To: ARRL ODV ( Also sent internally to J. Bloom, D. Patton, R. Inderbitzen, N. Fusaro, K. Allison, A . Pitts)

The Logbook of the World team has made significant progress fixing the problem that began on September 23.  We have caught up on the backlog of pending certificates.  We are now processing them as they are received.  New certificates are being issued without any problems.   LoTW users can still use their current certificates to sign and upload logs.  However, if no other changes are made, when users renew they will need to request a new certificate.  Therefore, the solution that the team has come up with still poses some long term problems for LoTW users, mostly in the amount of processing that is required to renew a certificate or to acquire an additional certificate, such as when changing call signs .

 The LoTW sign-up process has never been simple and new technology has become available since the original software was developed eight years ago.  Because of this situation, we decided to remake the Logbook of the World certificate management software (TQSLCERT) used by Logbook users.  We had previously scheduled this in as a 2010 project, but by moving it to the front of the queue, we can both simplify certificate management for the users and we can automatically fix users' certificates so the aforementioned problem with renewing certificates will be solved -- something we can't do with the present user software.

This also gives us an opportunity to adjust parts of the process that have proven to be problematic for users. Jon Bloom, Dave Patton, Norm Fusaro and Kathy Allison have all met and are working on the new process.  The new process and software will be easier, faster and more user-friendly and automated than the current system.  We hope to have his completed by the end of the year along with implementation of the VUCC Award on Logbook.  Because of the amount of time required to implement the new LoTW user interface, we are deferring integrating our current DXCC software system into the LoTW  software system until Q1 2010.  We are also deferring the proposed CQ WPX  award scheduled for implementation this year. 

While this decision causes us to postpone some important internal IT work, we believe that this course of action will provide the most benefit to current and future Logbook of the World users.

73,

Harold

Harold Kramer, WJ1B

Chief Operating Officer

ARRL - The national association for Amateur Radio™

225 Main Street

Newington, CT 06111

Telephone: 860 594 0220

email: hkramer@arrl.org

web:   www.arrl.org/