Appendix D: Setting up check-in for paid events

Introduction

Check-in can be combined with calendar events and payment groups / pages to provide a fully integrated event system.

People register for the event on a payment page where you collect any information you need from them and they make payment.
They receive an email with a link to their e-ticket that they bring with them.
On arrival at the event, their e-ticket is scanned on the door and they are admitted.

Their attendance is logged in Hubb, so after the event you can see exactly who turned up.

Configuration example

For this example, we'll set up a summer conference.

1. Create a main Summer Conference group under Courses & Events

Create your main article for it in this group
Once you've created your Payment Page or Group in step 3, embed or link to it from this article

2. Create the Summer Conference event in this group

3. Create a Payment Page or Payment Group anywhere on the site - in this case as a sub-group

4. In the Payment Group settings (or Payment Page Advanced Settings), on the Group Settings tab, link the payment group to the event

5. In the Payment Group settings (or Payment Page Advanced Settings), on the Options settings tab, add the main Summer Conference group as a benefit group for each payment option

6. In the Payment Group settings (or Payement Page Advanced Settings), on the Ticket settings tab, set a PDF to use for your e-ticket badges (you can base it on this template) and set the content accordingly - for example, switch the editor into <Source> mode and paste in the following:

<html>
    <head>
        <title>
        </title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <div style="text-align: center;">
            <br />
            <br />
            <br />
            <br />
            <br />
            &nbsp;</div>

        <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
            <tbody>
                <tr>
                    <td style="width: 340px;">
                        <div style="text-align: center;">
                            <span style="font-family:helvetica;"><span style="font-size:x-large;"><strong>{recipient.first_name} {recipient.last_name}</strong></span></span></div>

                        <div style="text-align: center;">
                            {delegate.eticket_barcode}</div>
                    </td>
                    <td style="width: 350px;">
                        <div style="text-align: center;">
                            <span style="font-family:helvetica;"><span style="font-size:x-large;"><strong>{recipient.first_name} {recipient.last_name}</strong></span></span></div>

                        <div style="text-align: center;">
                            {delegate.eticket_barcode}</div>
                    </td>
                </tr>
            </tbody>
        </table>
    </body>
</html>

7. In the Payment Group settings (or Payement Page Advanced Settings), on the Emails settings tab, add some text to the booker / delegate approval emails to link to the e-ticket, for example:

Please print out your e-ticket badge and bring it with you: {registration.ticket_link}

That's all the set-up done. The following will happen:

Someone registers for the conference through the Payment Page / Group
Once their registration is approved, they will be added to the Summer Conference main group members
On the day, launch a Check-in kiosk for the event
Use a smartphone with a camera to scan the attendee's e-ticket badge
They will be registered and checked-in to the event

Note: If an e-ticket barcode is scanned more than once, a warning will be shown that the attendee has already been checked-in. This is because the default Check-in profile that you'll be using at this point has Check-out disabled. If you use a profile with Check-out enabled, scanning the same e-ticket twice will result in the delegate being registered & checked-in, and then checked-out.

Advanced Setup

The system is very flexible and there are many options to help you customise the process to fit with your requirements. For example:

Printed name badges

Rather than asking people to print their own badges using the PDF template as suggested above, you could:

Include the e-ticket barcode directly in the delegate approval email
Simply ask the attendee to show the email with their barcode on their phone screen to be scanned on arrival
Set the Check-in profile that you're using to print a name label for attendees

On the day, when you scan an attendees e-ticket barcode from their phone, a name label will be printed for them.

Separate Children's Check-in at the conference

If you are running children's groups at your conference, you may wish to use the full child check-in system for the children's groups:

Create sub-groups below the main Summer Conference group for Adults and Children
Create additional Payment Group Option(s) for children
Change the benefit groups for the Payment Group Options so that Adults are placed in the Adults sub-group and Children in the Children sub-group
In the calendar event, on the Check-in Settings tab, untick "Automatically include event group in Check-in", and on the Check-in Groups tab, add the Adult and Children sub-groups
In Check-in profiles, create a new profile with suitable settings for your Children's group, including label printing
In Group Settings of the Children sub-group under Summer Conference, set the default Check-in Profile to be the one you just created

On the day, use smartphones with camera barcode scanning to check-in the adults as they arrive by scanning their e-tickets as before, but only include the Adults group when launching the kiosk and only scan the adults.

Set up a laptop or tablet at the extrance Children's group with a label printer and a kiosk launched with only the Children's group selected. Children can then be brought here and registered, any additional consents given, guardians registered and security labels printed.

Seminars

You can check-in delegates separately to the main conference and to each seminar to ensure attendees are at the correct seminars and record actual attendance for subsequent analysis:

Create sub-groups below the main Summer Conference group for each seminar
Create additional Payment Group Option(s) for each seminar
Change the benefit groups for the Payment Group Options to correspond to the correct seminar group
In the calendar event, on the Check-in Groups tab, add all the seminar sub-groups

On the day, use smartphones with camera barcode scanning to check-in attendees as they arrive by scanning their e-tickets as before, but only include the main conference group when launching the kiosk for these scanners.

For the seminars, you can use the same smartphones, but re-launch the check-in kiosks selecting only the correct seminar group that the scanner will be assigned to.

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