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?
Yes, whilst we have launched the Programme Planning Tools, we are still in a BETA development phase. This means that whilst the planning tools can be fully utilised at this time, there is going to be continuing work to develop the tools. To this end, we are asking users of the tools to help us in continuing this development, this may include letting us know if you come across something that is not quite right, or gives you an error. But is also about us adding in new bits of functionality or tweaking existing pieces of functionality based on feedback. We have launched the tools in this way, so that leaders can begin to make use of the tools, but to enable us to be realistic about constraints we have such as funding and the timeline for delivery. So please do join us on this journey and keep in touch with us at programme@boys-brigade.org.uk. - What new development / functionality can we expect?
There are a number of features we are already working on or have identified that we would like to introduce to the Programme Planning Tools.
Planned development includes:- Making fully responsive, so easily accessible on mobile devices and tablets.
- Improving the speed for loading content (specifically activities).
- Enabling sharing of programmes to enable collaborative working and further options to support delivery of programmes (in addition to PDF/print options already available).
- Ability to scroll through activities (rather than use next button).
- 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. See how to do this in our Introduction Tutorial Video (see above). - 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?
As part of the initial delivery of the project, 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. It is part of our next phase of development and our developers are working on making the Planning Tools fully responsive.