Over the last year, we've been building out a new Station experience. We've had quite a few people use it, and we think it's time for you! It's faster, easier to use, and full of new features.
What's New
Below is an exhaustive list of the noteworthy features and improvements we've made to the new design in the last year:
All Stations:
The biggest change—transparent fields are no longer. The transparent fields only worked with certain backgrounds, and we wanted you to have more flexibility! Want to put your church logo and color in the background? Go for it! You can even change the overlay to dark or light.
When someone is scheduled in Services, Check-Ins will now automatically match them with the time they’re scheduled to, instead of the closest time like before. If there’s a name match, we’ll also choose a location based on the team or position name in Services. And best yet, if they are not scheduled, we’ll match them with the best location for them as a Regular.
Manned and Self Stations
Need to change a time or location? That all happens on the same page. No need for extra pages to load or screens to navigate.
We’ve rebuilt how Check-Ins chooses the best time and location. The pages display faster and it's more intuitive when suggesting times and locations than ever before.
We know you'd like to collect different information based on whether or not the person is an adult or a child, so we've made the toggle to switch between those a little bit more prominent at the top right. Tap that, and it'll start suggesting different information to collect.
If you add a home phone number or home address to the first person in your household, that will save over to everyone in the household, so you don't have to type again. Also, as you add new people, we'll automatically add the last name field for you, as that's typically the same.
Customize what information you want to prioritize in the Household Editor
We know every church is different. Some care about email addresses, some care about phone numbers, and some don't care about either. That's why you now have the ability to recommend the most important pieces of information per adult or child. From the settings icon on the admin side select "Household Form Editor" and you'll have the ability to make this form look how you'd like.
The idea of creating households is for you to collect as little information as possible so that checking them in can be as fast as possible. This is why we only require first and last names.
Moving a field below the additional info line will hide the field when you first go to edit a person. You can still view and edit these fields on the station side by selecting "Show more".
But what about the additional information you truly feel you need? That's where emphasized fields come into play. Emphasized fields will show an alert on Manned Stations, letting the volunteer know there is missing information you'd like to collect.
We won't ever keep you from checking in, but it will highlight these missing fields in yellow every time you check in. You'll see the alert both on the check-in form, as well as the new household editing form.
If a parent is a Trusted Person, they can now search for themselves at a Station and select both their own household members and the children of the other households. Everyone will be checked in together and assigned the same Security Code.
On Manned Stations you’ll also notice that we have live household searching. And yes, keyboard shortcuts still work!
Roster Stations
Roster Stations have some of the biggest changes... with tabs! Rosters were designed for a clipboard-style view for each teacher to view their classroom. We’ve improved that view by only showing who you need to interact with at any given time. You can now easily see who is Ready to be checked in, who is Here, and who is Checked Out by cycling through the tabs.
To make Roster stations laser-focused for classroom management, other changes include viewing one location at a time and streamlining the user interface by removing some of the lesser-used features like adding Visitors and editing user profiles.
If two people are in the same household and are checking in on the same Roster Station, they’ll now share the same security code and only print one set of the required labels.
After you select someone, they won’t move to the next tab for about 2 seconds. This gives you the time needed to check in a whole group quickly or undo that accidentally selected person.
Show Medical Notes and Security Codes on Here Tab
It's vital that you know the allergies of your students. It should always be on their name tag, but now it's even easier to glance at everybody on one page by seeing the medical note icon displayed on the right of each applicable person.
Over time you'll probably know the allergies of all the children in your classroom, so we don't want to take up all that space every week. However, if you don’t know a child’s allergies or would like a reminder, tap the icon to see the specifics below their name, like in the case of Stevey above.
Another highly requested feature is to be able to see all the security codes on one page. That's now possible with a new station setting to show security codes.
By default, this setting is off, as we don't want security codes to be exposed to everyone. If you decide you'd like it, check the box to show security codes, and you'll see them on the Here tab of a Roster station.
Confirm Your Check-Ins on a Roster
The somewhat common scenario is when your families might check in and get their labels in a lobby and then release the children to walk themselves to the classrooms. A lot can happen between the time that labels are printed and when they actually arrive, from a scared child who doesn't want to be separated from their parents to a child who decides to go to a different location than they checked in to.
With a Roster Station, that teacher now has a way to track this scenario in real-time. At the top of the Here tab, you'll see a new section of all the people in order of when they checked in.
Let's say it's been a while, and a child hasn't yet been confirmed. You can use the new emergency texting option specifically for that scenario, and it'll send a text message to any adult in that household of your choosing.
If that person doesn't show up, tap on their name to delete their check-in completely.
You now have the ability to see everyone that is checked in across all your locations.
It allows you to sort by first name, last name, or most recent check-in, and it'll even alert you when updates are available. Now it should be so much easier to make sure everyone has left the building all from one page.
Enabling this feature from the station settings will expose a button on the Here tab that will take you to this new page.
How to get help!
If any of your volunteers or staff members feel confused about the changes, feel free to share this update note, and tell them to reach out to us from the Need Help button in the settings cog on the bottom right—we want to hear what is and isn’t working for you.
Happy checking in,
Team Check-Ins