The new tools are all about providing enhanced tools to support leaders in planning and organising their programmes, building on the development of the Programme Hub.
The Planning Tools provide the ability to create weekly programmes and build these using activities from our termly programme along with your own bespoke local activities. We believe programme planning is key to running a successful group and the reason we are investing in further enhancements to support leaders in this important area.
You can login and take a look at the Planning Tools at planningtools.boys-brigade.org.uk (using your OBM credentials).
To get started we recommend watching our Introduction video below …
You can also find out more about the Planning Tools below . . .
Overview of Planning Tools features:
- Create programmes for your weekly meetings by age group.
- View, search and select activities from the Programme Hub including activities, themed programmes and activity sheets to add to your programmes.
- Create your own bespoke activities and add these into your programmes.
- Add your own notes to your weekly programmes or individual activities, to help you to highlight important changes, instructions or comments.
- View, download or print your weekly programmes and activities.
- View previous programmes, serving as a record of what you have been doing, with the ability to duplicate programmes and assist with future programme planning.
Frequently Asked Questions:
We have put together some FAQ’s and will add to this:
- Will there be further development and new features introduced?
We are certainly hoping that this is just the start and that we can continue to develop the functionality of the Planning Tools. To launch the Programme Planning Tools it was important that we were realistic in setting out what we wanted to achieve considering constraints such as funding and timeline of the project. There are a number of features we already have identified we would like to introduce, as an example ‘the ability to share programmes with other leaders’. So watch out for news on any future updates. If you have any ideas please share them with us by emailing programme@boys-brigade.org.uk. - How can I share programmes with other leaders?
There is currently the ability for you to download a PDF or print out programmes to be shared with other leaders. To download a PDF of a particular programme you should go to the programme and use the ‘Print’ button, in the print window select ‘Save as PDF’ and click print. This will download a PDF which can be shared by email etc. We can also confirm that we are planning to develop functionality to enable sharing with leaders directly through the Programme Tools and we are already starting to look at this. - Will the Planning Tools replace functionality on the Programme Hub?
No, the Programme Planning Tools is an additional resource and the Programme Hub will continue to look and work in the same way. You can access all our programme activities and resources via either of these. - Does this replace the Programme Planning functionality on OBM?
Whilst the Planning Tools do not as such replace this functionality on OBM, we are no longer uploading the termly programme to OBM. Our initial scoping of the Planning Tools looked at whether we could enhance the Programme Planning functionality in OBM, but unfortunately there were a number of reasons this would not be possible. - Can we use Planning Tools on Mobile and Tablet devices?
Currently the Planning Tools have been designed to work on laptop and desktop computers, and are not responsive (do not resize) to work on mobile or tablet devices. Our developers will be working on making the Planning Tools fully responsive and this is currently something we are looking at.