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ATC Activity

Control Center automatically tracks the controlling activity of your members to determine their active status. This status (atc_active) is critical as it influences roster management, API synchronizations, and potentially endorsement validity.

How it works

The activity tracking system runs in two distinct phases via background jobs.

1. Data Collection

This job runs periodically to fetch raw session data.

  • Source: It queries the public VATSIM Data API to retrieve ATC sessions for your members. No personal tokens are required for this.
  • Scope: It looks back a configurable number of months defined by the atcActivityQualificationPeriod.
  • Filtering: It filters sessions based on the Callsigns defined for your Areas (FIRs/ACCs). Only time spent on positions matching your facility's prefixes is counted.
  • Storage: The calculated hours are stored per user, per area.

2. Status Evaluation

This job analyzes the collected data to set the atc_active flag for each user.

A user is considered Active if they meet either of the following criteria:

  1. Grace Period: The user has a valid Grace Period set in their profile (e.g., for new members or returning controllers) that has not yet expired.
  2. Minimum Hours: The user has accumulated enough controlling hours to meet the atcActivityRequirement (default: 10 hours) within the qualification period.

If a user fails both checks:

  • Their atc_active status is set to false.
  • If configured, they may be removed from external rosters (see Division Integrations) during the next synchronization.

Configuration

You can customize the activity logic in Administration > Settings:

  • ATC Activity Requirement: Minimum hours required (default: 10).
  • ATC Activity Qualification Period: How far back to count hours (default: 12 months).
  • Grace Period Duration: Default duration for new grace periods (default: 12 months).
  • Activity Mode: Whether activity is calculated based on Total Hours (sum of all areas) or Per Area (requiring hours in specific areas to remain active there).