SOAR

SOAR Customers,

I wanted to take the opportunity to personally update you on our plans for 2011 and to provide a review of 2010.

2010 – A year in review

I look back on 2010 with mixed emotions. While a number of very important tasks/updates were completed and the business had good growth, the list of updates/features I hoped SOAR would accomplish during the year never came to fruition.

SOAR started 2010 strong coming off the release of (1) all new Site Themes with lots of new options (2) the Splash Page option for those desiring more privacy. Given the popularity of the SOAR EBlast feature we then spent a lot of time adding options and updating the underlying HTML to guarantee consistent viewing across the varying email platforms that your members use. This was released in April 2010. This release also included upgrades to the Rich Text Editor and a temporary fix for “after registration” payments.

May through August 2010 was spent planning for and completing a migration to a whole new set of dedicated servers. This allowed SOAR to keep ahead of the continued growth in customers as well as provide lots of elbow room for new features. The migration went very well without customer interruption, with the exception of an email delivery issue to AT&T/SBC customers which was cleared up quickly.

One of the original website services for Cub Scouts Packs, www.PacksOnline.com, had a service interruption in early 2010. SOAR has a data transfer program that allows PacksOnline customers to transfer to a SOAR website that includes all their past data. Because of the service interruption, we spent some time expanding and hardening that transfer feature. For many PacksOnline customers that work paid off because PacksOnline experienced a large, unrecoverable data loss in October 2010 and subsequently announced they are shutting down their business in February 2011. From October 2010 till now we have been doing what we can to help the PacksOnline customers transition to the SOAR service, with as much data as possible, before their existing sites disappear. While this took time away from SOAR feature development, I felt it was the right thing to do.

Throughout the year we have also been supporting customers through email and phone. Most of the time we have been able to achieve same day response with peak periods being pushed to next day response.

A record number of new customers joined SOAR in 2010. We do not advertise, so all new customers come from positive word of mouth from our existing customers. We thank you for making that possible !

All sounds great – except for the fact that the features I and the support staff have been talking to you about were not being worked on.

2011 – What is coming up next?

The majority of PacksOnline customers have been transitioned over to the SOAR service. A large chunk of infrastructure work has been taken care of. It is time to get back to developing features and upgrades!

The first two releases will be “prep” for the major releases. Our plan is to complete them by the beginning of March.

1. Domain Name Automation – We have been processing domain name requests manually. We will be automating this to free up staff time and increase turnaround time for customers.
2. Email List synchronization – Currently all automatic email lists are updated immediately when Roster changes are made. There are a number of disadvantages to this approach: (1) Making roster changes is slower because you have to wait for the email lists to be changed; (2) If you are making multiple roster changes the email lists are updated multiple times vs. once; (3) If you don’t wait for the page to fully load there is the possibility that the email list will not be updated. We are going to move automatic email list updates into the background. Roster updates will set an email list update flag. A background process will run every few hours to rebuild email lists. Your site will contain an indicator if there are email list updates pending or if email lists are up-to-date. This will make all your roster updates through your SOAR website MUCH faster and give us the room for some expanded email features talked about below.

The first major release of 2011 will be Roster enhancements. The timing of this release will depend upon the completion of the above. We hope to get this release out in the June timeframe. This release will include:

• Expanded fields for data storage
• Youth Leadership positions for Packs (Den Chiefs)
• Scouts can belong to more than one group (Den/Patrol)
• Adults can be directly assigned to groups (Den/Patrol)
• Additional automatic email lists – PLC, committee, ASMs, OA, Den Leaders
• TroopMaster – Import enhancements
• Import file format checks – no more garbage accounts by accidentally using the wrong file type
• Roster change notification emails
• Additional options for Roster privacy
• Roster Export

The second major release of 2011 will be Event Signup / Online Payment enhancements. We will not have a release date on this until we are well into development of the Roster features. This release will include

• A “not attending” option
• Move from “By Family” vs. “By Individual” -> a set of options: parents can register scouts, scouts can register themselves, etc…
• Move from # of Scouts/# of Adults boxes -> set of family names from Roster with checkboxes. This will allow viewing the names of all attending in the Attendee List
• Addition of “event managers” who will not need Administrative rights
• Email Lists for Events, based on registration
• Excel export of registration information
• More attendee list sorting options
• Configurable questions for event registration
• Additional pricing options
• PayPal Button sorting options

Additional priority items for 2011.

• These may come after the above releases or be added to one of the above releases, depending upon timing.
• Calendar Sync – support for the iCal standard. This will enable members to subscribe to your site’s calendar and automatically get calendar updates with Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar, etc)
• Granular Permissions – addition of more granular levels of permission to be able to assign to individuals.
• Multiple Calendar Delete – a function like Admin/Members/Delete that would allow you to delete multiple calendar events via checkboxes

As always there is a long list of smaller items that we will fit in where possible.

Michael Kabot
President - SOAR