Connect OSM to ScoutOS Events
Linking Online Scout Manager means you stop typing names twice. Your young people, their details and their emergency contacts come across from OSM, and parents only have to fill in what OSM doesn’t already know.
There are two parts, and only one of them repeats
- Part 1 — connect OSM. One person does this once for the group. It takes about ten minutes and you never have to do it again.
- Part 2 — set up an event. Done afresh for each event you want to offer, by whoever looks after that event for your group. Two minutes once you’ve done one.
Watch it instead
Two short walk-throughs, one for each part, plus a look at the Events & Tickets screen. Everything below is the same ground in writing, plus the troubleshooting.
PART 1
Connecting OSM
The one-time connection, done once for the whole group.
PART 2
Adding & managing events
For leaders, each time you want to offer an event to your group.
NEW
Events & Tickets
A step-by-step version of Part 2, plus a dashboard of what each event is waiting on.
Who should make the connection
The connection is made with a real OSM login, and ScoutOS Events can only ever see what that person can see in OSM. So it needs to be someone with visibility of your whole OSM instance — every section you might ever want to pull young people from, not just their own.
OSM is strict about this in a way that catches people out: it works on an all-or-nothing rule. If the account making the connection is missing even one of the permissions we ask for in one section, OSM can hide every section rather than just that one. If you connect and see no sections at all, that’s almost always what has happened — see troubleshooting below.
We’ve set this up initially for Group Lead Volunteers in groups, as the role most likely to have that whole-instance view. If someone else in your group is better placed to hold the connection, that’s absolutely fine — email help@scoutos.org and we’ll change it for you.
Before you start, check you have:
- A ScoutOS Events sign-in — the email address your district or group used to add you. No password; we email you a short code each time.
- An OSM login for the same group, with read access to members and read access to events in every section you want to sync.
- Ten quiet minutes. It’s not hard, but it’s not one to do on a phone at camp.
Part 1 — Connect OSM (once per group)
Go to events.scoutos.org/sign-in, enter your email, and put in the code we send you.
Choose Groups in the left-hand menu and click your group. You’ll land on the OSM Connection tab — it’s the first one.
You’ll be sent to Online Scout Manager to sign in with your usual OSM details and approve the connection. We ask for two things, both read-only: members and events. Approve, and OSM sends you straight back.
You’re typing your OSM password into OSM’s own site, never into ours — we never see it.
Back on ScoutOS Events you’ll see a Connected to OSM panel listing the OSM account used, the sections it can see, and who connected it. Read the section list carefully — those are the only sections we’ll ever be able to pull from. If any are missing, stop here and fix the OSM permissions before you go on.
Underneath, in Sections to sync, turn on each OSM section you want to use and say which ScoutOS Events section it is — Squirrels, Beavers, Cubs, Scouts, Explorers or Network. We pre-fill these from OSM’s own section types, so usually you’re just checking our guesses. Click Save.
Last panel — and mostly done for you. The moment the connection is made we read the field names your group actually uses in OSM and match them to ours: name, date of birth, address, both contacts, allergies, medical, dietary, and the Primary Contact 1 email we send parents to.
Your job is to check it. At the bottom of the panel, Preview a record shows one real young person’s details filled in exactly the way we’d read them. If that looks right, there’s nothing else to do.
If it doesn’t look right, click Re-read OSM fields and then Auto-map standard fields to have another go. You can also set any row by hand from its drop-down — custom fields vary a lot between groups, so one or two often need a nudge. Click Save field mapping when you’re happy.
That’s the connection done — for good. It stays live for your group until someone disconnects it, and it’s shared by everyone in the group who runs events. You don’t reconnect each term or each event.
Part 2 — Set up each event you offer
Do this once per event, once the event exists and your group has been invited to it.
Groups → your group → the Events & tickets tab. If there’s more than one event coming up, pick yours from the dropdown.
This puts your group in the list parents pick from on the registration form. Leave it off and your families simply won’t see the event — which is a perfectly good way to opt out.
Under Eligible Sections, add a row for each section that can come, and choose which ticket it uses. A section with no row isn’t eligible.
