Lions, Meet Scoutbook!

Thank you for the update! I hope that our Council decides to participate. The extra merit badge counselor features will hopefully make life easier for Councils tracking and for the validation of appropriate individuals signing off merit badges. A big thank you to Bob and the entire development team who has been working hard on this. Please know that your hard work does not go unnoticed.

Awesome. When are you fixing the Report Builder?

Hoping my council sign on!

Thank you for this. Now, shooting sports program. Many of our boys earned portions at summer camp.

@Frank Turner, There is a forum in the New Features Request section that I created. I know that many people have asked for report builder to be fixed, but based on the amount of comments, only one, I would say that the reporting might be lower on the demand for development. Please note I have no insight from the development team, but that is only my observation due to the lack of feedback given on the boards.

Feel free to post any of your ideas and I will add it to the list. The board is at: https://www.scoutbook.com/mobile/forums/new-feature-requests/78981/list-of-reports-to-be-included-in-scoutbook--easy-location-for-the-dev-team-to-see-our-requests-/

Fix the reporting

@Bob, thank you so much for the information!

Thanks Bob, we appreciate it very much!

Thanks for the update Bob, and for getting the Lions program roll-out done before the back-to-school rush that is coming up in a few weeks. We are a pilot unit for our council and looking forward to having Scoutbook available for all ranks.

Question--is there a published schedule on when you plan (hope) to have new features available (i.e. leader awards, sea scouts, etc.)

Spike, it's basically just what gets posted in this blog.

I miss the days when scoutbook was for the volunteers who keep scouting going. Its sad to me to think of all the enhancements that should have been before this council integration. I guess there are going to be more employees in bsa as scoutbook users than volunteers and scouts.

The tools that are "called" Council Tools are in fact specifically for the volunteers. These particular tools that serve the volunteers do so in mass quantity in ways that require some intervention by the Council. "Validated" Merit Badge Counselors within Scoutbook will be a very large roadblock removed from Scout Leaders being able to trust MBC's that are in neighboring Units and/or District-wide and Council-wide MBC's. Currently, in Scoutbook, there is no way to know the validity of a MBC's credentials if you do not know them personally in your Unit. Therefore, it takes significant additional volunteer time to cross-reference the Council list with the Scoutbook list before you can assign MBC's in your Unit. MBC Validation will save the volunteers these extra steps.

Having the ability to see the District and Council calendars side-by-side for planning Units' events is another Volunteer-serving feature that the Council simply needs to validate that feed as being authentic. This serves the Council in no other way and does not draw in any professionals to be among the Users of Scoutbook.

A simple ability to send communications to those Users that are already Scoutbook Users (virtually all of which are volunteers) is the other "Council Tool" in the set. There are only 3 allowed Admin's for each Council. There is absolutely nothing that these "professionals" can utilize Scoutbook for other than to serve the Volunteers as noted above. With 280+ Councils, there could be just over 800 of these professionals over nearly 1,000,000 Scoutbook Users. (Many Councils will pick volunteers among these Council Admins.) So, it is an important assessment that Scoutbook serve the volunteers that keep Scouting going. With some additional help from the Councils, the efforts of these great volunteers will be further enhanced.

One thing I haven't seen asked about the Meritbadge Counaelor update is: Will leaders that aren't listed on the council list for certain meritbadges still be able to sign off merit badges? I am the MB coordinator for our troop and I sign a lot of meritbadge stuff off when they prove it has been done. Also sign off on the summer camp badges and merit badge universities.

Mike if you are not an MBC you should not be signing anything for merit badges.

Only MBC's are allowed to sign off on Merit badge requirements for the merit badges they have been approved for.

MIke, do your simply mean recording a merit badge in Scoutbook once it's been signed off on by a Merit Badge Counselor? If so then yes, leaders will still be able record a properly completed merit badge. As Tom says, only council approved merit badge counselors can approve that a merit badge has been completed.

My council, district, and pack have all been approved and I am approved as the lion guide. I do not have access to add new lions to my profile is this a glitch or is it still not fully setup

Lions is set up for all units in councils thay have been approved for the Lion Pilot. If you can't create a Lion den you might want to email scoutbook.support@scouting.org for assistance.

Matthew, I believe you may need to add the Lion den before you can add the Lions, and you likely have to be a pack admin to do that. I'd suggest a post in the using Scoutbook forum for additional assistance.

http://scoutingnewsroom.org/blog/bsa-names-new-chief-technology-officer/?tr=y&auid=16857170

Maybe this is a dumb question and maybe our troop is doing it wrong or something but I was told Scoutbook is not the official source of Ranks and Merit Badges. We have to do some export or manually enter stuff in the IA site? Why can't we just use scoutbook for the source of truth?

Bill, that is huge! Looking forward to that.

