get things to sync right because one required the leader specific training, the other only the general leader training. Just trying to get a handle on this before it is crunch time.
thank you in advance for your response.
Matt
As our District Lion Coordinator, the anticipated completion date for adding this program information is very important. I'm teaching our training this week, so any additional info I can give our new Lion Guides would be helpful.
Thanks!
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