Click Load OSM events, then Link OSM event on a row and pick the matching event from OSM. We highlight ones on the same date to make it obvious. Then choose who should come across:
- Everyone who said yes — the usual choice.
- Only those who’ve paid — if you’re taking payment in OSM.
- Hand-pick — tick individual names yourself.
Link each OSM list to one row only. If the same OSM list ends up on two rows we’ll warn you, because each young person holds one place per event and the two rows would fight over their section and ticket.
Nothing to link to yet? You can save the rows now and come back to link them once you’ve set the event up in OSM.
Save eligible sections, then Sync now if you want the names straight away. Otherwise the overnight sync picks it up and keeps everything up to date from then on — you don’t need to press it again.
What happens next
- Young people who meet your rule come in as pre-registered — they hold a place and count towards your numbers. Anyone attending in OSM but not yet meeting it (say, not paid) comes in as provisional and doesn’t take a place until they do.
- Their parent gets an email asking them to complete the bits OSM can’t tell us — consent, photo permission, anything the organiser has asked — using the details already filled in from OSM.
- If someone drops out in OSM, they drop out here. If their OSM details change after a parent has approved them, we ask that parent to check the change rather than quietly using the new version.
- The counts on the Events & tickets tab — synced, provisional, pre-registered, invited, approved, changed in OSM — are your at-a-glance state of play.
What we can and can’t see
- Read-only. We never write anything back to OSM. Nothing you do here can change your OSM records.
- Members and events only. We don’t ask for programme, badges, finance or anything else.
- Only the sections you turned on in step 5, and only the fields you mapped in step 6.
- Only around your events. We stop reading an event’s OSM list shortly after the event has been and gone.
- The access token is encrypted at rest, and you can disconnect at any time from the same panel.
Full detail is in our privacy policy.
If something’s not right
I connected, but it says no sections are visible.+
This is the all-or-nothing rule biting. The OSM account you used is missing one of the permissions we ask for — read access to members, or read access to events — in at least one section, so OSM has hidden the lot.
Ask whoever administers your OSM to give that account both permissions across all your sections, then come back and click Reconnect. If it still won’t play, connect with an account that has the fuller view instead — or email help@scoutos.org and we’ll take a look with you.
Some of my sections are there but one is missing.+
The connected OSM account can’t see that section. Add it to their OSM access with the same two read permissions and hit Reconnect — the section list refreshes and the new section appears in Sections to sync, ready to be turned on and mapped.
Can two people connect the same group?+
There’s one connection per group, and reconnecting replaces it. That’s deliberate: it means one clear answer to “whose access are we using?”. The panel shows who connected it and when. Everyone else in the group uses that connection — they don’t need to link their own OSM.
The person who connected it is standing down.+
Have their successor sign in and click Reconnect with their own OSM login before the old account is closed. Same group, same settings — your section and field mappings are kept.
Nobody came across after I linked the event.+
Work down this list — it’s nearly always one of these:
- Is anyone actually marked as attending on the OSM event?
- Is your rule stricter than you meant? Only those who’ve paid brings in nobody until payments are recorded in OSM — they’ll show as provisional in the meantime.
- Did you press Save eligible sections before Sync now?
- Is the row’s section one you turned on in Sections to sync?
- Did you link the OSM event for the right section? The same OSM event held by two sections is two separate lists.
I can’t see the OSM Connection tab, or the event won’t let me configure it.+
Those screens need the group-lead permissions on your ScoutOS Events account, and event setup needs “Event config (group)” for that event. Your workspace owner can grant both. If you’re the person who should hold them, email help@scoutos.org.
Do I have to sync every day?+
No. Once an event is linked it syncs overnight on its own, right up to the event. Sync now is only there for when you don’t want to wait — after a late flurry of yesses, say.
Will this send emails to parents I wasn’t expecting?+
Pre-registered young people get one email inviting their parent to complete the registration. Provisional ones don’t. If you’d rather check before anything goes out, use Hand-pick for the first sync and widen it once you’re happy.
Still stuck?
Email help@scoutos.org — tell us your group and roughly where you got to, and we’ll walk through it with you. We’d far rather help than have you fight it.
For anything that isn’t about OSM, the leaders’ half of our support page is the place to start.