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While we announced our big update of post-registration editing and in-line vehicle updates recently, we also pushed out a smattering of other notable updates as well. We'll try to keep it short and sweet:

June 1st-15th

• Updated our corporate site with new screenshots, updated copy and added new pages to better describe what we do.


• Since attendees can now add a vehicle right from the order form, we removed the "Add Vehicle" step from the new user registration to make initial sign up a bit faster and more appropriate for events not requiring vehicles like social events or fun runs.


• Added a little AJAX to smooth out new user registration checks for existing email and username for a better user experience. Users will now see a green check or a red "X" and message if their selection is already in use.


• Large organizations using deferred payment processing were sometimes seeing timeouts when our payment processor was slow. We've extended the timeout and added some smarts so it will pause rather than crash and burn..


• Fixed a bug when trying to update notify-on-payment email addresses that would leave the address unchanged.


• Removed the pagination from the Permanent Number listing to now show everyone in a single screen. This can also function as an ad-hoc report since we don't yet have a standalone report for a number pool.


• Ran two surveys to hear how we can do better - one for attendees and another for organizers.

June 16th-June 30th

• Optimized our static assets (style sheets, javascript and images) following YSlow recommendations. Combined core Javascript and CSS files into single, compressed files. Moved everything over to Amazon's S3 service using a new hostname which parallelizes downloads to the browser and speeds up page loads. We've also improved the caching headers we send back to help your browser only fetch these items once for the next year.


• We receive a lot of inquiries about the password reset process, particularly from AOL users. We spent a day rewording the process and updating the email and it's resulted in a significant drop in email and telephone inquiries.


• Based on customer requests, we're helping organize an open source timing and scoring software project for Solo/Autocross. The working name is SoloTimer. If interested, drop in on the discussion list.

July 1st-7th

• We have a new phone system in the office with Polycom SoundPoint IP450s. We've been using VOIP since the company was founded but this upgrade, along with a new PBX, will let us better handle customer calls and direct people to the right resource quickly. Same number as always - 415.462.5603.


• Resolved bug where editing a registration after the fact would not properly check branches with selected children or true/false questions with an answer.


• On post-registration editing, don't forget you must enable it! Remember if you clone previous events, it will be disabled by default.


• Updated site to address recent security vulnerability discovered July 2nd in FCKEditor, the WYSIWYG text editor we use on MSR.


• We're (finally) planning a major online knowledge base and help center and we've got the foundation in place. We'll start writing content and recording screen casts shortly.

A brief update on the AddThis widget we added in May - hundreds of links have been shared via social media services like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and more. This is why we're working to integrate with these services - more exposure, particularly via positive word-of-mouth - will generate more attendees and more members for your organizations. People will gladly tell their friends what they're up to if given an easy mechanism to do so. It's interesting to see the Facebook and Twitter dominance here. Is it that they have more users and clout or is it their users are more likely to be (or want to be) influencers among their peers?

Are you using any social networking today to spread the word about your events? Is it working? Let us know what you're already doing so we can think about ways to help you do it easier, faster or better. Leave a comment below or drop us an email.

We've added a couple of big features in the past two weeks, one primarily for organizers and the other primarily for attendees.

Post-registration editing

The ability to come back and edit your registration after the fact is now available! It is disabled by default, so you must enable it on a per-event basis. This lets events whose registrars are OK with post-registration modifications like car classes, numbers or second entries allow them, while registrars who want to keep their events locked like car control clinics or driver schools continue to do so. You can turn it on under the Basic Settings for your event. Any registration after about 6/1 will be instantly editable.

Be aware there are some limitations - significant changes by the registrar may cause parts of the registration to become locked to the attendee. This is because of the way that organizers have "advanced" editing capability while attendees must use the form. We're hoping to solve this in a future release as well. Generally speaking, most of the changes that registrars are likely to make can now be made directly by the attendee so these situations should be few and far between.

We have a few SCCA regions who have turned this on and we're already seeing less email inquiries which means fewer things for the registrars to do!

