Scouts.Digital Article

We all have them. WhatsApp Groups. Telegram Groups. And keeping them up to date is a real challenge. Scouts.Digital now helps you to keep them up to date.

Every Adult Leader in a Group knows what I'm talking about here. These Groups are a real challenge to manage. Who's on the Group? Should they be on the Group? While Scouts.Digital can tell you who should be on your Cub Parents / Scout Parents Group, it cannot, currently, tell you if they are, in fact, on the Group (or if anyone is on the Group that shouldn't be on the Group).

While we cannot manage your WhatsApp or Telegram Groups for you, the information for you to add a Parent, Scout or Rover to your own WhatsApp or Telegram Groups is contained in the Scouts.Digital system.

And we all know that a Parent, Scout or Rover can only be added to a WhatsApp or Telegram Group is by having that Parent, Scout or Rover as a contact on your Phone. You cannot simply add random phone numbers to a WhatsApp or Telegram Group.

And the easiest way for you to add a Contact to your phone is to download their contact information to your phone and save it to your Contacts (not to type their details into your Phone's Contacts).

So, in order to make your Scouting Life a little easier, Scouts.Digital now allows you to download a VCard for every Adult Leader, Parent, Scout or Rover in your Group. Once you have clicked "Download VCard" , Simply click the downloaded file and add it to your Contacts. You can then make the choice to add them to Any WhatsApp or Telegram Group where you're an Administrator.

You can download VCards from Manage Parents, Manage Scouts, Manage Rovers and the Directory of Adult Leaders (Please note that if a Adult Leader, Parent, Scout or Rover has redacted their Personal Information on Scouts.Digital, you will still be able to download their VCard. The VCard will, simply, not include their Phone Numbers if this is the case)

Now, here is where it all gets a little tricky.

Most modern smart phones are capable of coping with VCards (Yes, we know your Apple devices don't. In this case a .ics file will be downloaded).

Some phones simply cannot cope with VCards. So, your mobile phone must be able to cope with VCards in order for you to do this (This is not a Scouts.Digital thing, it a thing with your phone)

While we are not quite at the point where Scouts.Digital can send messages to your Parents, Scouts or Rovers over WhatsApp just yet, the ability to download VCards for each Adult Leader, Parent, Scout or Rover associated to your Group goes a long way to helping you manage your Groups WhatsApp or Telegram Groups.

As a side note, sending messages, programmatically, to your Parents, Scouts or Rovers over WhatsApp is on the long term road map, but some technology challenges currently exist.

If you currently use Telegram as a communication mechanism for your Scout Group, please get in touch with us on info@scouts.digital.