UPDATE: The new USAT API is now live and we are processing all requests with the new system around noon Thursday June 3, 2021.
USATriathlon will be going live with a new membership validation, selling and waiver system on June 2, 2021. USAT has a FAQ posted here.
The good news is that there is really nothing that race directors need to move to the new system, and that GiveSignup | RunSignup has built quick cut over (and revert) capabilities. There will be a new 30 day membership offering coming out, although you you should check with USAT on that availability.
Users will have a slightly different experience than today. Here is a quick run-thru the new process.
There are three choices users will see:
Current USAT Member
Participants will simply enter their membership number. If it is not valid they will get an error message, and they might need to choose the second option of renewing an expired membership.
Once validated, you will sign the USAT waiver (shown in the last example).
Renew Membership
In this option, the participant will see the popup of a USAT page that will ask them to login into USAT.
Once logged in, they will be redirected back to the registration process to sign the USAT waiver.
Buy a Membership During Registration
One of the nice features of the new API will be the dynamic display of membership types as USAT releases than (like the 30 day license they plan on releasing in the future). This means as soon as the API makes it available, participants will see it as an option.
Choosing one of the options will bring you to the waiver acceptance page where you need to scroll the entire waiver and accept with a match of the participant’s name:
Checkout
As before, this is an integrated checkout. We take care of collecting all of the money and passing that to USAT, along with tracking all of the reporting.
Summary
This new system should not really impact race directors, and there are no real steps that need to be made to support the transition.
With that said, we do have some notes of caution based on our experience with working on this new API…
Caution Notes
We welcome a new API that attempts to provide a better experience and increased reliability. The old system was built a number of years ago by people that are no longer at USAT. In addition, it was originally developed and running on a PC located at USAT (Bob and Bryan actually saw the server when we visited headquarters a number of years ago!), and then redeployed to Microsoft Azure a couple of years ago. The new system was built by an outside consulting firm on Microsoft Azure Serverless technology.
To be honest, we had concerns about the system going live because of the delays and bugs we had encountered working with USAT since last August. We are happy to report the new system is performing well with good response times. We are hopeful it has better stability than the old system. And we know users will enjoy a number of the improvements in ease of use.