Add or edit a vehicle on the registration form

Historically, adding or editing a vehicle from the registration form took you out of the registration workflow and into "My Account". We've made this more dynamic so you can add or edit a vehicle directly from the registration form without losing any selections. Since we can add one from the registration form, we simultaneously removed the vehicle form from the new user sign up process. Now it's one fewer step to open an account on MSR and for users that don't require a vehicle, like social events or co-drivers, it's one less screen to skip.

If you've volunteered in a car club, you know two things: it's supposed to be fun and it’s just a club, right? While some of our customers have had their teams in place for literally decades, the vast majority see staff turnover on a regular basis.

Like a forest fire that cleans out the underbrush to make way for fresh vegetation, a changing of the guard in a club can be a good thing but at the same time it can also result in a significant loss of institutional knowledge. Finding one volunteer for a task is hard enough, let alone locating a spare to cover in case a key person moves on suddenly.

MotorsportReg.com plays an important role as an organization knowledge base. Having a consistent way of dealing with registration and data management means volunteers aren’t left to reinvent the wheel nor head in the wrong direction. Historical data is captured and available 24/7 meaning any authorized staff member has the full legacy of the organization at their fingertips – no computer crashes, viruses, or specialized software to worry about.

A case in point: last year Jana Swan retired from PCA Pacific Northwest Region as registrar and Gregory Erickson picked up where she left off in running the administrative side of their Driver’s Education program. We interviewed Gregory to hear how the transition went from his point-of-view as a relative newcomer to club administration.

Case Study with Gregory Erickson

Q: How involved were you with the program before you took over from Jana?

"I was helping Jana do the hands on portion at the events - handing out registration packets, learning who was who in the club, the scheduling, etc. I assisted for two or three events prior to becoming the official registrar.

"At the end of the season, Jana turned over all the paper files, materials, and ancillary online documents she was using concurrently with MotorsportReg.com. She instructed (but no hands-on demo) me to duplicate the previous season's events and provided a critical path work program to get me through the process of putting on a DE event. I worked over the winter to get ready for the season opener."

Q: There is a lot of knowledge transfer required including procedures and policies to be followed. Everything from who is allowed to attend to how to handle special requests. How did MotorsportReg.com function as a support tool to help enforce those rules?

"Our prior registration process merely collected driver information and payment. With the MotorsportReg.com registration form builder, we were able to create a registration process where the driver (or instructor) could make a request for their driving class and instruction group. The assignments and inventory were compiled and regulated automatically. The new dashboard feature meant I could check our event status at anytime and in a fraction of the time it would take me previously.

"Now, instead of spending time every day keeping track and balancing each class and running around collecting information in different areas, I can check progress twice a week (even less for the first two weeks) and process everything quickly and efficiently because most information is on one screen. Plus, the Dashboard feature allows quick assessment of how the event is filling up.

"PCA/PNWR is now confident in expanding our class offerings with more instruction groups, and larger classes."

Q: What factor did our support via email and phone play in getting you up to speed as registrar?

"Jana was responsible for 25% and MotorsportReg.com handled the other 75%. MSR is setting the bar for support of their service. The response is always very quick and support info is always spot on."

We Play the Support Role

While some of our customers have been in their roles for more than a decade, the MotorsportReg.com community features many stories like Jana's and Greg's. This is where we see our value-add; not only are we assisting with the day to day tactical details but we’re also helping with the big picture strategic issues that a volunteer organization has to face.

Talk to us about how our full-time customer support and secure 24/7 data availability can check off one mission-critical aspect of club governance.

This is the first in a series called "Bits and Pieces" that will serve as an annotated ChangeLog for what's new and changed on MotorsportReg.com. We release updates frequently, as often as several times per week, and the changes range from small bug fixes to important new features or changes in behavior. If you're a customer of ours, this is your cheat sheet for staying on top of what's happening.

We're going to try to do this at least once a month but perhaps every other week time and schedule permitting. This particular update has been in my drafts folder now for almost a month and it's time to get it out before it becomes too unwieldy. So let's get to it:

Week ending May 1st

• Restored the Time Machine capability in the registration form preview to see how it will look at different dates. If you use early bird discounts or late penalty fees, for example, click the Preview Options bar above the form and enter a different date. By default we use the date registration opens.

• We replaced our SPEED promo on the home page with a link to Jarno Trulli's Abruzzo website for aid to the victims of the earthquake in Italy last month. To date the effort has raised €40.281,85 to help the citizens rebuild.

