Beanstack Tracker 4+

I love how convenient it is to log reading minutes for our summer library reading challenge. I especially love how I can log minutes for all the kids and myself when we are reading aloud all together. It is frustrating, however, that I am not able to do the same thing for activities and destinations.

The summer library challenge includes not only reading, but also activities and visits to sites in the community. While I can log reading for multiple members of the family at the same time, I am unable to do the same for site visits and activities for all the members of my family. Since all my kids come with me, and there are six of them, it’s very, very tedious to have to enter all the site visits individually for each person.

Hope this can be fixed for next year’s challenge! It will make tracking our participation in the library summer challenge much more fun. :)

Thank you for your feedback! We have made significant updates to our mobile app recently and would recommend downloading the latest version. Activities may now be logged! If you are still experiencing any issues, please reach out to our support team here: usersupport@zoobean.com. Thank you for your patience! 

Sincerely,
Beanstack Support

Our library is using Beanstack for their summer reading program since the building is physically closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our entire family is participating. We decided rather than have all four of us have our own account, we would create one account and have four “readers” in the account. What is frustrating is that the app doesn’t let you add a “default” person to your device. For example, every time I open the app, my 13-year-old’s “profile” loads rather than my own, creating the unfortunate opportunity for me to add my books, reading minutes, or completed Activities to his “reader account” rather than mine. At the same time, my 16-year-old’s iPhone, opens to MY account rather than his, and my wife’s iPhone opens to my 16-year-old’s. So it would be nice if Beanstack could add an option to set a default user, or at the very minimum open the app to the last reader account that was previously opened.

Also, I wish you could edit previously added books. For instance, I tried adding a book by scanning the ISBN. However, it wouldn’t scan, so I added it manually. Later, when I discovered I was scanning the book incorrectly, I wanted to redo it, but that would have required me to delete the book and re-add it, thus losing my minutes and pages read.

Thank you for using our app and for your feedback! We truly appreciate it. Our sincere apologies for the difficulties you've described. We are currently working to address these issues so that we can continue to improve our user experience. If there are any other ways we can help, please reach out to our support team here: usersupport@zoobean.com. Sincerely, Beanstack Support

UPDATE:

It seems as if the Beanstack developers decided the mobile app needed refreshing but the changes make it more frustrating for long time users. Most changes I can deal with or ignore but the recent moving of the field to log daily minutes read is bizarre at best. The log page has been reconfigured to first display the “Have you finished the book” line, followed by a “View More” tab that is where they moved the log minutes field. Common sense suggests a reader would want to log their daily minutes over the several days of reading the book then toggle the book completed field. The previous version did indeed allow us to log minutes first, then tap the book completed tab below it. It was easy to follow and enter data. Not now.

I have used the app since it was recommended by our library for reading contests it has offered over the years. I log my minutes daily even when the app fails to recognize them in my streak. I love the barcode scan feature even when it adds the wrong title—maybe 10% of the time. And I like the cumulative data of my reading activity. Overall a highly useful app for us bibliophiles. I wish its use was a bit more simplified though.

Hello - we're very sorry to hear about your experience with our mobile app so far and truly appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback. Just to note, the change may be related to what your library has specifically required for their challenge - what is required in a challenge is what is shown about that dropdown. If you'd like to share more, we're always happy to listen and chat further. Please feel free to reach out to usersupport@zoobean.com if there are any additional details you'd like to share, as we're always looking for ways to improve our user experience. Thank you again! Sincerely, Beanstack Support