Make database of camping places/times from online tour applications 

 In Progress

This idea is from a volunteer in Loomis, CA.

Now that BSA is collecting tour applications online, why not let units see when and where other units are going camping? Units that go for the first time to a certain place outside of the normal time of the year could have a really bad experience. It would be helpful to see when everyone else goes.

One step further would be to set up a blind email system so later units could contact earlier units and ask specific questions. Along this same line it would be nice if the unit could write a review about the trip after they come home.

Let me access recharter roster changes before March implementation 

 In Progress

My council does all recharters starting Jan 1, but they don't get implemented until March 1. Before handing over the paper charters I'm going through a district membership report (excel spreadsheet) of all my adults blacking out dropped adults, typing in new adults, and changing positions and adding email addresses. I'm doing this so that I can send emails to people to get trained in January and February. If I just hand over the paper charters to the registrar I would essentially just be totally blind for two months until the charters are implemented. Is there a better way to do this? Could National make it so I could access my post-charter roster (with email addresses too please) before it's implemented? Please don't tell me to look in ScoutNET one unit/person at a time with not even a copy/paste feature. This would essentially require me to do the same thing I'm doing now, typing out each change by hand, very time consuming and tedious.

Birthday wishes from the Chief (or District/Council) 

 Completed

Lots of organizations send birthday wishes by email on your birthday. Why not the Boy Scouts? It would be a nice touch. It might make the National organization seem just a little more personable. And it would be a nice opportunity to thank volunteers for their service.

Click on the title of this post. I've attached a sample picture.

If National doesn't do this, this is really easy to do on the district level and it helps volunteers remember that people in the higher levels of Scouting actually care about them. Download the membership roster in ScoutNET. Open in Excel. Hilight the birthday column. Date->Text to columns. Delimited. Next. Check the "Other" box and type in "/". Next. Finish. Hilight the three columns. Format->Cells. Under Category select General. You now have columns for birth day, month, and year. Sort by month and day and now you have everyone in order by birthday for the year. You can now email birthday wishes yourself.

Unit Meeting Info Feed (XML, please?) 

Please allow us to access Unit Meeting Info by a URL Feed. XML would be nice.

For example:
http://scouting.org/xml/unitmeetings/[council#] will give information like:

*Note: please replace scare brackets below with angle brackets.

[council number='047' name='Golden Empire Council'][district number='011' name='Iron Horse']
   [unit type='troop' number='1']
      [meeting place='LDS Church' street='100 Main St' city='Sacramento' state='CA' zip='95821' time='7pm' /]
   [/unit]
[/district][/council]

Please make the URL extensible to add a district # and even a unit # to drill down to the information.

We already have ScoutNET designed to store this information. What's the point if nobody can access this information? It's meeting info that Councils are forced to then duplicate on their own webpages. Then when the unit's meeting info changes the DE has to change it in ScoutNET (no point currently in doing this) and then ask the webmaster to update it. This new idea would allow the DE to simply update the info in ScoutNET and then the change would be made across all systems that get meeting info from ScoutNET.

Councils could then make some really sweet (and up-to-date) unit maps using Google Maps.

Your zip code thingy at thescoutzone.org has major flaws for my district. Half the suburban city has zip 956** and the other half 957** so when a person puts in 95661 they get all of the Sacramento metropolitan area, but they don't get across the street in their own city. Plus the results offer little in the way of useful information (no address or time, but just unit numbers for a good portion of California?) and it's all textual. Why all text and no map? Please give us the requested feature and we can make our own maps with even more valuable features that National just doesn't have the time/resources/innovation to make. Example, make a "get directions to unit" link for each unit on the map.

See http://ironhorsebsa.org/councilmap to see some of these ideas in action, just it's not hooked up to the info in ScoutNET so only the Iron Horse district has much of anything. There's even a YouTube video in the bubble of one of the packs. And the DE's email address is in every bubble. And a Council logo that is clickable to the website. And a date when last updated.

Get rid of Council Flash in MyBSA (The pro one that is) 

 Completed

This Welcome to My BSA from 2005 is a waste of space.

