Advancement Sync

For us, the sync process was incredibly easy and error free. You guys are doing an amazing job.

I second that! Hurrah for modernization and reducing administration!

First line: "We are currently rolling out the Scoutbook Advancement Record Sync with ScoutNet to troops."

By use of the word "Troops", should I assume rollout is only targeting traditional Boy Scouts units, and not Cub Scout Packs yet?

Jason Wilburn
We are still in Quality Assurance testing for the Pack rollout. It will be a few weeks before we begin rollout with the packs.
Here are some things you can do to prepare your unit to be ready for the sync:

We are a few weeks away from rolling out packs. However there is lots you can do now. Please follow these instructions:

1) Make sure all Scouts on the roster are registered in the unit and have their current BSA Member ID in their profile. A unit key 3 member (Unit Leader, Chartered Organization Representative or unit Committee Chair) can go to Member Manager at http://my.scouting.org and download a unit roster which has the member ID and registered name for each Scout. NOTE: For the membership ID to be accepted by Scoutbook, the Scout's First Name or Last Name must be exactly as it appears in the first name or last name field in your council's system. If you have problems, please contact your council registrar and ask them which name is in which field.

2) Make sure there are no duplicate Scouts on your roster in Scoutbook.

3) The person who will be setting your unit up for the sync must be: a unit key 3 member (Unit Leader, Chartered Organization Representative or unit Committee Chair.) and a Scoutbook Unit Admin. They will need to verify their My.ScoutingTools login credentials so they should check that they can log in at http://my.scouting.org and they are listed as a key 3 member.

4) Make sure there are at least 3 Scoutbook unit admins in your unit, and that they have logged into Scoutbook at least once.

Our Troop activation was extremely simple & error free!

Thank you!

Thanks for all of your hard work!

Yippie!! I cannot wait until the Cub Scout Packs are included in this!! Great job! Please keep us updated with the developments! As committee Chair, Advancement chair and Scoutbook go-to; this will make volunteer life a bit easier!

Following up with Susan's comment. I would REALLY appreciate any updates regarding the deployment to the cub scout packs. Living outside the US and making sure all thing are properly accounted for has been challenging...this upgrade to Scoutbook would be very, very helpful to me and my pack! =D

WORKED FINE FOR ME

Thank you for this! It is going to make my life so much easier.

Question. You say make sure all Scouts are in the BSA register and have a BSA # entered into Scoutbook. What happens if they aren't and do not have a BSA number yet? we have a number of new Scouts who do not have a BSA number yet as they are still being processed.

Will this new sync also update scoutbook to match current training and advancement? For example there are courses still listed as requiered in scoutbook that you can not take anymore. Also the list of merrit badges in Scoutbook do not lign up with what is on my.scouting.org. Computers is a good example.

I currently use scout book. If I sync with scoutnet will all of my scouts currently on there be adjusted (meaning lose the achievements that I already have in) or will only my new scouts be added? Thanks

Tom,

In order to enable sync, all approved Scouts in Scoutbook must have a BSA# in their profile and be on your BSA roster. For Scouts that do not yet have a BSA# you can simply go to their page, click Membership then their current active membership. Remove the Approved check (do not enter an end date) and click update. After you complete activation of sync, you can re-approve those Scouts. Once you have a BSA # in their profiles, you can enable them for sync with a link that will be on their pages.

Michael,

Scoutbook contains both current and historical advancement data. The Computes MB was retired but is still listed in Scoutbook since some Scouts may have earned it before it was retired. If you have further questions, please ask in the forums where we are more likely to see them quickly.

Dyana, importing your unit roster via a ScoutNET roster import and the advancement sync are two separate things. But either way, you will not lose advancements that are currently in Scoutbook.

Even though I am the committee chair, I was not a troop admin. I am now, but didn't get the notice. Is there a work around for me?

Judd, follow the instructions posted by Bill N here: https://www.scoutbook.com/mobile/forums/using-scoutbook/99892/getting-ready-for-the-advancement-sync/

Watch the video, too.

This is great news, however, when do initial packs get the functionality back? We had it for a minute then it was ripped away!

Mike, there are still some bugs on the Cub Scout side that need to be fixed before it is broadly rolled out. The rollout for packs will restart as soon as we are comfortable they have been fixed.

Understood. Hopefully the same bugs don't exist on the troop side. I'll be happy to test when you are ready to move forward with packs again.

No, the same bugs do not exist on the troop side. They are unique to the Cub Scout program.

Worked great! Next CoH should be a breeze!

Thanks for all your hard work on making things easier.

After performing the Advancement Sync, we had some newly registered scouts come through a few days later. When I click on each of these scouts, I see a message that says, "[NAME] is not setup for BSA advancement sync. Click here to activate." [NAME] would have each scout's first name.

I would click to activate but then I get a popup error message saying:

www.scoutbook.com says:
Advancement sync activation failed for the following reason(s):
Scout was not found on official BSA unit roster.

The new scouts show up correctly in Internet Advancement. Is this something that will rectify itself eventually or is there something else I need to do? Thank you.

Jim, yes, there are multiple BSA systems that need to populate with the roster. So, scoutnet/Internet Advancement is just the first one. When you see it show up in Member Manager on my.scouting.org, you can expect to be able to activate sync for these Scouts.

We currently have Advancement Sycn setup for our troop. I can no longer export an advancement file to upload to the old BSA advancement site so I expect the sync to be working. However, the old BSA advancement site does not have any of the advancement records that I entered into Scoutbook a few days ago. Our local scout office will not let us purchase any awards until the records are in the BSA advancement site. I really don't want to enter all these records manually in the BSA advancement.