When are you going to allow the Cub Scout Adventure cards to be printed from Scoutbook like the old Sports and Academics loops? This is a desperately needed function that PackMaster added almost immediately last year. We've had the new program for over a year and still have to hand write every card--sometimes over 80 a month. You had this listed for implementation nine months ago. Update please!

@Tim Bradford, there are literally hundreds of pages of requests for improvements to the report builder. Last I looked (a year ago at the Cub level), there were over a hundred. The same for calendar updates (e.g., recurring events, weather provided by ZIP code of event rather than unit, pack committee calendar, etc). For report builder, the biggest thing was the lack of ability to drill down a report for individual adventure requirements. They fixed this about 2 weeks before the end of the year, even though it was desperately needed a few months earlier during the mass advancement hysteria of late January to early May.

At the beginning of the year, our attention returns to the payment log, which was a FANTASTIC idea but quite poorly implemented. Our pack treasurer can't bulk add debits (like dues) or anything. We have about 50 Scouts. I won't ask her to add lines to every Scout's page. We look at the calendar inadequacies with renewed fervor. We look at the lack of Paypal processing for pack finances and charges. We look at TroopTrack and other packages that do these things better. We still WANT to love Scoutbook after so much frustration. Everything important to us is "coming" or "in a few weeks" or "stay tuned."

Bob; if you are increasing security, can I please recommend that you enable 2-factor authentication? Properly configured 2FA is a lot more secure than a simple user ID/password system. As a web/phone app, 2FA seems to be a no-brainer.

Has the merit badge counselor verification thing actually been an issue to anyone? Hundreds of pages of complaints about the Report Builder, but I can't find any fretting over an unapproved merit badge counselor bringing a troop to its collective knees. I fail to understand your priorities, and am pretty seriously considering abandoning Scoutbook when our subscription expires. How is it that other programs already have in place things Scoutbook seems to refuse to address?

@Frank Sharing the actual, registered and approved MBC list in a secure, reliable way, has been a desire of councils for as long as I have been involved with advancement at a district level. Also creating a way to electronically approve MBs in a way that councils would embrace has been a desire of troops for a long time. So, yes, it is important.

In thinking about the issue of reports and my troop/pack can not possibly survive without these reports let's think back to 1910 to say 1980... how in the world did units function then. We have become dependent upon electronic information but yet forbid the scouts from having electronic gadgets. How could I have ever made any rank without some printed BoR report. Think about it for just a few moments.

Any word on whether Lone Scouts will be able to enter their information correctly. Bob mentioned a meeting a few weeks ago. Did anything come of it? If Lone Scouts can't enter their info in correctly all these updates related to the syncing of systems is worthless to us.

With many families having two working adults, the convenience of good reports can not be understated. Sure, there was no electronic reporting 20-30 years ago, but there were also far more 9-5 jobs where the work day stopped at 5. Volunteers are valuable to the organization. Facilitating our ability to do our volunteer work is a good thing. Honestly, with as much as has been mentioned about updating reporting, with as high as it is on the list of things that folks want to see improved, and the relative ease with which that can be implemented, why it has not been done yet is very curious to me. I can write a query to get what I want in minutes, even with crazy parent child relationships between tables. It would take me longer to reverse engineer the schema. Building web based results around that query, especially with much of the development tools common in the workplace nowadays, again, just a few minutes.

My pack is on scoutbook. We love it. My troop is on troopmaster. I have a hard sell trying to get them to switch primarily because of reporting. The folks do not want to give up the convenience these reports offer. We can speak about how it was back in the day, but I doubt most of the people saying that would give up their smartphones, forgo air conditioning, give up their internet, and go back to 3 channels on TV.

@Henryk Enhanced reporting will come. For now, ScoutBook offers instant access to everyone who has a computer or a smart phone or tablet to real time advancement status pretty much when ever they want and where ever they happen to be (not when someone happens to email a report.) That includes parents, leaders and Scouts.

Leaders can credit Scouts for achieving requirements in real time, as the requirements are accomplished, not days or weeks after the fact. Parents and Scouts can view the crediting in real time. That is, in itself, pretty impressive albeit a different paradigm from a central person entering advancement and emailing reports.

Different tools right now have different advantages. Units choose what works best for them.

@Henryk ... I'm with you on this. 20 or 30 years ago, units had paper ledgers and records.

Our troop is slowly moving to scoutbook, but right now the only useful feature is showing accurate ScoutNet data and the Individual Advancement Report. We use that individual advancement report all the time. To view rank progress, we never click into each rank. That's just too clunky during a one-on-one discussion. Rather that one PDF report is a great powerful feature. Now that I know how to kick off many individual advancement reports into one PDF ... wow. great feature. The only negative is that I have scouts from three troops listed and it's really really hard to get just the 30 or 40 scouts from a single troop. ARGH.

