Scout tracking info

Is there a project int he works to add tracking information for cub scouts and boy scouts? There are a couple unofficial programs floating around out there, but nothing sponsored by the Church that includes both scout tracking and faith in god activities.

I'd love to see a simple, excel-like form added to the ward website to track all of this information, giving leaders and parents a single point of reference for this information. this is especially critical for cubs, where families complete the majority of activities - and synchronizing with leaders is more of an art than science.

cbuck wrote:Is there a project int he works to add tracking information for cub scouts and boy scouts? There are a couple unofficial programs floating around out there, but nothing sponsored by the Church that includes both scout tracking and faith in god activities.

I'd love to see a simple, excel-like form added to the ward website to track all of this information, giving leaders and parents a single point of reference for this information. this is especially critical for cubs, where families complete the majority of activities - and synchronizing with leaders is more of an art than science.

I do not believe that there are any official plans right now to support this. Not that we won't...just that we currently don't.

Tom

You really can't do much better than programs like Troopmaster that already include the youth awards. Spreadsheets aren't good at prompting you to enter the detail a good Scout program needs. Most often it's only the bare necessities that get posted.

Additionally, only the commercial programs can interface with the new online records systems at the council offices. With Troopmaster, by the way, you can post your records on a server to share with all the Scouters in your unit, as well as stake leadership. Our stake buys the program for each ward for this very purpose.

k0nod541 wrote:You really can't do much better than programs like Troopmaster that already include the youth awards. Spreadsheets aren't good at prompting you to enter the detail a good Scout program needs. Most often it's only the bare necessities that get posted.

Additionally, only the commercial programs can interface with the new online records systems at the council offices. With Troopmaster, by the way, you can post your records on a server to share with all the Scouters in your unit, as well as stake leadership. Our stake buys the program for each ward for this very purpose.

Note: The Church does not endorse any specific program. It is left up to the individual units and people to decide which solution (if any) they should use to track their scouting progress.

How about listing how you consider to be the base requirements for the package.
Do you want to limit the package to just scouts or do you want to include YW, Duty ot God, Adult Scout awards, Primary awards and other programs?

I'd like the program to cover things like trip permits, permission slips, scheduling, equipment checks, contact info, etc

I'm trying to build one but I keep running into roadblocks

oscar

Why does this functionality need to be sponsored by the Church? There are a few commercially available applications that support the DTG and FIG programs. I've listed the ones that I could find quickly here. Troopmaster/Packmaster and Scoutmate both offer FTP sites for data in addition to the PC based applications. All of these applications are also ScoutNet certified and that mean the ability to upload membership, recharter, and advancement data to the local council and the BSA. This is something that you really want to be able to do. It is also not something that would be cost-effective for the Church IT organization because of the US centric focus of the application.

Be leary of web-based applications because of the youth protection issues involved. Also, web policies differ slightly from council to council. Some councils may prohibit any web storage of youth data for safety reasons. I can't say that I disagree with that stance.

James Francisco
Committee Member, Troop 182 Grand Canyon Council

Applications that track 'Duty to God'
Troopmaster(http://www.troopmaster.com)
ScoutMate (http://www.kscgroup.com/scoutmate.htm)
ScoutSoft (http://www.scoutsoft.net/)

Applications that Track 'Faith in God'
PackMaster (http://www.troopmaster.com)
ScoutMate
ScoutSoft (Also tracks Achievement days and YW)

Web-based Access:
Troopmaster/PackMaster (FTP site: parents can be given read-only access)
Scoutmate (FTP site)

cbuck wrote:Is there a project in the works to add tracking information for cub scouts and boy scouts? There are a couple unofficial programs floating around out there, but nothing sponsored by the Church that includes both scout tracking and faith in god activities.

I'd love to see a simple, excel-like form added to the ward website to track all of this information, giving leaders and parents a single point of reference for this information. this is especially critical for cubs, where families complete the majority of activities - and synchronizing with leaders is more of an art than science.

Tracking software sounds great! Is there any Mac Scout Tracking Software?

When I was a varsity coach tracking software would have been great! But it would have been even better if our whole scout committee could have access to the records through some sort or web-based interface that they could log-in to or something similar to that.

Is there anything out there that has this sort of functionality? It looks as if the above listed solutions are client only with the possibility of FTP upload.

I think that Oscar is interested in developing an open source project for scouting. Yes, there are commercial products out there. This does not mean that there is not room for an open source "free" product. The Church has not endorsed any project at this time. Whether the Church does endorse a specific project or creates one on it's own is not something I have any information about.

Tom

As I've told others and as I have done myself, if you come up with a great idea, find an open source code manager (like SourceForge) create a prject and then invoote people from this form to join. The nice thing about Source Managers is that they keep track of who made what change and if there were conflicting changes made.

I am slowly working on a tracking program. It is setup to track a lot more than just scout advancement. Right now it is to early to setup a source repository or a formal project. If I can get to the 0.9 stage I'll be happy to share. The license I plan to use is GPL v3.

The base concern I have is to design for a kde on linux package, an apache based web package or one supporting both interfaces.

The base questions revolve around security.
With ssh + linux + kde I can build an app that is very difficult to crack.

Building a solid web app is a lot more than just building some dynamic html with some hooks into a database.

What web methods are need to defeat man in the middle, scripting attacks, etc.
Just using SSL is not enough for what I'm trying to setup.

