Early this morning the first batch of emails for the USCF’s new TLA Mail Service were sent out.
TLA Mail enables USCF members to sign up for emailed announcements of upcoming events that meet their selection criteria. Players can request to be notified when a TLA is first published online and/or two weeks before the event begins.
For recurring online TLAs, the player can request TLA Mail two weeks before each scheduled occurrence of that event.
The signup form for TLA Mail is in the Members Only area of the website.
TLA Mail only sends out announcements about events that are listed in the Online TLA Service. Currently there are about 68 events in the Online TLA Service databank. However, all print TLAs should be included in the Online TLA Service by early December, since the interface that organizers use to create Online TLAs will also be used to create all print TLAS, starting some time in October.
The office staff will shortly begin using that same interface to enter TLAs that are mailed or emailed to the USCF. However, organizers who use the Online TLA Service form to create their own TLAs and submit them for both online publication and in the magazine will have a later magazine TLA submission deadline, since using the Online TLA Service interface will save time sending proofs and payments back and forth.
I tried that, but the URL got to be rather long and I wanted to keep the message itself fairly short (especially for us dinosaurs who use text-only mail engines.)
The mail interface I’m using (in PHP) doesn’t have full support for MIME documents, so I’d probably have to code that manually.
However, I’ll continue to explore this possibility, as I expect there will be a few changes to the TLA Mail service now that it is operational.
I made a number of changes to it over the last few days just to get it operational, including expanding the selection criteria to permit selecting adult/open or age based (scholastic/senior) events, as well as any USCF national events or FIDE rated events even if they are outside of the usual geographical limits for that member.
OK, I’ve added a ZIP code radius term to the TLA Mail selection criteria. Any event that is within the designated radius from the member’s zip code will be included regardless of what state or zip code it is in, subject to your other limitations, of course.
I still need to figure out what to do about events held outside the USA.
During the testing of another use of the zip code radius function, I ran across an event in Wisconsin that my query told me was within 100 miles of a member in Michigan. I guess there’s a ferry across the lake, but otherwise it’s a fairly long drive.
I still have to test the selector code, I’ll do that tonight before sending out the 2nd batch of TLA Mail announcements. (I doubt there will be very many to send out tonight, as there are currently no new TLAs pending approval for the Online TLA Service.)
