ScoutsTracker is capable of supporting custom badges. However, currently you still have to submit a custom badge to support@scoutstracker.ca for inclusion in your section's Program.
Attach a document to your submission email formatted as below:
The formal name of the badge. E.g., “Pathfinder Outdoor Skills”. Generally, one can omit the word “badge” (i.e., no need to say “Pathfinder Outdoor Skills Activity Badge”).
If required, a shorter version of the name for phones or tablets with smaller screens. Retain as much information as is possible, with a target of about 16-20 chars. E.g., when shortening “Pathfinder Outdoor Skills”, “P. Outdoor Skills” is more meaningful than “P.OS”.
One or two short paragraphs that gives some introduction to the youth reading the badge. E.g., “Imagine the fun of catching and killing a grizzly bear with only a swiss army knife and an unsuspecting friend. This badge will guide you through the process.”. DO NOT feel that you NEED To use this space, especially for history or personalities that frankly won't matter to the youth (E.g., “Marge Snively-Cronwight first proposed this badge in 1978 after her friend was eaten by a grizzly bear. She then proposed the badge to the steering committee each year until her death in 2008. The committee then wisely decided to accept her proposal.”… boring! cut to the chase!)
This is considered hints or important advice. E.g., for a Standup Paddle Boarding badge you might want to add “A PFD must be worn whenever on or near the water”.
This is listed as a guideline to the youth if they must have completed something first. E.g., if the youth must complete their First Aid badge before proceeding with their “First Responder” badge, then you can list that“. This is a guideline only… if you explicitly want to prevent the youth from completing the badge without a prerequisite, then make that prerequisite one of the badge requirements E.g., “1. Earn your first aid badge”
Requirements can be of the following types
The are used to divide up the requirements in logical groupings. E.g., the Cub stars all have a Part A and Part B. A few other badges have a sections for “Equipment” and “Skills”.
In general, only use a section if it is really necessary.
Sections can have any labelling they want, but do not give your sections numbers, as this will confuse the youth because the basic requirements are all numbered… I.e., it's safer to use “Equipment” or “A. Equipment” or “Part A - Equipment” than it is to say “1. Equipment”. Numbering should be reserved for the main requirements (see below). Note that regardless of whether you actually identify the section (e.g., “Equipment” vs “Part A - Equipment”), behind the scenes they are all implicitly lettered. E.g., the first section is “A” the second section is “B”, even though you just refer to “Equipment” and “Skills”.
If you specifically label the part, e.g., “Part A - Equipment” or “Part A: Equipment”, ScoutsTracker will automatically format “Part A” differently (e.g., bold, different colour) from “Equipment”.
These are the bread-and-butter of the badge. E.g., “1. Earn your First Aid badge”. “4. Sleep three consecutive nights on the open water”. “5. Describe some ways to recycle paper”.
Top-level requirements are numbered.
If you are using sections (see above), you can either restart the numbering with each section or continue it. E.g., If you have a section “Part A - Equipment” that has five requirements, the first requirement of “Part B - Skills” can either be numbered as “6” or restart at “1”.
Requirements should be descriptive enough that the youth can follow the instructions.
Requirements should be able to be undertaken in different stages. E.g., “1. Plan a menu” and “2. Buy the food for your camp” and “3. Cook for your patrol” should all be separate requirements, because it is likely that first requirement will be satisfied in a meeting, the second will be completed the next evening, and the third will be completed at camp. If you combine them, e.g., “1. Plan a menu, buy the food, and cook it for for your patrol”, then you will end up with some youth who haven't yet completed ALL the parts of the one requirement (an alternative is to use subrequirements, see below).
In general, expect that the youth will undertake the requirements in a non-sequential fashion… e.g., they may do requirements #5 and #7 first, then a week later do requirements #1-4, and finally get around to #6 several months later. I.e., avoid making the requirements like a recipe (do this, then that, then that, then that).
You can specify that requirements have subrequirements. E.g., rather than specify three main requirements
OR you could create a requirement with bullet points
OR you could create a requirement with subrequirements
the latter has the unique trait in that ScoutTracker can handle subrequirements as separately completable requirements. E.g., a youth can complete 1a and 1b, but because they missed the camp, they didn't complete 1c. On the other hand, a bullet list is just a way of formatting text in a top-level requirement.
However, one should use subrequirements with discretion. If the subrequirements are for different concepts (e.g., “Hike 3 nights” and “Build a latrine”), then they probably shouldn't both be subrequirements (e.g., make them top-level requirements). The common exception to this guideline is when the requirement stipulates “Do two of the following community projects” and the possible projects are then listed as subrequirements, e.g., “a) clean up a park”, “b) volunteer at a community fair or fun day”, “c) stage a bloodless coup”
Similarly, if the requirements don't need to be completed at different times, then don't bother making them subrequirements. E.g., “show how to safely light, and extinguish a fire” is fine as a single requirement since it's hard to conceive of teaching youth how to safely light a fire and NOT simultaneously teaching them how to put it out. I.e., there's a single underlying teachable.
You can make text bold or italic.
You can add bullet points or (optionally) numbered with roman numerals (not to be confused with Subrequirements, which are independently completable items).
Very simple tables can be used, but your table formatting will be subject to the style sheets used by ScoutsTracker. But basically you can define table headers and bodies, and the cell contents can be left/centre/right aligned.
There can be links to external sites (e.g., for project ideas), or to internal badges (e.g., “1. Earn your First Aid badge”)
You can define special conditions for completing a badge, or an individual requirement.
In general, it is assumed all requirements of a badge have to be completed. If this is not the case, then you'll have to describe the logic in a comment at the beginning of the requirements section.
All requirements are labeled as either their top-level requirements (e.g., “1”, “2”, “3”), or with their subrequirement identifier “2b”, “2c”, “2d”. If your are using the optional sections, then the identifiers become “A1”, “A2” or “B5c”, “B5d”. The section identifier must be used even if the label doesn't include the identifier.
“AND” logic is supported by use of the ”&“ symbol separating the requirement identifiers. E.g., “1&2&3&4” says requirements 1-4 all have to be completed.
“OR” logic is supported by use of the “|” symbol separating the requirement identifiers, optionally suffixed by a count identifier. E.g., “1a|1b|1c|1d” says that one of subrequirements 1a-d have to be completed. If you were to say ”(1a|1b|1c|1d){2})“ then that would say that 2 or more of subrequirements have to be completed.
Complex logic can be implement by combining AND and OR clauses. E.g., a typical Cub Star will say “complete 3 requirements from Part A, and 4 requirements from Part B”, which would then be represented as ”(A1|A2|A3|A4|A5){3}&(B1|B2|B3|B4|B5|B6){4}“
Normally a requirement (or subrequirement) is just manually marked as complete. However, some can be automatically completed when another badge or requirement is completed. (E.g., “1. Earn your First Aid Badge”), or when a tally has been reached (e.g., “Camp six nights”). Include a comment in your text explaining what you want done.