Check-In Suite - Released September 18-19, 2023
We heard your requests from the Idea Board, and we're delivering! This release includes improvements to all things kiosk, plus enhancements in Classroom Manager and the Admin Console.
Kiosk Settings
- Check-In Suite now uses the Domain time zone and calculates the times for different time zones automatically. This means you can enter all events in the Platform with the actual time and the calculations will be done for you! For example, you add an event for 11:00 a.m. Central time. If you launch Check-in Suite in the Eastern time zone, the event will show for 12:00 p.m.. If a congregation or participant is in the Pacific time zone, the event will show for 9:00 a.m.
- You can change how long the countdown shows after a participant checks in. In the Check-In Kiosk Settings, select the number of seconds (between one and ten) to show the Done timeout. The default is five seconds.
Tip: You might select a shorter time (like one second) if you want people to move along quickly after checking in. You might select a longer time (like ten seconds) if you need people to wait while labels are printing.
- Fixed an issue that caused an error to display after clicking an Auto URL if it was set up with a theme that had a space or number sign (#) in the name.
- Fixed an issue that caused an error after clicking an Auto URL where the associated Attendant Password contained a number sign (#).
Kiosk - Search
- When searching for a new family in Attended mode, the results timed out after 30 seconds. This wasn't enough time to find the family and review the members listed in the household to verify that it was the correct family. So, we removed the timeout! Now, volunteers can take as long as they need to verify families before editing.
- Room limits are usually based on the fire code capacity, but that number is often much higher than the number of people you want to attend an event. For example, a room can hold 100 people, but you only have enough leaders to serve 30 kids. Now, you can override the room capacity to fit the event. On the Event record, go to the Rooms & Groups tab, and scroll down to find the new Check-in Capacity field.Note: When multiple groups share the same room for the same event, the Check-in Capacity should be the same. If they are different numbers, Check-in Capacity honors the higher of the two; it does not add the capacities together.
- Congregants can now check in for multiple groups associated with a single event. For example, a volunteer may serve on the Setup team before a service as well as the Greeters team during the service. They can select both groups from the same check-in screen and print a tag listing both roles.
Kiosk - Add/Edit
- If your church doesn't want to display the Add Guest button, you can hide it. This is helpful in cases where you've trained people to use Add/Edit Family to add a guest instead. We added a configuration setting for CIM, ShowAddGuest, which defaults to Yes. Set this to No to hide the Add Guest button in Attended Mode. It may take up to ten minutes to see the change in the Check-In Suite.
- During check-in, new families had to choose the congregation or parish. Now, this defaults to the one that was selected on the home screen or in the Auto URL to save them a step. They are able to change it, if needed.
- Fixed an issue where groups that had been end-dated were still available to select when adding/editing a family member or when adding a one-time guest.
- Fixed an issue when adding a one-time guest where you were able to choose from ALL events for the day, including events that were not yet open for check-in or were after the check-in availability time.
Kiosk - Print
- When printing labels, you get a message to wait while the labels are sent to the printer. Usually, this doesn't take too long (depending on the number of labels you're printing). If it's taking longer than expected, there's now a Cancel button so you can close the message and try printing again.
Home/Login
- Fixed an error that displayed when you tried to log in with an incorrect username or password. Now, you'll see a more helpful message, and you're prompted to enter the correct credentials.
Classroom Manager
- We added an Auto URL to Classroom Manager! An admin can generate a link so a user can skip the login screens.
- We improved the way pages of members display in Classroom Manager. This makes it a lot easier to navigate between pages, especially when you have many members.
- Fixed an error that displayed when checking in a participant whose Notes field contained over 500 characters.
Admin Console
- You can print test labels to be sure the label format is correct and your printer is working. This is helpful when you need to add a new printer, you made changes to labels, or your printer jams in the middle of printing – whatever the reason, run a test to ensure your labels print exactly as you expect.
- Picking a color for kiosk themes has never been easier! Use the color picker to quickly grab the one you want, and the HTML color code is filled in for you. Of course, you can still enter HTML codes if you already have them memorized.
- Kids are usually more than happy to let you know when their birthday is coming, and now, Check-In Suite can tell you too! Add the Birthday token to your label template to indicate an upcoming or recent birthday. The birthday cake icon displays when the person's date of birth is within the last seven days or the next seven days of the current date.
Note:
Reminder about Support Browsers: Before accessing Check-In Suite and other MinistryPlatform applications, make sure your browser is up-to-date. Otherwise, you may see errors.
The technical details: TLS versions 1.0 and 1.1 are no longer supported for our services. To use our applications, the browser must be on TLS 1.2 or higher. For this reason, we suggest using the most updated browser version.