Before the Squirrels launch, we wanted to make sure that all Scouts Online websites had Squirrels pages and some content ready to display when a local Drey was opened. We also wanted to make it simple to add these pages, without the need for you to manually add pages, verbiage, images and content yourself.

Squirrels information pages, image, messaging and badge details were therefore added to the platform before a lot of the information was published by The Scouts, and updated as information has been published.

For group websites, you can add Squirrels to your website by adding the section in Admin/Section Details. For District/County websites, add the Squirrels section to the group in Admin/Group Details. Once this has been done, clicking [Save] in Admin/Page Management will automatically add the Squirrels pages to the Sections menu.

Squirrels will also automatically show up on your website footer bar, in events lists, photo albums, Image Banners, Links Lists application form section fields and on sectional links.

Squirrels images have been added to the Admin/File Manager's Scouts Online Files, for you to use on your events, news articles and your website pages.

We try to stay up to date with the evolution of Squirrels, but if you find new Squirrels messaging, badges, images, etc., please let us know where we can find them.

Scouts Online contact forms and application forms are setup in a Contact Form control. By default, the contact forms are emailed to Site Admin and group Main Contact users. This can be overridden to send the form to a particular person.

To allow you to send the form to more users, the Contact Form control has been changed as follows:

• The "Default" option in the Email Recipient drop-down-list has been renamed to "Automatic - ...". This also specifies who will receive the form, to make it more transparent to you.

• Two Additional Recipient fields have also been added.

  Whether your main Email Recipient field is set to "Automatic - ..." or a specific user set, if these fields are set, the form will also be sent to these specific users too.

  These fields could be used on a Group site so that the Chair also receives contact forms, or on a District site for a District Membership Secretary to monitor all applications sent to GSLs.

  NB. If you edit the contact form settings on a Group Details page of a District/County website, please remember that these specific contacts will receive the form details for all groups. Only the "Automatic - ..." Email Recipient is based on the group.

• Two (i) information hover-buttons have been added to also explain this.
• To further clarify who will receive a contact form further, a [See Recipients List] button has been added, to display a list of the email addresses that the form details will be sent to.

• A new Membership Contact field has been added to each group section and to the Admin/Global Details, on District/County websites.

  When populated, Youth/Adult application forms will be sent to this person instead of the Main Contact or Section Admin/Site Admin users.

  Other contact form types will not be affected.

NB. For Group websites, where a Main Contact has been setup for a section (or the 'Group' section) in Admin/Section Details, a software change will soon be implemented to use this as the recipient instead of Section/Site Admin users. If you have any doubts, please clear the Main Contact fields for your 'Group' section and all other sections, so that forms are sent to Section/Site Admin users.

NB. If a Contact Form is set to "Automatic - ..." and the form contains a field for website visitors to select the group or section, then the form details may be redirected based on that field.

By default, the page title header bar images are set randomly based on the context of the page. For instance, Cub pages show Cub pictures and Scout pages show Scout pictures.

It is now possible to define the image and style by clicking the settings cog (when logged in as a Site Admin user). Styling options include:

• Random image flag - based on page context
• Background Colour - Select from Scout branded colours
• Image/URL - Select an image from the list or use your own image
• Text Colour - Select a Scout branded colour

When adding a new event, the Provisional field was previously ticked by default. This meant that the event didn't show up in events lists or calendars.

This has been changed to leave this field un-ticked as the default.

To continue to keep your website on-brand and in line with The Scouts website look-and-feel, a new optional home page design was added early this year.

To update your website Home Page, Theme or Footer Design, change the fields in Global Settings, or Group Details for Group websites.

For non-editable group package 1 websites, your website has been updated for you as part of the central management.

The administrative control modules, such as Text/HTML Content, Links List, Image Banner, Contact Form and Team List, that define the content displayed on your web pages, have been re-written.

Whilst website visitors won't notice any visible difference, the changes have reduced page load times; standardised and smartened up the settings fields; and facilitated better auditing of admin changes made - See the Admin Audit Trail article below.

Site Admin users can now see any changes that have been made to Control Modules, in the Admin/Admin Audit Trail page. The list of changes also shows when settings have been saved on Admin pages.

The list can be filtered by the page, control type and a date range. The [View] button drills-down to show the details of the change along with the settings before and after the change.

A Style field has been added to the HTML Panel control. The HTML Panel control displays HTML inside a 'block'. The styling options include Scout branded colours, country colours and rounded corners.

If you have a major campaign, initiative or event, and you want a landing page to use on your promotional material, you can now use one of 'Your Non-Menu Pages' in Admin/Page Management by ticking a page, adding the campaign name in the Menu Title field and clicking [Save].

You may then use this page URL on your adverts. E.g. www.OurScoutCounty.org.uk/Jamboree or www.OurScouts.org.uk/XmasPost

If you use facebook adverts in your recruitment or fundraising campaigns, you could target your advert audience to people who have recently viewed one of your website pages.

After registering for a Facebook 'pixel' you can add the pixel ID to the page's Facebook Pixel ID field in Admin/Page Management. This will automatically add the required facebook script/code to your web page, without affecting the page appearance. When a website visitor views the page, facebook is alerted.

After allowing facebook a week or two to collect data, you could setup a facebook pixel campaign. The facebook advert will be displayed specifically to people who have viewed your web page, based on your facebook pixel ID.

A feature has been added to the OSM Integration settings page to allow you to download member details from all your OSM sections, to a single spreadsheet.

This could be especially useful for groups with many Colonies, Packs, Troops and Units.

After logging in as a Site Admin user, move to Admin/Group Details, click the [OSM Integration] button, and click the [Members Download] button. Select the sections to download, Full Details or Basic Details, sort criteria, decide whether you want to merge duplicate members (for leaders in multiple sections) and click the [Download] button.

You can now limit viewing of a photo album to Content Contributor and Site Admin users only.

Admin/Photo Management has been amended to add Content Contributor users to the Privacy Level field.

When editing a photo album, change the Privacy level field and click [Save].

We have built a management suite to allow you to build your own contact forms.

Forms can include text instructions, text input fields, drop-down-lists, multiple choice (radio buttons), multi-select (tick boxes), email address, date selector, date and time, and file upload (for logged in users).

Form fields can be split into blocks and have spacers between fields.

To see an example of a form created by the Contact Form Builder, see HERE.

Helping Each Other

Just like software enhancements, if a feature is useful to you, it could also be useful to other Scouters too.

As part of the community aspect of Scouts Online websites, selected forms created by Group, District and County Site Admin users may be added to the standard contact forms set so that we all benefit from this.

Pilot Required

If you're a Site Admin user and have technical skills, would you be interested in piloting the Contact Form Builder? Please contact Chris for more details.

We have built a process for importing and updating adult user data from a Compass Appointments CSV Report.

This will create user records for adults that are not already on your website; attach group users to their group; delete adults who have left; change adult roles, update email address and telephone number.

When the Compass file is uploaded and read, a table showing the changes is displayed. You will be able to review potential changes and tick/un-tick lines to process.

District / County Directory

As you may know, there is a Members/Directory page on District package 2 websites. The User Import tool could help you keep this up to date, and remove the need for keeping a District Members word document up to date manually.

Pilot Required

If would like to pilot this, and you're an experienced Scouts Online website administrator, with access to your District's Compass Appointments report and data records, please contact Chris for more information.