Compass has been an absolute unmitigated disaster right from the outset.
It is cumbersome, insecure, hard to use, and should have been abandoned.
To give you an idea - all Scout leaders are required to transfer all details of all their beavers / cubs / scouts / explorers into the Compass database before the end of this month. So far, so good.
They can do it using a bulk upload. Sounds reasonable.
Only, thing is, you can do ONE SINGLE bulk upload and that's all. Which is pathetic!
What if you want to do a small test bulk upload to ensure you get everything right, then do a full bulk upload afterwards of everything?
Tough luck, you can;t, the morons who designed the system won't let you do it.
Some fields are marked as compulsory, even though they make no sense and don't always apply - for example, the Compass database requires full contact details of TWO parents for any member - so if you are a single parent then screw you, clearly your sort are not worthy.
The system itself is cumbersome. To create an event, you must create the event, then you must invite yourself to the event, then you must accept that invitation, then you must approve that acceptance, and only then can you edit the event! To add attendees, one invites them, waits for them to accept, THEN one must accept their acceptance before they are actually fully accepted as attending the event.
The system is designed and implemented by people who have no knowledge or understanding of how to actually run a scout troop.
The Scout organisation have wasted millions of a worthless, insecure, useless system, and refuse to do anything other than continue to throw good money after bad.
Their original plan last year was to develop Compass and do a phased rollout, such that everyone was gradually added over several months, with the database fully populated n time for this year's "census".
Alas, as early groups were forced to use it, more and more bugs and instabilities came to light. The Scout organisation's response? To press ahead anyway, so that now the entire organisation are required to rush their members into a not-fit-for-purpose system which falls over under medium loads and doesn't actually do what is required.
Now, the pathetic thing is that a great number of troops already use an existing perfectly good system, designed, developed and actively maintained by a ScoutMaster who knows what he is doing. It is used by a great many local UK scout troops, as well as a few international Scout organisations, and works beautifully.
ScoutsUK, meanwhile, refuse to even consider using it.
Why?
"Not Invented Here".
So instead, they continue to force their volunteers to use a system which doesn't work, which is insecure, and which causes more problems than it ever solved.
The individual scout troop leaders? The majority put the bear minimum into Compass, and continue to use the existing excellent system for general running of their troops.
Well done, ScoutsUK, your pathetic shortsighted approach is causing major problems for your volunteers, all because you are too arrogant and proud to admit that given the contract to your mates was not the wisest decision.