We purchased the Scouts EMS platform and brand in the Summer of 2022. Before this, it was developed by volunteers. We are a 12-strong team of designers and developers actively work with 150,000+ Scouts worldwide through our Scout Websites and Scouts EMS products, and, following ten years experience, have become the #1 tech supplier to The Scouts.
We’ve re-written the platform from the ground up, and we continue to add functionality weekly, with the aim of creating the most used event management platform for the Scouts and Girlguiding.
Scouts EMS is written in the PHP framework, Laravel, with a Vue front-end. These technologies are used by the likes of Facebook and Disney. The platform is now easier to use from an experience point of view, is secure, loads instantly, and allows for limitless future development and ultimate scalability.
Below we have outlined the functionality of Scouts EMS as of March 2024. Following this, all further releases of improvements and development will be logged within this Changelog.
If you find any issues within Scouts EMS, please log them under
Bugs
under Feedback. If you'd like Scouts EMS to do something it doesn't just yet, please feel free to log these as Feature Requests.
Our platform is developed by you. Your feedback is instrumental. Thank you.
Where we refer to "us/we", we're referring to Scouts EMS, the platform developers.
Overview
Scouts EMS is a web application (web app), that works across both desktop and mobile devices, built to handle event registrations and bookings including the collection of personal details, putting people into teams/areas, managing payments, and report on all of this data. It also has the capability to feed data to allow the use of on-event wristbands.
Once a Group is registered by a Leader, Young People and Leaders are placed into this Group.
All Groups, Young People, Leaders and Volunteers have unique 6-digit reference numbers. These reference numbers are referred to as IDs. For Leaders and Volunteers, these IDs do not change between events. For Groups and Young People, they are different records for each event.
Permissions
Users are split into:
- Event Organisers - those that can manage an event;
- Leaders - those that can manage a group(s), it's leaders and young people;
- Young People - editable for each young person that is attending;
- Volunteers - those that can manage their own volunteering profile and role(s).
All functionality that is available to any other user is available to an Event Organiser.
Access
Event Organisers, Leaders and Volunteers access the platform via an email address and password. All users can reset their password. All users can change the event they're managing, if they have access to multiple events. When they access the platform, it will default to the latest event they have been managing. All personal information will be used across all events they have access to (apart from any volunteering roles chosen or custom fields completed). All users have the ability to choose 'Remember me' on the log-in screen, which will increase the time the platform saves the log-in session for. This is not recommended on shared computers/devices.
- Event Organisers have to be invited by us, or other Event Organisers.
- Leaders use a registration link, unique to the event but hashed meaning it cannot be guessed. Leaders need to be approved by Event Organisers to be able to access the platform. An email is sent when this approval takes place. If a Leader would like to access more than one Group, an Event Organiser will need to add them to additional Groups. Each Group can have one or many Leaders, however a Primary Leader is chosen.
- Volunteers use a registration link, unique to the event but hashed meaning it cannot be guessed. A volunteering role(s) is chosen at this point, but can be amended by the Volunteer within their profile.
- All users have the ability to log out in a single click.
If a Leader wishes to Volunteer, they do not need two accounts - instead they choose to volunteer and choose their volunteering role(s) within their profile - a selection which is unique to the event, however the rest of their personal information will be used across all events they are attending.
Young People are invited to attend by a Leader, with the parent/carer receiving a link to complete their profile. This link does not change (unless the email address changes), and therefore the profile can be edited at any point by a parent/carer if required. Please scroll to the bottom of this page to read more detail on the security of this process.
Event Set-Up
- We can create a new event within the platform within a few minutes.
- An event can be set-up with description, and an updatable message, which appears to all Leaders and Volunteers using Scouts EMS.
- Each event can be branded to Scouts, Girlguiding, or both, along with the ability to upload a logo.
- An address can be set, along with a support email address, both of which show to all users.
- Terms and Conditions can be uploaded as PDF, which are then accepted by all attendees.
- Event start/end dates and times can be shown to all users.
- Event Organisers have a dashboard of key statistics, including the total number of Groups, Young People, and Volunteers that are attending.
- The ability to input (singly or in bulk) a list of Groups that can attend the event, which are chosen when a Leader registers.
- The ability to input (singly or in bulk) a list of volunteer roles.
