There are several challenges we are having with Troop Track email that I am hoping you can help with:
We can’t tell who an email was sent to (as the receiver of the email)
We can’t be sure who we are replying to as the from address isn’t always the sender (sometimes it’s TroopTrack) and we don’t know if reply to all was checked in TroopTrack when the email was created.
If you click “Send Replies to all original recipients” and you are NOT in the recipient list, you don’t get any replies! For example, if I send an email to Bob and Joe and check that box, I will not get the responses unless I add my name to the list of recipients. This causes emails to basically disappear because when Bob responds, it only goes to Joe, and not me. Bob thinks it went to me, but I am in the dark on it.
. This stems from BSA Youth Protection rule that digital communication (TroopTrack) always automatically CC’s a parent, which isn’t necessarily true. If someone sends an email from TroopTrack and leaves the default setting of “Send Replies to just me” all the replies go ONLY to the person sending the email, a parent is NOT cc’d.
a. Also, in this case the email goes directly to recipient without going through the TroopTrack server, so the TroopTrack “Recent Messages” has no record of it.
This is expected behavior and could be a privacy issue for some.
As I have seen and tested the only time you will see a Reply-To using a trooptrack.com address is when the Reply to all Original original recipients is checked, otherwise it will show the person who sent the message, in the Reply-To. The only other difference to this I have seen is the Newsletter.
I did not experience this in my testing. I was not an original recipient but when sending to two others when they responded I did get the message. Perhaps there are some other settings at play here but unsure what might cause a difference like that.
Yes, that is true. Other than only using replies to all I am not sure how TT could do anything about this given that the messages at that point are just going from one person directly to another using their e-mail systems.
Thanks for the responses Aaron here, is some feedback on them:
This should be an option, just like BCC in ‘real’ email. The fact that we can’t see who it was sent to is problematic, for example, someone sends a question, I don’t know if they sent it just to me, or a just including me to keep me in the loop, or it was sent to a list of people. Scouts often don’t put the salutation (so I know who it was to) so I can’t tell who all the email went to.
a. I am going to play devil’s advocate on the privacy issue. If reply to all is enabled within TroopTrack, I (as layperson) don’t know that, or who all I am replying to, which is also a potential privacy concern.
b. This is especially challanging from the perspective of replying in general. There is no way for me to know if I am replying to just one person (the originator), or the group.
I see what you are saying. So if Reply to all original recipients is checked how would I, as a recipient, know who I am responding to? On the example I am looking at it says message_p5llVvFYdbx0TTBDMuxM_Q@trooptrack.com. Until know I didn’t know how that worked, so I didn’t know that indicated it was going to a group as compared to single person.
a. I would have assumed that all troop track initiated emails are routed through the troop track server and then deciminated to the recipients. The recent messages functionality gives me that impression, which would be a handy feature for keeping tabs on what the boys are up to. Having it do this would also allow troop track to always CC the parents.
I will have to retest that. I am confident in the past that was an issue, but perhaps it was fixed and I was not aware.
See my 2a on this response for one idea on how it could work. Another option to to treat it more like traditional email, where the parent is in the To: field or the CC: field so that reply to all CCes them.
For your 4th concern of having an email sent you can click on the gear icon, “edit Troop settings” and then go to “TroopTrack settings” and “basic email settings”. There you can click on “copy parents on all scout emails”. That way when a scout gets sent an email the parent will get an email as well.
If it’s going outside of the TroopTrack email server then, the best thing to do is to check the bubble of “send replies to all recipients”. This will then allow the messages to be sent/recorded in TroopTrack making sure that rule is being followed.
I have a question about the parent always being notified. My daughter logged in as her user account, and used Achieve > Record Individual Progress to mark some badgework as complete. Her badgework was approved by a leader, and my daughter received an email message informing her of that, but I didn’t receive it.
I would have assumed that I would receive a copy of that email. Can you make it so that the parent receives that email, too?
I just tested this out on our test Troop and I wasn’t able to re-create that issue. For me, after I approved Tyler Junior’s stuff, I got an email letting me know that it was approved for him.
Tyler Jr’s email is different from my email, but we have the setting of “copy parents on all scout emails” turned on.
I just tried this again. My daughter logged in as her account to enter badgework, and I logged in as my account and approved it. She received a confirmation email but I did not.
We do have the “copy parents on all email” selected:
Any suggestions for what we should do differently? I think it is important that parents get copies of these email messages.
I just realized that Tyler Jr’s email is my personal email, which did receive the email but my work email (which is the one for my TT account) didn’t receive an email.
I apologize for the confusion! I’m going to get this fix over to the tech team so they can make sure confirmation emails go to the parents too when that setting is enabled.
The status is indicated as “200” (instead of “Approved”?)
The time/ date stamp is really off. I received this on 3/16 at 10:09pm, but the date stamp is 3/17 at 2:09am. I have seen incorrect time stamps elsewhere in TT. Is there a place I can update our time zone preference?
I can get that issue over to the tech team as it should say “approved” and not “200”.
Also you can update your time zone by clicking on the gear icon, “edit troop settings”, and under Troop info there’s the place for your time zone. Is y’alls already the correct time zone?
This issue has been fixed by the tech team. Now when getting a requirement approved/rejected the correct response is sent with the timezone of the Troop.
Is there a way to cause “send replies to all recipients” to be the default option when a scout is on the email list? This way any replies won’t be directly to the scout, but always thru TroopTrack, and thus, always copied to the parents…
