Manual: Features-WSYSARMA

Background

The Washington State Youth Soccer Association (WSYSA) has implemented a Risk Management program designed to insure that Volunteers (such as Coaches, Referees, Managers, etc.) interacting with Minors have no record of activities deemed inappropriate.

As a Washington State based Internet Service Provider, RidgeStar believes that the motivation for the program is quite appropriate and has worked with WSYSA personnel to develop and implement a mechanism to permit RidgeStar Sites to verify individual Users in real-time. This has been done to empower our Clients in many ways, depending upon the individual Client and, in fact, has slight variations from Client site to Client site.

The objective here is to present a general overview of how this mechanism works, but do not hesitate to contact RidgeStar for additional specifics about your own Site.

An Overview

Generally, each time a User identifies himself/herself to a RidgeStar site (e.g. Logon), the Site can contact the WSYSA during Logon processing to establish the User's Risk Management status at that point in time.

The Risk Management Status (RMStatus) is then stored into the Site's Users table and is available for subsequent use by Site based processes (e.g. limiting Referee access to assignments for WSYSA Matches, limiting Adult access to information about Minors, etc.).

The data elements utilized in the Users table are:

1. RMA: A numeric value identifying the individual User's clearance
2. RMStatus: A character string indicating if the Individual is Cleared, etc.
3. RMExpires: A date value from the WSYSA, normally related to when the RMA will need to be reprocessed or renewed
4. RMDate: The Date and Time that the RidgeStar site last successfully retrieved the RMA, RMStatus, and RMExpires values from the WSYSA

How It Works

Each time a User successfully identifies himself/herself to a RidgeStar Site (by providing a valid SiteName and Password combination), the Logon process determines if it is appropriate to contact the WSYSA. It calls the WSYSA to retrieve the current status IF any of the following are true:

• RMStatus is not "Cleared"
• RMStatus=Cleared and the RMDate+RMAInterval is before the current date and time

If a call to establish the RMA Status is necessary, the Logon function:

1. Formats a request containing the Users RMA name (normally, the Legal Name) and Birthdate and sends it to the WSYSA

   NOTE: NO editing of the Name is done prior to transmission to the WSYSA...the end User is responsible for entering EXACTLY what was submitted to the WSYSA for clearance processing, including any embedded apostrophes, quotes, and/or periods.

2. If a response is received from the WSYSA
   • The current Date and Time is stored into the User's RMDate field
   • The RMA, RMStatus, and RMExpires values retrieved from the WSYSA are stored into the User entry
3. If a response is not received from the WSYSA (either due to Timeout or a null response)
   • If RMDate+RMAReset is prior to the current date and time, RMA, RMStatus,RMExpires are reset to null values.
   • If the RMAReset interval has not been reached the current RMA Information is left intact

Optional Settings

For RidgeStar Version 4.0 and up systems equipped with the Option Settings Feature, the following Settings can be modified to have the desired effect:

RMAInterface

Set to 0 (False) to disable the automatic call to the WSYSA during Logon processing. Set to 1 (True) to enable the Interface.

RMAInterval

Specifies a period of time (in Hours, Days, Weeks, Months, Years....) that will be allowed to expire before the RMA Interface will re-validate RMStatus=Cleared Users again. Users with other than RMStatus=Cleared are checked on every Logon. Typical setting is "3 days"

RMAReset

Indicates the allowable period of time (in Hours, Days, Weeks, Months, Years....) that is permitted to elapse since the last verification before the underlying RMA Data elements (RMStatus, RMA, and RMExpires) are reset to null when a query to the WSYSA is either not responded to (e.g. Timeout) or when the response contains no values (WSYSA returns no data elements for the User). Typical setting is "3 months"