Re: Division notifier- Get a text when divisions are released
 

Consider offering email as well? With something like SendGrid, you can probably push out all the emails nearly instantly. And if you ask users to provide their carrier, you can use the email-to-SMS gateways offered by most service providers (this seems like a fairly comprehensive list, but I'm sure offering just the major US options would be fine).

I'm guessing you're using Twilio for SMS, which unfortunately does have that rate limit for non-shortcode SMS. This could serve as a fallback for users who don't provide an email and/or don't use a cell carrier with a supported email to SMS gateway.

Re: Division notifier- Get a text when divisions are released
 

I'm liking the random quote generator

Re: Division notifier- Get a text when divisions are released
 

I went ahead and added a couple more phone numbers for good measure. Now we're at ~3 minutes. :D


I considered it, but decided against implementing email notifications to keep the system simple, based on the amount of time I had to make it.
I'll probably add it as an option next year.

Re: Division notifier- Get a text when divisions are released
 

3 minutes until what?????

Re: Division notifier- Get a text when divisions are released
 

3 minutes from the time divisions are released to the last text notification going out.

Sorry for the alarm!

Re: Division notifier- Get a text when divisions are released
 

That is 2.973 minutes too long.

Re: Division notifier- Get a text when divisions are released
 

3310 demands .25 seconds or less ;)

Thanks for this!

Re: Division notifier- Get a text when divisions are released
 

Yeah team 3507 really enjoyed creating some of them. I enjoy the 50% chance your pit is in Houston!

Re: Division notifier- Get a text when divisions are released
 

I signed up pretty early... Hopefully I get my message under that time! ;)

Re: Division notifier- Get a text when divisions are released
 

I should have added some micro-transactions: "Donate $0.99 to Ubotics to put your phone number at the top of the queue"

Re: Division notifier- Get a text when divisions are released
 

Monetizing your poor design choices? I dunno, I think that ventures into Worse Than Failure territory...

Re: Division notifier- Get a text when divisions are released
 

Sure, it sounds bad now but next year when the design is improved the shareholders will force me add an artificial delay to encourage more donations anyway. :)

Re: Division notifier- Get a text when divisions are released
 

This is Great!

Re: Division notifier- Get a text when divisions are released
 

Sounds like a job for Speed Up Loops.

Re: Division notifier- Get a text when divisions are released
 

Here are some post division release stats:

912 division notifications were sent to people from 349 different teams. Teams 195, 148, and 469 had the most people notified with 15, 14, and 13 respectively. The last person to sign up (from team 74) did so 3 minutes before they received their division.

Timeline (Central time):
~12:31 First divisions released
12:33 First notifications sent
12:53 Last notifications sent

Because everyone loves graphs:


The biggest limiting factor was the rate at which divisions were added to the usfirst.org website.

There was also a small bug that delayed the last 9% of notifications by about 7 minutes. Luckily I was at my computer and was able to fix it quickly.


So, to improve for the future:

• Let people choose if they want to be notified when their team gets a division, or when any team gets a division
• Add email notifications as an option
• Increase division data acquisition speed

What else could be better?