How do I use Bilby? It’s so different from our last (Zealous) system.

The first place you should look for help is the Bilby Wiki, which is also linked to ‘Help & Support’ in the footer of every Bilby page. The Using Bilby section covers all the basics and there are sections on Membership Info and Running Activities.

Remember, Bilby is a system designed to be used by many clubs and if you can’t find an answer to your question there perhaps your question is more CBC-specific. In that case, this FAQ list may be of help so read on …

How do I create a Short Notice, Toddlers Toddle or Family Walk and advise members and guests about this upcoming activity?

Short Notice emails are on the list of possible future enhancements for consideration.

Use Tags to flag your walk as a particular type of activity to help members find them. They can filter by a relevant tag on the Activities page helping them find activities suitable to their interests.

Use Toddler Toddle, Family, PRAMbulation or any of the other available tags as appropriate. They are found under ‘Tags’ on the Overview tab when creating or editing an activity.

How do I find out if a booking on one of my activities is pending and awaiting action?

You can set your notification preferences to include being notified of this and it’s set this way by default.

How do I submit an Incident Report?

The process is similar to the process you’ve been used to in the past.  After you’ve returned from your activity the steps are:

  • Log in > My Activities
  • Scroll down now and select the trip/activity concerned
  • Select Edit My Activity
  • Select Finish Activity

A dialogue box will now appear reminding you that you’re about to close the activity and that, once you’ve done this, only an Activity Officer (Administrative Role) will be able to make edits on this record. This dialogue box will also give you the option of adding an Internal Note that will only be visible to CBC Administrators.

  • Select Yes if you want to submit an Incident Report, otherwise, simply select Finalise Trip.

If you selected Yes then the dialog box that opens up can be used for a variety of internal notes, not just an Incident Report. If you are using it to record an incident then you should add a note here to the effect “Sally had an accident and I’ve submitted a separate Incident Report”.

Finalise the trip and change the participants’ status to Attended as appropriate.

Return to the CBC website (by using the Canberra Bushwalking Club link on the top left)

Will there still be a Check-In Officer email address for us to submit Incident forms to?

Yes. The existing CBC email accounts will remain active and the address is check.in@canberrabushwalkingclub.org

How do I create a Trip Report? Can I attach a .gpx file to a Trip Report? Will I be able to search for previous (and new) Trip Reports and any attached .gpx files?

A short report on every trip is welcomed by members and in Bilby you use the Notes tab to add a report that can be viewed later by all logged-in users:

  • Log in
  • Select My Activities
  • Scroll down now and select the trip/activity concerned.
  • Select Edit My Activity
  • Select Notes
  • Select Add Comment
  • Write your comments (up to 500 characters) in the dialogue box
  • Select Submit

Other users can now see your comments and add some of their own.  They may wish to ask, for example, whether or not you had a .gpx file that you’d be happy to share.  If you wish to be notified by email when someone adds a comment make sure you have selected this option in your profile preferences.

If you change your mind, or wish to edit your Trip Report Comments, you can easily do this later using the Edit or Remove function.

At the moment, no gpx or kml or any other attachments are currently possible but this feature is on our list of possible future enhancements.

Why do I need to know the User ID if I want to add participants?  Why can’t this just take me to the list of members and I pick them from there? This seems to be cumbersome.

This is on the list of enhancements and should be improved before too long. For now, use the Members link and search the list of members. When you find them, copy their UserID to paste into the field in Add Participants.

What is the difference between Add Comment, Add Notification and Add Internal Note on the Activity Notes tab?

Comments are only visible to logged-in users. Active members can also comment on activities. You can change the visibility of a comment later by editing it.

Notifications generate an email to all ‘approved’ participants of that activity. This is useful as a means of communicating important information on a particular activity to those who are confirmed as attending.

Internal Notes are only visible to administrative users and the owner of the activity. They can be used to note an incident during an activity or any other potentially sensitive information about that activity.

When creating an Activity I notice that there’s an option with a drop-down box with choices of Single Day, Multi Day, Social and Legacy. Why is this here when there’s a series of tags at the bottom?

The Activity Type (the drop-down at the top) sets which data is entered for that type of activity and which fields are compulsory. It can also control who is allowed to create that type of activity.

The Activity Tags help define more about the type of activity and are used for categorising and searching to help members find activities relevant to their interests.

This combination allows more flexibility e.g. the ability to create a multi-day activity that has a combination of activities such as Cycling, Rafting and Liloing.

The Legacy Activity type only applies to activities migrated from the Zealous system and shouldn’t be used when creating new activities.

Why does a leader have to add themselves to an activity? Surely it’s automatic that they’re on the walk?

This is why they’re called the Activity Owner rather than Leader. The aim is to have the flexibility for others to create the activity and not assume they will participate.

Where have all the photos I put up in the photo gallery and on my previous trips gone? I can’t find them on the new website since Bilby was introduced.

The new Club website with updated information will be available soon after Bilby is launched. All the photos on the previous Club website have to be manually transferred to our new site, which will be done gradually. Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible to just migrate them easily from the old version of WordPress to the newest version. You might recall that in 2021 when the Club tried to upgrade WordPress versions our website crashed for about 10 days. We want to avoid this happening again.