• Resolved failures when deleting an event with validation rules on the registration form.

• Resolved failure when cloning an event with an assigner without an event segment checked. An assigner should never be without an event segment but there are ways it could have happened previously so this fix prevents the cloner from throwing a meatball.

Week of Cinco de Mayo

• If a discount code could be redeemed more than once per person, it was possible for someone to redeem it more than once for a single event if they made multiple payments. Closed this loophole.

• Attendees editing their own registrations is one of our top requests for club race and autocross organizations. We rolled out the behind-the-scenes portion of this feature and are working on the remainder.

• Added the ShareThis widget to let participants post event links in Facebook, Twitter and other social networking services. Usage has been positive and helps organically spread the word about your events.

• Blue Ridge Region of the SCCA is using our new REST API to embed a dynamic calendar of events into their website. Follow the link and click "Register" to see it in action.

• For PCI DSS compliance and security reasons, we redirect our payment processing through a managed server in another colocation facility. The upside is that we are fully compliant and customer data is as safe with us as with your bank or Amazon. The downside is that the remote server is "dumb" - it simply processes payments and does not know whether or not an attendee is logged in. When Joe Blow gets to the payment page and walks away from his computer for an hour letting his session expire, returns and clicks "Pay", the remote server happily processes the payment. But when Joe is redirected back to finish his registration, we no longer know who he is and his registration is left incomplete. To try and prevent this, we added a behind-the-scenes timer that pings our system every 10 minutes on the payment page to reduce the likelihood of a session expiring while Joe tries to find his credit card.

Week ending May 15th

• Added anti-caching headers to report system to help prevent web browsers displaying stale report data. Subsequently found this causes problems with MS Internet Explorer^1,2 so we scaled back to a basic Expires header. This should still have the desired effect although it may not resolve people who use HTTP proxies.

• Updated AxWare report to strip the "$" from the "Amnt." column so it will be picked up properly.

• Launched our very own MotorsportReg.com Facebook "Fan" page at http://facebook.MotorsportReg.com. Become a fan and watch for some cool integrations between MSR and FB!

Week ending May 22nd

• Added ability to reorder Club Questions. This will change the order of appearance when participants add your organization to their profile as well as the order that you see them when reviewing their records.

• Resolved bug with Blacklist status not preventing all registrations.

• Resolved issue in the administrative Add-Attendee-To-Event form where the "Add Vehicle" link would take you to your own account instead of the attendee in question. This led to organizers adding attendee vehicles to their own profile by mistake. We didn't think we could correct this because of how the form works but we came up with a clever line of jQuery javascript:
  

  $('a.addVehicleLink').attr('href', '/correct/url').attr('target', '_blank');

Week ending May 29th

• Reinforced our session expiry helper with a pre-submission check that verifies the user is logged in before sending the request. This prevents incomplete registrations by blocking the user from processing their payment if their session expires.

• Resolved formatting issue with Google and Yahoo calendar links where certain invalid characters were not properly escaped.

• Resolved bug where organizers adding a blank registration would get a meatball if the person was already registered. Expanded this search to check for canceled registrations as well as active.

In addition to those changes, there are some other things we're doing behind the scenes to make our customer service better. I'm hoping we'll have it ready for June and we'll share more about it then.

People often ask us about security, especially when talking about credit cards, but in general they want to know their information is safe with us: safe from evil-doers, protected from loss and safe from accidental disclosure.

Today we completed our latest Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) review. This involves internal scans, external scans, code and policy reviews and only when every box is checked affirmative are you recognized as "PCI Compliant". We've spent a lot of time and money on security, not just for the sake of compliance, but to protect our customers and we're proud of our compliant status. We haven't posted these in the past but I wanted to share some of the details for those who are curious:

• Pukka Software PCI DSS SAQ (PDF, 178kb)


• Pukka Software PCI Scan Summary by Qualys (PDF, 40kb)

If you flip through the SAQ and are not an IT person, your eyes will quickly glaze over and you'll realize how happy you are that we deal with it on your behalf. If you are an IT person, your eyes will burn like you've been maced and you'll realize how happy you are that we deal with it on your behalf. :)

We achieved compliance through a combination of internal effort and vendors who supply some part of our payment processing infrastructure. We couldn't be compliant or secure without the help of our trusted partners Layer42 Networks in Santa Clara, Braintree Payment Solutions in Chicago and Greensoft Hosting in Kansas City.