Registrations & Bookings
- Bookings can be set as open or closed, and limits can be set on the number of Young People or Volunteers that can attend.
- The following details are collected from each Young Person, Leader or Volunteer: full name; email address; date of birth (with date-picker and restrictions); telephone number; photo upload; emergency contact full name, relation and telephone number; their Group; the over-the-counter medication that can/cannot be administered by event volunteers; medical information; dietary information; allergy information.
- Multiple custom fields can be set up, allowing for additional data to be collected from Groups, Young People, Leaders or Volunteers, in the form of text-fields or single-choice selections. Custom fields can be shown within a profile, or set as "Private", meaning this custom field is only shown to Event Organisers.
- Young People can be placed into "teams" within a Group, which can have parameters, meaning a minimum and maximum size of team can be chosen, with validation showing to Leaders.
- Leaders can delete Young People from an event.
- Event Organisers can remove a Leader from an event, which doesn't delete their Scouts EMS profile as they may be registered against more than one event.
- Event Organisers can remove a Volunteer from an event, which doesn't delete their Scouts EMS profile as they may be registered against more than one event.
Leaders that are part of a Group, and Event Organisers, have access to a Group detail screens, showing the name of the Group (editable); a list of Young People (editable and removable); a list of Leaders; a list of teams, and their finance screen. Young People can be added in a single click. Event organisers can see top-level screens of all data together. All tables are searchable by multiple columns and sortable by multiple columns.
Payments
- Payments can be collected via BACs from Groups.
- A cost for a Young Person, Leader and Volunteer can be inputted.
- The ability to add a custom field that controls costs, which can add amounts to a Young Person, Leader or Volunteer cost should the option be selected - for example, to add catering.
- BACs details can be inputted - and these will be shown to the leader or individual making payment.
- The platform generates a unique reference for each Group or individual, allowing BACs payments to be easily reconciled as they are received.
- An invoice-style layout exists for each Group, showing a breakdown of costs and a total balance.
- The ability for payments to be logged (one at a time), which will show in the format of: date; amount; method of payments, and; notes.
- A top-level sortable screen to view all Groups that shows a total cost, amount paid, and a balance.
Reporting
- Event Organisers can download all information into filterable spreadsheets – including custom fields information – for Groups, Leaders, Young People and Volunteers.
Wristbands
Scouts EMS can feed data in a format which can be used by wristband production companies (we have partners you can use) so that the below options can be chosen:
(a) No wristbands required;
(b) Tyvek wristbands are to be used and can be colour-coded;
(c) Tyvek wristbands are to be used and can be colour-coded, with QR codes printed on these wristbands, allowing any individual to be scanned using any QR-enabled camera – for example, an iPhone – pulling up their Scouts EMS profile instantly (should they have permission);
(d) Fabric wristbands are to be used and can be colour-coded;
Infrastructure & Security
Everything we do is covered for both GDPR and cyber-security compliance. We promise 100% uptime, every minute monitoring, 24/7 support, dedicated firewalls, DDoS protection, and a back up every hour.
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Further detail: The security around links for Young People's profiles
When a young person is added to Scouts EMS, only their name is inputted before an email address is entered. It is at this point that the parent/carer is emailed with a unique link to view and edit the profile of the young person. A parent/carer does not need to log in when they use this link. Upon editing the profile, personal and medical information (excluding address) is added. This link is never shared with anyone apart from the user of that email address - leaders and volunteers manage young people through access to Scouts EMS via authentication. Therefore, if this link was to end up in the wrong hands due to the email address inputted being incorrect, the only information showing would be a full name of the young person, as at this stage this is all that is held. If an email address for a Young Person is changed, this link is destroyed and a new one created. The link that is produced is unique to that young person, and unique to them attending the specific event. It is generated randomly and is produced in 32-bit encryption. In this instance, there are around 2.27 x 10^57 combinations of possible links (2,270,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). The fastest computer available today would take 7.2 x 10^40 years to generate every combination, and this is without storing the data (which would take immensely longer) to ensure there are no duplicates produced. This amount of years needed would be immediately longer than the age of the universe, which is estimated around 14 billion years. Even if a number of random strings were created, testing each one to see if it produced a profile would be impossible given the security infrastructure in place as our system would immediately stop an attack after just several tests. The framework used to write Scouts EMS is enterprise-level, and the infrastructure it sits on is of the same grade, providing immense security.