Boards of Review & Scoutmaster Conferences

Boards of review and leader-to-scout conferences are the conversations that close out a rank. MySummitKeep gives leaders one place to schedule them for a scout, assemble the adult board team, triage requests scouts send in, and record the outcome — and gives scouts a simple page to request their own board or conference on an open meeting date.

The leader workspace lives at Advancement → Boards & Conferences (/advancement/boards-conferences-admin). The older /advancement/board-of-review and /advancement/board-reviews links now redirect there, so everything is on a single page.

When boards and conferences apply (program differences)

These processes are part of Scouts BSA, Venturing, and Sea Scouts — they do not exist in Cub Scouting or Exploring. MySummitKeep reads your unit type and adapts automatically:

• Troops show “Board of Review” and “Scoutmaster Conference”.
• Crews show “Board of Review” and “Advisor Conference”.
• Ships show “Board of Review” and “Skipper Conference”.
• Packs and Posts see neither. Both the leader and scout pages display a friendly notice instead of the controls. The leader page explains that this admin surface applies to Troops, Crews, and Ships; the scout page explains that Cub Scout advancement is approved by den leaders and parents through adventures, so there are no boards or conferences to manage.

Note

The labels you see on screen follow your unit. If you switch between units, the page re-labels itself — a Crew advisor sees “Advisor Conference” where a Scoutmaster sees “Scoutmaster Conference”.

Scheduling a board of review

In the Schedule a board of review for a scout card, pick three things:

1. Scout — any active youth member in the unit.
2. Rank — the rank the scout is sitting for, drawn from your program’s rank list.
3. Date — an eligible meeting date.

Click Schedule and the board is created in the Scheduled state, ready for you to build its team. The date dropdown only shows meetings you have flagged as board-of-review-eligible, and each option can show how many slots remain (for example “3 left”). If the list is empty, you’ll see a prompt to mark an event as board-of-review-eligible first.

Tip

You set which events can host boards and conferences on the event’s edit page. See Event Planning for how to mark a meeting as eligible and set its capacity.

Building the review team and assigning a conductor

Every Scheduled board appears under Scheduled boards of review — assign teams, showing the scout’s name, rank, and date. Expand Board team to open the team builder.

Choose adults from your roster — youth are excluded automatically, so anyone who isn’t a scout (leaders, parents, committee members, admins) is eligible to be seated. For each person you select, set their role to Chair or Member, then click Save team. You can reopen and adjust the team any time before you record the result.

Caution

Scheduling, team-building, triage, and recording are leader-only actions. The admin page is reached from the leaders’ navigation, and the backend independently enforces the advancement-approval permission on every one of these actions — so scouts and parents cannot self-schedule or seat themselves even if they reach the page.

Triaging scout requests

When a scout requests a board through their own page, it lands in the Board of Review requests queue near the top of the admin page — just below the scheduling card — with a “pending” count. The queue stays hidden until something is waiting.

For each request you have two buttons:

• Confirm — accepts the request and moves it onto the chosen date. Capacity is enforced on the server, so if the meeting is already full the request stays queued rather than overbooking the slot.
• Decline — cancels the request.

Confirmed boards then flow down into the Scheduled list, where you assign the team exactly as above. Requested conferences are triaged the same way from inside the conferences panel (see below).

Scoutmaster / Advisor / Skipper conferences

The conferences panel — labeled for your program — handles the leader-to-scout conference. To schedule one:

1. Pick the Scout.
2. Optionally pick a Conductor. The conductor list is built from adults who hold an active adult-leadership position in the unit (for example a Scoutmaster, Assistant Scoutmaster, Advisor, or Skipper), shown as name and position. Leave it on “Assign later” to set it afterward.
3. Pick a Date, then click Schedule.

Scheduled and requested conferences are listed below the form with their status, date, and conductor. Any conference a scout requested shows Confirm and Decline buttons right in the list, with the same server-side capacity check as boards.

Recording board results

Once a board has been held, use the Record result row on that board. Choose an outcome — Passed, Defer, or Not approved — add optional Notes, and click Record. This saves the board’s outcome to its review record so the unit keeps an honest history of what was decided.

Note

“Defer” is for boards that need a follow-up before a decision; “Not approved” records a board that did not pass. Both keep an honest history rather than silently deleting the board.

For the bigger picture of how rank progress, requirements, and approvals fit together, see Advancement Workflow.

The scout’s view: requesting a board or conference

Scouts and parents use Advancement → Boards & Conferences (/advancement/boards-conferences). The page shows two request cards and a My boards of review list.

• Request a board of review — the scout picks the rank and a preferred, eligible date, then clicks Request. The card only appears when there’s a rank and an open date available.
• Request a conference — the scout picks a preferred meeting date and requests it. Again, it only shows when an eligible date is open.

Either way the scout sees “Request submitted — a leader will confirm your date,” and the request appears in the leader’s triage queue. The My boards of review list shows each of the scout’s own boards with its date and current status (Requested, Scheduled, and so on), so families always know where things stand.

Note

On Packs and Posts this page shows the same Cub Scout notice as the leader view — there’s nothing for a Cub Scout family to request here.