In the great functional sense of the individual advancement report, we need functional reports for the calendar, expense logs, camping logs, service logs, etc. Until those reports are there, those "features" won't be seriously used.

We're eagerly waiting for the rest of the features to mature.

I just love how people just assume internet access, smart phone ownership, and cell coverage is universal. Sorry people, but it's not. Having all this information only available on the internet with no useful way of getting it off alienates everyone who doesn't have reliable access. You can't update, view, or track squat if you don't have a signal.

Scoutbook has glaring deficiencies that we keep getting told will be "addressed later." I have little confidence "later" will ever come.

My assumption is anyone using or interested in using Scoutbook has internet access and probably a smartphone. I would assume those with limited or nonexistent internet would be more interested in optimizing more traditional means of advancement tracking.

I'm referring to scouts and their families, not necessarily the adult troop leadership. Although, the church we're chartered at acts like a cell jammer. Three steps into the building and my phone drops from 4 bars of 4G to 1 bar of 3G.

@Henryk, that's not necessarily a good assumption. There are a lot of folks (me included) who don't have smartphones and whose charter (or meeting place) doesn't offer wifi, or as Frank pointed out kills signal for anyone who [i]does[/i] have a smartphone. So, at those meeting places, there is no connectivity. There's no way for me to say to a parent who asks what their Scout needs to do next "Here's what John needs to finish for his Arrow of Light..." or better yet "Here, let me show you how to check this yourself..."

Personally, I'm perfectly happy with tracking things in an Excel spreadsheet, despite the facts that I have perfectly good 'net access at home and I'm a techie-guy. Frankly that's where things have gone for me via the chrome plugin due to the issues with functional summary reports). All that said, it's not my call (or even any individual parent's call) to make as to whether or not we're on Scoutbook, rather it's our unit leadership's call as a group. As a result, advancement tracking, ordering, and most other tasks are now online.

We have plenty of parents in my unit who don't have reliable home internet access or a smart phone due to their income levels, and have to go to the library or (if it's available) at work. The fact that the unit uses Scoutbook is near useless for them. It's tough making sure they are updated on upcoming events. I feel we shouldn't be saying "well those are the rare cases", but rather "those are the families we [i]really[/i] need to reach". Kicking reporting down the road because it seems superfluous to those with constant 'net availability seems like a failure to understand the nature of the problem (or the families for whom it is a problem). I think we all recognize not everything can be done at once, even with a commercially-funded operation (which Scoutbook clearly is not). I still believe that much of the frustration is related to the desire for some sort of priority list (or better yet the ability to read and provide feedback on such a list) on which the average user can rely. Not a hard deadline, just an explanation of what the priorities are, and ideally why. The 30000ft view, as it were. As much as the blog may have started there, it seems to keep sliding around.

(shrugs) everyone has a different perspective. My perspective is, the unit does not need an internet based app if they can not use it. If there are limitations in the membership to accessing the application, that gets worked around with good reporting, which I think was Franks implication, which I had misunderstood in reading his prior post, and revise my response to be in agreement with him :) . That is how my pack does it. My troop is not willing to take the plunge because of this lack of flexible reporting, and due to the nature of cubs vs boy scouts, I can understand this opinion (despite myself being willing to work around it until the reporting issue is resolved).

Our council decided to hold of on Lions this year. However, 8 units in our district have decided to pilot Lions. My unit is one of the pilots. At this time, scout book will not allow me to add a Lions den since our council is not a pilot. Is there a way unit can have Lions available?

By the national pilot requirements, your council must be participating in order for any units in that council to have Lions. Scoutbook only allows Lion dens in units whose council's are approved and participating in the pilot.

one thing that needs to be fixed for the lions is when editing the profile of a lion there is no K for kindergarten in the drop down. I did manually type it in there just not sure if when I did it messed things up.

I think that one was missed in testing. I'm leaving it blank for now, it really doesn't do anything functionally. It's just for reference, but I'm sure it will be fixed.

Listed as Lion's Coordinator; however, can't get the trained patch, even though have all Cub Scout Adult Leader required training. Any suggestions?

I see the lions awards listed in my report to be awarded but not in my purchase report. Is this a bug?

I remember when there was a Lion rank for the Cubs. Guess I have been out of touch with the new rank. Don't remember if my grandson went through it. He is now at Star and working on finding a Eagle project. Thanks for all of the great information.

Ok

We are new to the lions program, our council is going thru the pilot process now. I do not see Lions listed as an option to our den type and I am an scoutbook admin (I have been the one making sure it has been paid for). Is there something we need to do or is this more of a backend adjustment? I would really like my parents into using this app as a resource and will make emailing all of my parents easier.