Scout

Scout is OuterSpatial's assistant in Manager. You ask it for help in a chat on the right side of the page, and nothing changes until you review what it prepared and approve it.

Scout is available on the Enterprise plan. If your organization uses another plan, Ask Scout in the sidebar shows a lock; select it to learn about upgrading.

Open Scout

Select Scout on the right edge of the page. On a smaller screen, select Ask Scout in the sidebar, just above Help. The Scout panel opens with:

• A message listing what Scout can do for the page you're on. Select a suggestion to start it.
• Your chat with Scout, newest at the bottom.
• A message box at the bottom.

Scout stays open as you move between pages. Press Esc or select × to close it.

Ask Scout

1. Open an area, trail, point of interest, or outing.
2. Type what you want in the message box, such as "Draft a description" or "Suggest related areas," then press Enter. Press Shift+Enter for a new line.
3. Scout answers in the chat. If your request isn't clear, it asks a question and offers quick replies. If it can't help with something, it lists what it can do here.

The record you're on shows above the message box, such as Trail · Lost Lake Trail. Every message you send works on that record. To work on a different record, open it; Scout keeps your chat. A card for a record other than the one you're on names that record and links to it.

You can ask Scout to change something it just prepared, such as "make it shorter." Scout replaces its earlier draft with a new one.

Messages can be up to 1,000 characters. A chat holds up to 40 messages; when it's full, select New Chat. Scout also limits how many messages you can send in an hour. Your chats are private to you and are kept for 30 days.

Draft a Description

1. Open an area, trail, point of interest, or outing and go to its Info tab.
2. Select Draft With Scout next to Description or Accessibility Description, choose the suggestion in Scout, or ask in the message box.
3. Scout drafts a short, factual description from the record's name, tags, and owners. For an outing, it also uses the route type, difficulty, Related Areas, and stops. This can take up to a minute. You can keep working while it runs.
4. Review the draft in its card in the chat. Select Why? to see what Scout used.
5. Select Use in Description to place it in the field, or Discard to dismiss it. The card then shows Added to Description. Save the page to keep it. Select Show to jump to the field.
6. Edit the text if you like, then select Save on the page.

Saving is your approval. Until you save, nothing on the public record changes. The field shows Drafted by Scout; select View in Scout to find the card, or Remove Draft to put the field back the way it was.

You can only place a draft on the record's own page. If you're somewhere else, the card links to the record.

Scout never changes a description that comes from a data connector, such as the USFS feed. Edit those at their source.

Suggest Related Areas for an Outing

1. Open an outing with a saved route.
2. In Scout, select Suggest Related Areas or ask for them.
3. Scout lists the Areas the route passes through that aren't related to the outing yet, with how much of the route each one covers. Areas that cover at least 10% of the route start checked. Select Why? to see how Scout ranked them.
4. Check the Areas that give visitors useful context, and uncheck any that don't.
5. Select Apply Changes to add them, or Discard to dismiss the suggestions.

Applying is your approval: the Areas are added right away. If a teammate added one of them in the meantime, Scout skips it.

Suggest Activities and Seasons for an Outing

1. Open an outing with a saved route.
2. In Scout, select Suggest Activities and Seasons or ask for it.
3. Scout checks the trails the route follows. It suggests an activity only when every one of those trails allows it, and seasons only when every trail is open in certain seasons and the outing doesn't list seasons yet. Select Why? to see which trails Scout checked.
4. Uncheck any activities and seasons that don't fit.
5. Select Apply Changes to add them, or Discard to dismiss them.

Applying is your approval: the activities and seasons are added right away.

An outing with no seasons is shown to visitors as open all year, so Scout only suggests seasons when the trails show the outing is seasonal.

If you have unsaved changes to Activities or Seasons, save or discard them before you apply Scout's activities and seasons.

Suggest Tags for an Area

1. Open an area and go to its Info tab.
2. Select AI Tools > Enrich With AI in the Details section, choose Suggest Tags in Scout, or ask in the message box. You can add what to look for, such as "only dog rules."
3. Scout reads the area's description, accessibility description, and Additional Information, plus its parent area's description. It also searches the web for pages about this area, using its website, address, parent area, and owners to tell it apart from places with similar names. This can take up to a minute.
4. Scout lists the Activities, Good For, and Rules & Regulations tags it found support for, grouped by category. Tags Scout is less sure of say Likely or Possible. Tags marked Possible start unchecked.
5. Select Evidence under a tag to see the passage that supports it, where it came from (such as From this area's description. or a web page), and links to those pages. Select Show More to read a long passage in full.
6. Uncheck any tags that don't fit, then select Apply Changes to add them, or Discard to dismiss them.

If Scout is already suggesting tags for the area, Enrich With AI opens Scout so you can see that suggestion. If your chat is full, select New Chat in Scout, then try again.

Applying is your approval: the tags are added to the area right away, and visitors see them. If a teammate added one of them in the meantime, Scout skips it. Scout never removes tags.

If you have unsaved changes to Activities, Good For, or Rules & Regulations, save or discard them before you apply or undo Scout's tags. Your other unsaved changes on the page stay as they are.