..."This Council Flash window shows information that your council can post for other council employees using My BSA. It's a bulletin board for council news and is especially useful to employees who work away from the office..."

I don't think my Council has ever used this, especially for employees who work away from the office. We use email in the 21st century.

Other languages spoken in ScoutNET 

Some pros are asking for foreign language training. This is a waste of time and money in my opinion, I lived in Russia two years and now speak Russian.

Our volunteers are a huge untapped resource to help us get into other language populations. The adult app should allow a person to specify other languages they speak and ScoutNET should hold that information for us. Then we could contact a volunteer (perhaps in a neighboring district) to help us.

Of course we could always get out and meet our volunteers and get to know them. Half my council in California is LDS. Most of the men have served two-year missions all over the world. When you meet a volunteer ask if they speak another language. I asked a white guy this and it turned out he spoke Chinese.

Add email address to Trainings Not Completed report 

 Closed

I recently had 600 people needing various trainings in my district and training in two weeks. In order to email them their individual list of trainings needed I would have had to look up each of them in ScoutNET and write an email one at a time.

Luckily, I'm a little smarter than that. I found software on the Internet for $30 that merges the Training spreadsheet with columns from the membership roster spreadsheet (I needed email address) by matching the BSA ID# from both. This gave me a training spreadsheet with email address. By splitting the courses column into 3 columns and doing lots of search and replace I was able make a human-readable spreadsheet which I then did mail merge and sent each individual the list of trainings they needed by email with the click of a button.

I've created a web application that merges the two spreadsheets for free and does all the search and replacing at http://ironhorsebsa.org/tools/training . Can't National improve ScoutNET to make it more usable with email by at least including the email address?

See my Facebook post in the BSA Professionals group at http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=7506061819&topic=7102 for more details

BSA Branding of Council websites 

 In Progress

Many council websites are poorly done. They use designs from the early 90s (when the worldwide web was just starting). Most of all, visitors to some sites can't even tell the site is a BSA site. Very poor branding. Council websites should scream Boy Scouts, with style of course.

I'm sure lots of DE's and volunteers have graphics talents to share.

Get rid of the scrolling marquee at the top of MyBSA 

 In Progress

This kind of web design is no longer used. It is annoying and half the time when I do try to read the announcement I can't because the first half is off the screen. At the very least keep it stationary. If you're hurting for space, make a dedicated box on the page for announcements of this type. Make short headlines that we can hover over (or click on) for more details.

Also, the welcome page says " Welcome back...." Could someone please code a proper non-breaking space? The problem is the ampersand is being translated into it's html entity code (&) which creates   thus breaking down not so gracefully.

Allow Pros to change their own ScoutNET/MyBSA Password 

 In Progress

Why can't I change my password? Seems like a no-brainer that I should be able to.

Electronic Applications/Payment 

 In Progress

Why not allow a paperless option for joining Scouting? The application would be sent by email to the committee chair, etc for approval. And I as DE would be notified that the app is in process, I would approve it, and the registrar would give final approval without having to retype anything. And money would be paid online as well. All along the way we could hide the applicant's social security number to protect even more from identity theft.

If a leader doesn't have email, I as the DE would see the jam and just call them myself to get their approval by phone and sign in their place, just like I can on paper apps.

If the parent or child signing up doesn't have Internet they could still do it the old fashioned paper way.

I don't know about other Councils but we have a room full of unlocked file cabinets full of years and years of paper apps. They have social security numbers on them and could easily be stolen. And how many people saw the social security number in between the applicant filling it out and me getting it? Not to mention it's a waste of space and a waste of trees. This would also solve another problem. Sometimes I don't get an application until 6 months after the applicant started the process. If I had been notified about the applicant I could have been aware and encouraged the process along and notified the person about upcoming trainings. This would also save the units on postage and me on gas taking them to Council.

I think especially for the Latter-day Saint units, the application process should have the ability to be started by other adult leaders like the Bishop of the ward who gives the calling.

After the application is completed the applicant should be redirected to fast start training and to mybsa to see their training record.