Cory,
Please send an email with your contact information to: scoutbooksync@gmail.com I would like to ask you some questions about your issue.

All the Scout Shops have been notified to accept the unit advancement report from Scoutbook for sync'd units.
If they have any questions they can also send an email to scoutbooksync@gmail.com or scoutbook.support@scouting.org or contact member care.

Thanks, Bill, information is sent.

Will I be able to see the sync'ed information in scoutnet? I updated on Sunday a scout that complete two Awards Fire'm Chit and Totin' Chip and they are not showing scoutnet for that scout?

Doug,

Units do not have direct access to ScoutNET. Some awards synced via Scoutbook will not appear in Internet Advancement which shows units a subset of what is in ScoutNET. Once enabled for Sync, Scoutbook is the official BSA record for those Scouts.

Doug,
When you say you are checking 'ScoutNet' do you mean Internet Advancement? If so, you need to go to the beginning of Internet Advancement (Start Over if you are on the page listing the Scouts) and Load Roster again. IA has to pull the data from ScoutNet to show it to you. It can take a day or so for the data from Scoutbook to appear. Realize that Internet Advancement doesn't show all the data that is stored in Scoutbook (like advanced palms) even though that data will have been recorded in ScoutNet by the sync.

If you continue to have questions, feel free to send an email to Scoutbooksync@gmail.com with your contact information and a good time to call.

Is there a report that can be sent to administrators that outlines the changes made during the initial sync? I'd be interested to see where the difference was between scoutnet and scoutbook and how they were resolved. In preparing Eagle paperwork we've found that we have had several merit badge cards that were signed by our district but not recorded in scoutnet. I've attempted to fix this in scoutbook over the last year. If they were in scoutbook but not in scoutnet I'd like to know if they were kept during the sync.

Steve,

What you can do is use Export/Backup (if you are a unit admin) and select Advancement before activating sync. This will dump all of the advancement data for your unit that is in Scoutbook. At least 24 hours after you activate sync, do another Export/Backup of Advancement. Compare the two files. The differences will show you what changed.

Steve, if the MB is in Scoutbook but not Scoutnet prior to the enabling sync, sync will add it to Scoutnet.

Can't wait to see this in action!!!

My biggest problem with advancement is some of my Cubs are listed in different versions of the tracks. So when a den leader goes to credit all the boys some of them don't appear. Seems like we have checked the box to move them to the newest adventures. Any suggestions?

Michael,

Please post in the Using Scoutbook forum where we can better assist you.

How are the preparations going for activating the sync for packs?

I'm wondering if there is an announcement for packs yet?

Megan, not yet.

We will be inviting Packs to the advancement sync very soon. Please read the first post in this forum thread about what to do to get ready: http://bit.ly/advsync

Quick question about this. I have all the checkboxes set now to activate advancement in Scoutbook. So I know they can enter advancement in Scoutbook and it will sync back to Scoutnet. However, can this still be entered in Scoutnet if needed right now, and sync back to Scoutbook as well? Can they both still be used once you active this?

Thanks, James

James - The process behind sync is that a unit would not need to enter items in Internet Advancement.

When are you rolling out Scoutbook Advancement Record Sync for cub scout packs? I have a red banner that informs me it will be effective January 1st, 2018 but I can't get it to work.

We transitioned over to the new Scoutbook sync. Now when I log into Internet advancement there's nothing listed. No scouts and an error message: "error processing your report, please try back later." Any ideas or should I not be worried about this? Thanks, Scott

I am with a scout pack and the link is still not working. What should we do

Is there anyway to enter advancements into Scoutbook before BSA gives a new Scout a BSA ID?
Or do we have to wait for the ID?
Keeps error out on us and don’t really want to write out his advancements then enter when he gets an ID

Daniel, which link is not working? I'd suggest posting your questions in the forums where they get more visibility.

Ryan, yes, for those scouts who do not have sync activated, you can still enter their completions, but don't check the leader approved box when you do. Once you activate the sync for that scout, you'll be able to approve those completions in the needs approval report.

That suggestion is not really helpful as it defeats other useful aspects of scoutbook such as the "needs purchasing report". Yes you can enter the advancement but if recharter is "in process" or new scouts are being processed there won't be any advancement for those new scouts. Basically the scout gets the award in scoutbook but it gets missed for ordering. 1 step forward and 3 steps back. When making these changes BSA needs to consider the scouts and volunteers needs first. This "upgrade" just made a bunch more work for the already overloaded volunteers.

Very good instructions, very well setup.. it took only minutes for me.
I had a couple of IT issues not related to sync, got immediate attention and was resolved.
Thanks for the amazing work !
Ravi

Wow, I am impressed with this system! Great that Pack 5 is moving forward quickly to implement its use. I got a chance to look over the records in the Pack and love the detail. I hope Troop 5 Corning follows and also my grandson's Troop 154 in Red Bluff where I am an ASM.
I need to study the database. Will this supplant the advancement records or will is run concurrently? Will the Cubs and Scouts and their parents have access to their records?

I accidentally subscribed to this blog. How do I unsubscribe? The button is missing.

In verifying my AOL Scout's advancement records in Scoutnet, I noticed that one of my Scouts records don't match that of Scoutbook. We have successfully synched our scouts and advancement. All advancement was approved properly. I can't seem to figure out why the synch isn't working automatically. Is there a way to manually kick it off or see an error report.

I've confirmed the Member ID so the only data element I can't confirm as matching is birthdate, but since those fields in the profile are greyed out (as the profile has successfully synched), I don't think there is a mismatch.

Help, Please... they are going to register as Boy Scouts soon.