What is the difference between Manual and Automatic Missions?

Within dscout Diary, we offer two mission types: manual and automatic. You can change mission types under the “Activity Availability” section within your mission’s Details tab. Understanding when to use each will help you best put the platform to use.

Manual missions

Manual missions allow you to control when activities become available for scouts to complete. 

This type of mission is helpful when you need scouts to complete an activity over a set number of days. It’s also helpful if you are looking to customize later mission activities based on responses to earlier activities. 

Activities can be edited until you publish and open them to scouts. Once an activity has been opened, it cannot be edited.  If you’re using due dates, you cannot change a scout’s due date after you’ve opened an activity up for that scout.

Note: Activities must still be opened sequentially (i.e. you cannot open Activity 1 and Activity 3 without also opening Activity 2).

Automatic missions

Automatic missions allow scouts to choose how quickly they complete activities in their mission. 

As scouts complete the minimum number of required entries for an activity, the next activity will open for them automatically. All you need to worry about is keeping scouts on track with the overall deadline!

This is great for when activities don’t need to be completed over a specific number of days and scouts are able to go at their own pace—they are even able to finish a mission in one sitting, if they want to!

None of your activities or due dates can be edited once you launch the mission to scouts, so make sure you test your mission before launching!