Import Details From a Website

1. Open an area, trail, point of interest, or outing. For an area, go to its Info tab and select AI Tools > Scrape With AI in the Details section. Anywhere, you can choose Import Details From Website in Scout or ask in the message box.
2. Scout reads the website saved on the record (for a point of interest, its first web link). To use a different page, paste its address in your message, such as "Import details from https://parks.example.gov/pine-ridge." Scout reads only an address in the message you just sent, and if you paste more than one, it asks which to use. Scout reads official websites only, not listing or review sites such as AllTrails, Yelp, or Facebook. You can also add what to look for, such as "only accessibility details."
3. Scout reads up to four pages of that website. This can take up to two minutes.
4. The Website Details card shows the website it read, such as From parks.example.gov, and one list of what it found, grouped like the page: Description, Accessibility Description, tags (Activities, Good For, and Rules & Regulations for an area; Activities for an outing), and Additional Information. Trails and points of interest get no tags.
5. Description and accessibility text is copied word for word from the website. Replaces the current text. means it takes the place of what the field says now. Additional Information is written from the website's own text. Select Show More to read long text in full.
6. Select Evidence under a change to see the passage it came from and links to the pages Scout read. Changes Scout is less sure of say Likely or Possible; those marked Possible start unchecked.
7. Uncheck anything that doesn't fit, then select Apply Changes, or Discard to dismiss them all.

Applying is your approval: everything you checked is saved to the record at once, and visitors see it. You don't need to save the page. If a teammate added the same tag or Additional Information in the meantime, or changed the text since Scout read the website, Scout skips that change and tells you.

If you have unsaved changes to a field Scout is about to change, such as Description or Activities, the card names those fields; save or discard them before you apply or undo. Your other unsaved changes on the page stay as they are.

Undo removes everything that one Apply added, all at once. Scout won't undo if someone has since edited the text, removed one of the tags, or edited or deleted one of the Additional Information blocks; change those by hand instead.

Scout never changes a description that comes from a data connector, such as the USFS feed; the card's Why? says when it left one as is.

If Scout is already importing for the area, Scrape With AI opens Scout so you can see that card. If your chat is full, select New Chat in Scout, then try again.

Get Outing Ideas

Scout can suggest out-and-back hikes for an area from its trails and save the ones you pick as outing drafts.

1. Open an area. In Scout, select Get Outing Ideas or ask, such as "Suggest some hikes here." You can add what you want, such as "under 3 hours," "about 10 km," or "from Bear Lake Trailhead." Get Outing Ideas appears only for areas that Scout's routing covers. An area with no outings yet may show No outings here yet. Suggest some from this area's trails?
2. Scout plans routes from the area's trailheads to its peaks, viewpoints, other points of interest, and trail ends, along published trails. This can take up to a minute.
3. The Outing Ideas card lists up to 8 ideas, named like Estes Cone from Longs Peak Trailhead. Each shows a small map of the route, the round-trip distance, elevation gain, and estimated time, and the trailhead and destination. Select the trail count to see which trails the route follows.
4. Ideas that cross an active closure say so in a red or amber box. Scout flags closures but doesn't route around them. Select a closure's name to open it, if your organization manages it.
5. Nothing starts checked. Check the ideas you want, then select Create Drafts, or Discard to dismiss them all. To see different ideas, ask in the message box, such as "shorter" or "longer."
6. The card lists the drafts it created. Select one to open it, then edit its name, description, and route before you publish it.

Creating drafts is your approval, but visitors don't see a draft until you publish it. Each draft has its route and the area as a Related Area. If your organization already has an outing with the same name, Scout skips that idea.

Estimated time assumes walking 5 km (about 3 miles) an hour, plus an hour for every 600 m (about 2,000 ft) of climbing. For now, Scout suggests out-and-back hiking and walking routes only, not loops or one-way routes.

Scout doesn't recheck routes for trail or closure changes after it shows its ideas, and ideas expire after 24 hours. Check each route in the route editor before you publish it.

Undo deletes every draft that one Create Drafts made, for 7 days, as long as nobody has edited any of them. If someone has, Scout tells you and you can delete drafts by hand instead.

Undo a Change

After you save a draft or apply changes, the card in the chat shows what changed with an Undo button. You can undo a Scout change for 7 days, as long as nobody has edited that field, or removed something Scout added, since.

To see every Scout change to the record you're on, select the activity button at the top of the Scout panel.

If Someone Else Edits the Same Field

If a teammate changes the field after Scout drafted it, Scout doesn't overwrite their work. Your other changes save, and the field tells you Scout's draft wasn't saved. Ask Scout for a new draft.

Who Can Use Scout

Scout follows the same rules as editing by hand: you need to be an admin or staff member of an organization that owns or manages the record. Every Scout change is recorded with the person who approved it.

Scout Settings (Admins)

Scout is on by default for Enterprise organizations. To turn it off, go to Organization > Settings > Scout and use the Use Scout in This Organization switch.

How Scout Uses AI

Scout uses an AI model to understand your messages, draft text, suggest area tags, and choose what to import from a website, so it can make mistakes. Related Area, activity, and season suggestions for outings don't use AI; they come from the outing's saved route and the trails it follows. Outing ideas don't use AI either; Scout plans them along the area's trails and names them after their trailhead and destination. Read every draft before you save it, and check the evidence for each tag before you apply it. Scout uses facts from your records and what you write in the chat; area tag suggestions also use web search results about the area, and website imports use the pages Scout read. Scout never changes anything until you approve it.