With the full transition to Scoutbook Plus for advancement, the generated report formatting through the program does not align with the needs to import these efficiently into Trooptrack. Does anyone have any tips/tricks to make this easier on Advancement Chairs?
First suggestion is to do all advancement tracking in TT and then upload completions to SB+. Now I do understand that does not take care of the increasing number of MB counselors and entities that are directly entering MB’s into SB+. So far in our Troop those have been relatively small so we just manually enter them into TT when they come through as completed in SB+.
What would your ideal process look like? What is currently not working with the import, are you getting an error, do you end up with bad data, extra data, incomplete data? Are you only importing completions or are you importing partials?
Report generated by Scoutbook Plus has columns and rows flipped the other way. Additionally, first and last name are now in the same cell when the CSV file is created. Date field also includes the word Approved in the cell.
The Advancement Importer is setup to use a file from ScoutBook that is still accessable. scoutbook.scouting.org - Troop/Pack - Export/Backup - Advancement, that still gives you a CSV of all advancement data for all scouts on your roster and that is the file that the TT - Support - Spreadsheet Import/Export - Type of Import - Scoutbook Advancement uses. It will remain to be seen if SB+ will offer this specific export. For now this is still the process and still available.
Aaron,
When I’ve tried this in the past, I get so much extraneous info and extra columns and rows, that it doesn’t import to TroopTrack.
Wade
There was a problem with the importer for a while, that was fixed a couple weeks ago. If you have tried that recenlty and still have issues with the import please document the process, take screenshots, share the CSV file you are uploading and open a Support ticket via the form on the Support menu.
Aaron, the problem is not with the importer, it is the format of dd/mm/yyyy. It is not exported from Scoutbook in that format. And Excel does not have that as an option under Date format. I’ve tried creating a Custom format, using a Text format, etc. Every time I save the csv file, Excel keeps reverting it back to the m/dd/yyyy format. Honestly, I have extensive experience with Excel and am at a loss on this one.
Wade
(Attachment troop_3738_B__Ranks_091925.csv is missing)
Please verify this is the process you are following.
Login to scoutbook.scouting.org
Select Your Troop
Scroll down below the members and select Export/Backup
Select Advancement file troop_xxx_B__advancement.csv is downloaded
Login to TT
Select Support Menu
Spreadsheet Import/Export
Select Browse and select troop_XXX_B__advancement.csv file
Type of Import drop Down
Select Scoutbook Advancement
Select Submit
What do you get as output after selecting submit?
Previously I was specifying Types of Import as Rank. However, even when selecting Scoutbook Advancement, it isn’t uploading the information. It is giving me the following error message, which is one I haven’t seen before.
Wade
I redownloaded from Scoutbook and now I’m getting a completely different error message. Same one for hundreds of lines.
Wade
This needs to be sent over to Support as a ticket, take these screenshots and the original CSV from SB and open a Support ticket. Perhaps BSA changed the report but this was the one that the importer was originally setup to injest. Going forward as BSA continues to move things to SB+ we will need to see what exportable reports there will be and then ask TT to update the importer.
I just did a bunch of testing, I exported the CSV from TT Merit Badges and Ranks on the importer page. The date format of the exported file is YYYY-MM-DD, I manually changed the data to a test user and imported both MB and Rank using the YYY-MM-DD date format and the import was sucessful. I also changed it to DD-MM-YYYY manually as the importer instructions specify and that worked as well.
I exported from SB, manually removed all data and created a MB import for my test user using the date format that comes out of SB MM/DD/YYY, that worked with no issues. I updated the file with the MM-DD-YYYY and got the same malformed error you got. The SB importer is expecting the MM/DD/YYYY format that comes out of SB with the slashes not dashes.
Are you modifying the CSV file that you download from SB?
Thanks, Aaron. For both the rank and merit badge importers, is was specifying in direction that dates needed to be in DD/mm/yyyy format. So I was following that approach, but it sounds like it is different from this one. You may want to clarify directions on the Help section
Wade
I did some further testing and the MB importer does allow the slash as a date delimiter and allowed the import in format YYYY/MM/DD as exported from TT as well as DD/MM/YYYY as is specified in the help guide. I would assume the same would be true of the Rank and all other importers except the SB Importer that clearly needs the specific slash as the delimiter for date entries.
Unfortunately there is no current export from SB+ that will directly import into TT. The only options are to export from SB+ and edit the file to conform to the TT Rank or MB importers, or export from SB and import using the TT SB Advancements importer. You could remove all of the old data from the SB importer that is all ready in TT and only import the newly changed data but again that is editing the CSV file.
Aaron,
This partially worked. I think I know the sticking point. Scouts setup in TroopTrack have all of the rank versions as 2016. In the import spreadsheet, there are quite of few rank years listed as the 2022 version. As an example, one scout who has completed Star (2016 version) in Scoutbook has not been updated in TroopTrack because First Class wouldn’t update. His First Class in Scoutbook is 2022 version as compared to 2016 in TroopTrack. An older scout who has all ranks listed as 2016 in both places appears to fully updated and aligned between the two.
Wade
I just ran a test with dummy scout and everything defaults to the 2016 version when a new one is added in TroopTrack
Wade
Got it, at this point the current state of TT Ranks does not align with BSA Ranks and so the import will not work properly unless you change the version year in the SB CSV file before importing into TT. BSA has made so many changes recently and they do not communicate these out to 3rd parties like TT. I can get this over to the TT Staff to try and align the TT information with the SB information.
What is the reason you are attempting to import this data? Will this be ongoing or is this a one time need?
That would be great if we could realign with Scoutbook rank year. Our troop families are primarily in TroopTrack. Merit badges completed at summer camp or with individual counselors are recorded via Scoutbook. Our Advancement Chair has also recorded rank advancement there. So we need to flexibility and ease to accurately import.
Wade
I would definitely suggest you change the process with your Advancement Chair to only record Advancement in TT and then upload to SB+.
I hope that as the SB+ transition continues it will give us better reports and more control over those reports to be able to get an export or craft a custom export that will be useful to import Summer Camp and Counselor recorded MBs from SB+ into TT. I was hopeful with the latest reports that you can select by date however I am not sure they give enough data to be able to perform a consistent and reliable import, as you noticed the name first and last is all in one field rather than seperate and there is no option to add the BSA ID. Hopefully that will change and it will be easier for those larger troops that have large numbers of MBs being recorded directly in SB+.
I am curious, outside of the large number after summer camp for the rest of the year about how many MB’s are recorded directly into SB+ for your scouts?
Hi Aaron - I don’t think it is practical to only go one way. We use TroopTrack to keep track of scout progress and, especially for merit badges, we need to be able to import from SB for counselors that aren’t in our troop (for example, merit badge midway and summer camp.)