First of all, thank you using the Community. I tagged each of you because at one point or another, you had an idea or +1 on an idea about Sign Up Sheets. I’m trying to bring that all together now and I need your help.
Before we proceed with development on new sign up features, I would like to hear more from you guys. Describe how you would like it to work. Friendly debate on features is welcome.
Thank you all for participating and helping to make TroopTrack a better place!
I don’t want to get in a passionate debate on just what the ideal signup sheet or event planning method is. However I do think that there would be a lot of positive response if you added an automatic email notification feature that was sent to the event planner every time someone replied to a signup or survey.
I am a good example. I was the adult planner of our annual “new scout” campout in March, and I am leading summer camp in June. Both are very big events, and both will have at least 40 attendees.
I have not used Troop Track yet, since we are brand new customers that haven’t even transferred all our troop information to your site. So I used Signup Genius in March, to coordinate a lot of things, and am using the Google Forms survey for summer camp. Both have their pros and cons, but primarily were great tools. And most importantly, both automatically sent me an email whenever someone replied or even updated their answer. That is all that we are suggesting.
In fact I recommend that you perhaps create a “beta” survey on Google Forms, pass it around the office and ask your coworkers to answer a handful of questions. You will like the automated notification system. Heck Google Forms even lets you input the answers into a spreadsheet–a very nice feature.
Thank you for these ideas! I will have to try the Google Forms survey.
I spoke with one of my coworkers about the idea and he had a good point about certain troops with hundreds of scouts and them probably not wanting to get an email for each thing (it would quickly become unmanageable). That being said, if we implemented your suggested feature, we would likely need to include an opt out button for the email notifications.
Another thought we had was to create a new notifications area within TroopTrack that could keep track of, and alert you to each new signup. This could also potentially be used to notify people of expired trainings, but that’s a different topic.
I’m looking forward to hearing more from our community about your idea and other thoughts on the Sign Up Sheets.
The sign up sheet being emailed AFTER we have added all the items needed. We’ve actually had people click on the link before we finished adding all the items to the sign up sheet. (Or is that a bug?)
The ability to print the sign up sheet with page breaks or save off in a pdf.
Allow certain members to see what has been/not been signed up for. For instance, our Flag Ceremony had a Youth Coordinator. But she didn’t have the ability to see the sign up sheet b/c I (the VC/TT manager) created it. If I could assign who could see/access/change the sign up sheet that would make it easier for 2-3 people to work on it.
Those assigned to the sign up sheet to see who has signed up for what. Sometimes, girls are more apt to sign up and stretch themselves if they can see a friend is already signed up to help.
An blank text box that would allow users to fill in the blank on a generic task. If we need 5 desserts, they could use the text box to fill in what they’d bring. The ability to include or not include the text boxes would be lovely. (But this really is a bells & whistles feature to be able to turn that off and on. )
Being able to divide the sign up sheet into categories:
Service Opportunities:
* Set Up Chairs
* Food Layout
* Decorating
Food Needed
* Desserts
* Salads
* Drinks
Email those who have signed up as well as emailing those who have not signed up. (sort of like the calendar events. I can email those who have RSVP’d a certain way or not RSVP’d at all.)
Those are all I can think of for now. But I may come back and add more when my brain is functioning a little more.
I’ve been away at camp and am just now seeing this!
I’d LOVE for leaders to be able to sign up others for things. In my troop the parents have troop “jobs” they can sign up for. Some keep the same jobs year after year, so it would make more sense that I just go in and add them and let others sign up for the jobs that aren’t taken for the year, rather than leaving it open for someone else to take.
I’d also like the option to MANUALLY email the list out to everyone (same with checklists). As it stands now, every time a sign up sheet or checklist is saved, it sends out an email.
Also going with that, if we do multiple sign up sheets in a day, maybe there could be a “digest” option where we can include them all in one email so the parents aren’t getting a ton of emails.
A “digest” option would be AWESOME!!! Maybe add that feature to the newsletter with an option to send all those links to sign up sheets and checklists once a week?
The idea for the “jobs” list is spectacular as well. We won’t process our girls registration until after the parents commit to jobs for the year. There are parents in our troop that are the same, they serve in the same job, year after year. Creating a sign up sheet that would allow us to have parents sign up for jobs allows us time to interview them and approve their choice.
The workflow for tasks just seems to be off as currently implemented. As SRUEDU noted, it would work better to create the sign-up sheet and each of the items before sending any emails.
A change to the number of action items / notifications in a users’ “Your Assignments” counter is needed too. When a new checklist is created now, invited users get an email and “Your Assignments” shows one item. If they sign up, their assignment list goes to two - one for the original checklist invitation (which they accepted) and another for the item they’re supposed to bring. This is counterintuitive. I would suggest the original invite should be removed (they did it) leaving the actual item in their list until it’s been completed.
I would also support the addition of allowing anyone to see the outstanding items, who’s signed up for them, etc. We use Survey Monkey at work for sign ups and everyone can see everything and it’s not a big deal.
A notifications area was also mentioned and would be a great addition. TroopTrack used to display an alarm bell in the header , but this hasn’t worked since then Community went live. TroopTrack should bring this back, with a click to take them to a page with all action items.
I posed this request prior to the Community going live, so it may already be in the pipeline, but just in case… I would love to have signup sheets with an automatic reminder feature. For example, we used to use Shutterfly to have parents sign up to bring snacks to troop meetings. We set the system to remind parents a certain number of days prior to the meeting. That feature would be very handy. I want to add that I’m a new Girl Scout TroopTrack user and I love it so far! Thank you for this product.
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, but this hasn’t worked since then Community went live. TroopTrack should bring this back, with a click to take them to a page with all action items.