"Hey, where's my #50 that I've had painted on my Spec Trabant for the last 15 years?"

Key to autocross, club racing and some driving school programs, our Permanent Number system has been in place for over a year keeping track of who owns what. Perhaps the most compelling feature is what we call "Use-n-Reserve"; the ability to let participants claim a number by using it first. This eliminates manual tracking of the numbers for most organizations, particularly for autocross programs.

For organizations who want to more carefully manage the numbers (say, club race programs who annually renew their numbers), the problem with our previous set up was when Lance Leadfoot went to register, the system looked backwards in time at all of Lance's previous registrations to see if he has previously claimed a number. If so, use it. If not, then we looked up all of the possible numbers defined (say, 0-99) and removed any numbers which were already used by others. The remaining numbers were presented to the participant for selection and going forward that number would be gone from the available pool.

So this works great, but here's the rub: say Henrietta Horsepower wants #50 and it doesn't show up in the list so she contacts the registrar: "Hey, where's the #50 that I've had painted on my Spec Trabant for the last 15 years?" Well, Randy Registrar goes to the number list and sees only a few numbers that were manually assigned (or maybe none at all if they were all claimed). Now what? Well, let's just say figuring out where #50 was first claimed was what authors like to call "an exercise left to the reader".

Disappointed that we were complicating the life of number keepers across the country, we said to ourselves, "what if we simply created a number assignment instead of looking backwards at the time of registration?" OK, know-it-all, just suggest a simple solution that will eliminate several hundred lines of complex database queries in favor of a very simple solution that works for everyone.

Turns out smarty pants was right. So that's what we did. And released last week. Plus, we copied all of the existing reserved numbers from the previous scheme providing a single point of reference for numbers. Check it out under "Club Profile", then "Permanent Numbers".

For some time now, we've been internally using an API that facilitates remote access to the inner workings of MotorsportReg.com. Today, we're excited to announce general availability of the service to our customers and partners. Customers with or without development expertise in house can take advantage of our API to incorporate their data into their own applications and websites. Understand the implications are very powerful: this can eliminate manual updates to your website for event-related information! We'll show you two ways you can integrate these listings directly onto your own website.

We made a small adjustment to our event types today to what you see in the image. The changes are brief but will be helpful as we've diversified the kinds of event we host:

1. Renamed Autocross to Autocross/Solo to help with SCCA-oriented competitors


2. Renamed Fun Run/Rallye into Fun Run/Tour and added new type for Road Rally


3. Added new type for Karting for our indoor and outdoor speed junkies

We have had requests to add other, more specific types, but we try really hard to keep these buckets as generic as possible. It's an arbitrary decision on our part but we don't view the event type as a way for organizations to personalize their events and listings. Rather, we look at them as a taxonomy for potential attendees to find events and this is why we have kept the list as short as is reasonable.

We're always open to input so don't hesitate to leave a comment or drop us a note!

MotorsportReg.com credits are a treasurer's best friend. Rather than taking the time to write and mail a refund check, or worse, refund to a credit card and take another hit in fees from Visa or MasterCard, an in-system credit is just like monopoly money that an attendee can use like cash towards a future registration.

The benefit of these credits is the ways in which they can be limited to restrict redemption. Since it's rare that an organization wants a credit to stay on their books indefinitely, these controls support a wide variety of cancellation policies as suggested by the screen shot to the left and a credit is always limited to the organization who created it. Plus, credits roll their balance forward if they aren't fully redeemed eliminating manual book keeping. Credits automatically flow into the event financial report for a clear breakdown of who paid and how, alongside online payment, offline payments and discounts.

While this information has always been available to organizers, there was only one point when the attendee could see their credit, on the payment screen.

Starting today, we're now listing these credits under the My Account tab. While this doesn't introduce a radical new capability, it does provide peace of mind for the attendee when they can see the credit listed and it will eliminate a small, but constant number of inquiries to you and us. You can point your members to look under their "My Account" tab going forward.