Hopefully some of the web designers can suggest some solid security methods.
thanks
oscar

A questions for the web designers.
Since web transactions are basically stateless - What is the current preferred secure practice to pass information between web transactions? cookies, hidden fields, local storage into a database?


SSL will encrypt the data the last step. The in between step is the concern. Should I plan to seperate the web server from the database server?
Is the postgres encryption good enough or do I need additional paranoia steps to protect the data.
For a small app I'd prefer to keep everything on 1 machine. Once it scales up of course it will be time to split the web and db parts. About what size should that occur?

I don't know if this will ever work. It is just easier to ask the questions now rather than recode and redesign after the whoops.


thanks for the help
oscar

Thing with cookies is that they can be copied and another computer can "take over" a session. Now since you are using SSL that information is encrypted and using the standard 128-bit encyrption you are pretty secure. Seperate computers can be more secure in that the database server is locked behind a firewall that is inaccessable.

Now for a note, remember tom's post about not storing membership information on a server, even your own. I don't know how the policy would apply to the membership information that you have access to since technically you are downloading it to your own computer and running it for yourself. Of course if this doesn't affect the MLS or LUWS data then you are alright, from my understanding.

thedqs wrote:Now for a note, remember tom's post about not storing membership information on a server, even your own. I don't know how the policy would apply to the membership information that you have access to since technically you are downloading it to your own computer and running it for yourself. Of course if this doesn't affect the MLS or LUWS data then you are alright, from my understanding.

The policy currently only covers data that you download from LUWS or MLS. In other words do not take data that you have downloaded from the Church and then re-upload it to another 3rd party server. Obviously we provide the data for you to use but we ask that you not upload the data to another "shared" server. Basically you are under the obligation to keep the data secure. If you upload it to a third party, you lose your ability to keep it secure.

There currently is no policy about using web sites that ask for information to be entered in manually. Until a policy is formed, common sense and prudence should apply. I think what Oscar is asking for is help on how to ensure that the data people do input is kept very secure.

Tom

Standard practice is to usually have the web server and the database on separate machines, but this usually has more to do with performance, but can also be thought of as a security practice too.

Before I worried that much about architecting out separate servers, I would probably put some thought into where you are going to host this. If it is going to be a paid hosting service, they would probably have some recommendations or standards that they would want you to meet.

Honestly, and maybe I get stuck in architect mode too much, I am not really sure what you would be doing different if your database was on a separate box or not? What difference should it make to your code? I have had to revisit things going from a single box to a cluster, but that is a different issue.

I have a website that I run called eTrailToEagle.com. We provide Duty to God and Scout Tracking modules. It works well on Mac as long as you use Firefox as your browser. We are writing it in ASP.NET 2.0 using MS AJAX 1.0. The Ajax pages don't work well in the Safari browser yet.

Nathan Anderson
www.etrailtoeagle.com

Tomj wrote:Tracking software sounds great! Is there any Mac Scout Tracking Software?

When I was a varsity coach tracking software would have been great! But it would have been even better if our whole scout committee could have access to the records through some sort or web-based interface that they could log-in to or something similar to that.

Is there anything out there that has this sort of functionality? It looks as if the above listed solutions are client only with the possibility of FTP upload.

I have been my ward advancement tracker since March 2007. The only records that I was given were the pink copies of the advancement forms dating back to the 1970's and a brief troop history typed several years ago. I went through all of the pink forms and extracted data into an excel chart. However, it has holes. Apparently people other than the advancement tracker sometimes bought awards & those pink copies never made it into the file.

In May I gave the scout leaders a copy of each boy's new advancement record with a note attached that they contact me to provide missing data. No one has responded to date.

Getting folks to give me the completed advancement forms prior to the court of honor so I can buy the awards is hard enough. How do you get folks to contribute other info, such as leadership positions and participation in service projects, etc.? Or, do you just leave that to the scoutmasters to track? Also, how does an internet based tracking system protect the integrity of the data?

As for troop advancement software there is a comercial product that my old ward used was Troopmaster and it was very easy to keep track of advancements and what was missing from each boy.

Notice: Troopmaster is a commercial product and is not endorsed by the church and is only placed here as another option.

If you are looking for an official summary of advancement data, this site is available: https://scoutnet.scouting.org/iadv/UI/home/default.aspx It requires your unit ID, unit type, and unit number in order to create an account.

I'm not the advancement coordinator in my troop, but we have been using this to help make sure that the official records are up to date. This may help you piece together awards that were submitted but which you don't have a paper record for. However, the data for this site is only as reliable as what your scout council has updated it to be.

From the FAQ:

The Advancement Report lists each youth member that has new ranks, merit badges, and awards, if any.

The Unit Awards Summary lists the number of new ranks, merit badges, and awards by name.

The Advancement Update Summary lists any ranks, merit badges, and awards that were already in the member record but which were given a new date earned.

Thank you for the responses. My ward isn't paying for any software, so Excel it will be. At least I can readily share the info with troop leaders this way.

There are a zillion tracking devices on the internet. Nevertheless, we still look for something that meets our needs without trying/buying every option out there.

My interest is with the disconnects between the Duty to God and Scouting porgrams. The fact that many are still searching for tracking solutions indicates that we have not solved the problem. I chose to give up the tracking options I found online; instead, I opted to track everything in Excel where I could create my own formulas and put in a format that I can easily view on my iTouch.

The church really needs to re-assess the requirements in the Scouting an D2G programs. The two programs need to better mirror each other.

Tracking should not be this hard, and should not require leaders with years of experience or someone that is tech savvy. The two programs need to blend together.