Our Troop has a Permission Slip format we would like to keep using, instead of the one TT offers. Is there a way we can upload it and program to auto-fill like the one TT has?
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No, I’m afraid we don’t offer something like that at this time.
Thanks for asking!
You should add this to the Ideas section, since we are in the same boat.
LDS BSA troops do not use the BSA permission slip form since we use our own. I always have to manually upload an LDS Permission Slip attachment manually to every event so parents fill that out instead of the BSA one.
Jared, thank you for your comments. Assuming your unit is using Troop Track, what can you tell me about your experience? What do you like, what do you dislike?
Added to the IDEA section 1/3/17
To answer your question, @IowaFossil:
Like
- Customer service. I always feel like any question I have is taken seriously by the staff. And that’s before the community forum was launched this past year. That already puts it light years ahead of all other Troop management software.
- Not an official app. This might seem like a weird one, but the fact that they’re not the official software published by BSA (like Scoutbook) means they aren’t held back by some bureaucracy or red tape when it comes to new features. That means the app is updated regularly with items you actually want to see.
- Plenty of bells and whistles. It’s got everything that actually matters- automatically sending reminders, attachments, uploading documents for common use, tracking custom awards, etc. These little details make it all feel comprehensive and worthwhile.
- …and even some that we don’t have a use for (yet). A good example of this is a Troop website- we don’t have a use for one at the moment, but knowing that TroopTrack gives us the option to use it if desired is awesome. It’s features like that which can get our adults and youth excited because they get to do it themselves.
- Simple enough for parents or scouts to use. Because a lot of Scouting involves recordkeeping, there’s only so much you can do to make digging through records as painless as possible, and I’ve tried seven other programs and TroopTrack does it best, in my opinion. I love being able to give one parent permissions to edit some records without opening that can of worms for someone who may not know what they are doing.
Don’t like
- The mobile app is super out of date/minimalist. This actually isn’t a dealbreaker for me because I use an Android phone, so I access the mobile site instead. Some people clamor for these apps to be updated (a sign of the times, I guess, with everyone going mobile), but personally if I’m out camping and don’t have signal, I shouldn’t be on my phone anyway- I should be spending it with the youth instead and save the paperwork for home.
- Few community contributors. You’ll see a lot of the same people commenting over and over again on the forums. Not a bad thing, but I wish more of your average users were on the forums instead of just power users. That way you get better representation of the kinds of people that use the product. This is something TroopTrack doesn’t have control over, so they don’t lose points for this.
- Forums are used a lot for deciding new features, but users don’t know how to use the forums correctly. Again, not something TroopTrack has much control over, but the whole “like this post if you agree” system for gauging value for users isn’t very effective because people don’t know how to/ignore using it. A lot of good ideas get lost this way.
Everything else I could list is situational- individual bugs that I know are being worked on, for example. I have been super impressed with TroopTrack and so have our other adult leaders, which is why our Troop, Team, Crew and Pack all use it. TroopTrack has allowed us to spend less time doing paperwork and instead spend more time being servant-leaders for our youth in Scouting- that is the definition of money well spent.
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