Being able to have visibility of people within the new membership system is essential for things such as a Nights Away Notification (NAN) submission, when adding names of adults that are going to be attending. Or even when simply using the ‘Search Member’ function within the system.
Unfortunately, there are instances when people that you may know and expect to find in the system are simply not visible to you in the system. It can be even all the more frustrating and baffling if you may have been able to find them in the system in the past.
The reason for this behaviour is intentional, but badly (if at all) explained or understood.
Why does this happen?
As part of its design, the system uses the idea of a structural hierarchy to determine who is visible to whom under different circumstances and especially default situations.
What does this mean?
In simple terms, by default, if your role(s) are restricted to a particular Scout Group, then anyone within that Scout Group will be visible to you, as well as anyone who has made themselves visible to a wider audience (which is why when using ‘Member Search’ you can find random people across the UK).
So for example, by default, a leader in the 48th will only be able to ‘see’ members in the system from the 48th, but not from the 46th, or Explorer units within Rosyth District.
What if I have a District role?
Then your hierarchy view widens and you have visibility of all members in the system across the entirety of Rosyth District.
What is the ‘default’ visibility setting?
By default only people within your hierarchy have visibility of you and you of them.
I need to have visibility of a member outside my hierarchy or people outside my hierarchy need to be able to see me, how is this done?
Fortunately, changing your visibility is straightforward, but each person can only do it for themselves. Meaning that if you need visibility of somebody, then you will need to ask them to change their visibility setting.
To make the change:
1) From the ‘My Membership’ system go to the ‘Settings‘ page (follow the link).
2) Select the ‘Privacy/visibility’ option.
3) Select ‘Change’.
4) Change the pull down option from ‘No’ to ‘Yes’ for ‘Allow yourself to be searched for outside your hierarchy’.
5) Change the ‘Minimal level of members searching outside your hierarchy’ to ‘Everyone’.
6) You may wish to change details of personal data you make visible in the next few options, or simply leave them at ‘No’.
7) Press ‘Submit’ to make the changes active.
You can change the visibility settings further at any time.
Further information on this can be found on the Scouts website here.
