Self check-in for families

Let parents check their own children in with a door pass on their phone or a printed family card, at the station or a self-serve station.

Parents can check their own children in. A parent gets a door pass on their phone, or carries a printed family card, and shows it at the door. A volunteer scans it at the check-in station, or the parent scans it themselves at a self-serve station: a laptop or iPad at the door that does nothing else. The tags and the stub print as they always do, and pickup doesn't change.

Admins and people with the Check-in role turn this on and look after it.

Turn on door passes

Open Check-in, then Settings.
Under Self check-in, turn on Parents can get a door pass on their phone.

It's off until you turn it on. Turning it off hides the card on Your week. Passes already made still work today.

What parents see on Your week

On a day with a check-in time, a parent signed in to Trellis sees a Kids check-in card at the top of Your week. It lists their own family's children, and nobody else's.

If there's more than one time today, they pick the time.
They tick the children who are coming. Each child shows their first name, their age or grade, the room Trellis suggests, and their allergy if they have one.
They press Get our door pass.

The pass has a QR and a six-character code, like K7M-4QX, with the children's first names. It says "Scan this at the check-in station, or type the code." Under it are Change who’s coming and Cancel this pass. A pass is good until its time ends, that day only.

A child who can't be ticked says why, like "Checked in at 9:04 am" or "No room fits Age 13. Ask at the door."

The pass is not a check-in. Nothing is checked in until the pass is used at a station. Once it is, the card on Your week turns green and says the children are checked in, with their rooms. It never shows the pickup code. That's only on the paper stub.

Parents can't change an allergy or a room here. The card says "Allergy not right? Tell the team at the door."

Family cards

A family card is for a parent without a phone, or who'd rather not use one. It's one printed label with your church's name, the family's name, a QR and a 12-character code, like RX4K-7MPQ-3TWA. It works at any station, for any time, until it's cancelled.

A card carries no children's details: no names, ages, rooms or allergies. Each family has one card at a time.

Make and print a card

Open Check-in, then Children, and pick one of the family's children.
Under Family card, press Make a card.
Press Print the card.

A child with a second household has a Family card section for each.

Once a family has a card, the section says when it was made and by whom, and when it was last used. It has Print the card, Make a new card and Cancel the card. You can make and print cards whether door passes are on or off.

A parent can print their own

When door passes are on, the Kids check-in card on Your week has a Family card line at its foot, on a day with a check-in time. It has Print the card, and Make a new card once the family has a card. A parent can only print their own family's card.

A lost card

Cancel it. Press Cancel the card, then Cancel the card again to confirm. It stops working at every station straight away. If the family still needs one, press Make a card and print the new one.

Make a new card does both at once: the old card stops working, and the new one is ready to print. It asks first, so a family carrying the old card isn't caught out.

When an adult leaves a family

When an adult moves out of a family in People, or is deleted, the family's card is cancelled, because nobody can say who still has it. The door passes that adult made for the family are cancelled too. Passes the family's other parents made keep working. Make and print a new card for the family, or a parent still in it can print one from Your week. Merging two records of the same person cancels nothing.

Self-serve stations

A self-serve station is a laptop or iPad left at the door. A parent scans their door pass or family card, ticks who's here, and the tags print. Nobody is signed in on it, and it has no access to the rest of Trellis without a sign-in.

We recommend a laptop. On an iPad, each check-in needs one more tap.

Set one up

Only admins and the Check-in role can set one up, from the station's bar.

On the laptop or iPad for the door, open a fresh browser window or tab.
Go to Trellis and sign in.
Go straight to Check-in, then press Open the station.
In the bar at the top, press Make this a self-serve station.
It says what will happen. Press Make this a self-serve station again.

You're signed out on that device only, and the self-serve screen opens. Your other devices stay signed in.

When the self-serve screen first opens, the browser may ask to use the camera. Allow it. Without a camera, the screen says "The camera isn’t available. Type the code instead.", and parents type the code. On a Mac, if it says that even though you allowed it, open System Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Camera, and turn it on for your browser.

Keep it on the self-serve screen

While the self-serve screen is open, Trellis asks the browser to keep the device's screen on. Most browsers do, unless the device is low on battery.

If someone opens your church's Home or Today page or a check-in page on the device, like the check-in station, it goes straight back to the self-serve screen instead of asking them to sign in. Any other page, like a link to a group or a person from one of Trellis's emails, asks them to sign in as usual. The device stays a station only in the browser it was set up in, so:

Use a normal browser window, not a private one. A private window forgets the station when it's closed.
On an iPad, use Safari itself, not a Trellis icon added to the Home Screen. The icon keeps its own sign-ins, so it doesn't know about the station.
Don't clear the browser's history or website data on that device.

To keep people from leaving the screen:

On an iPad, turn on Guided Access (in Settings, then Accessibility). Then, on the self-serve screen, triple-click the top button (or the Home button) to start it. Also set Auto-Lock to Never (in Settings, then Display & Brightness).
On a laptop, show the browser full screen and turn off sleep in the laptop's settings while it's plugged in.

On a laptop

Make the label printer the laptop's default printer, and start Chrome so it prints with no dialog. See Label printers. Then the tags print as soon as a parent presses Print our tags.

On an iPad

An iPad shows its print sheet each time. The parent taps Print once more to print the tags.

What parents see at a self-serve station

The screen starts on "Scan your door pass or family card". The parent holds the QR up to the camera, or types the code and presses Next. Under it: "No pass? Parents can get one on Your week in Trellis, or ask the welcome desk." When no time is open, it says when the next one opens, like "Check-in opens at 8:30 am.", and the camera is off.

"Who’s here today?" shows the family's name and the time, like "The Reyes family · 9:00 am", and each child's first name and room. With a door pass, the children on the pass are ticked. With a family card, nobody is.
The parent ticks who's here and presses Print our tags. Start again goes back to the start.
The screen turns green: "Mateo and Lucia are checked in", and "Take the tags for your children and keep the stub: it’s how you pick them up." That’s wrong, undo takes it back, until the screen moves on to the next family a few seconds later.

With no touch for a minute, the screen goes back to the start.

When something's wrong, the screen says what happened and what to do, with Scan again:

"That code isn’t working." The code didn't match a pass or card. They can check the letters, or ask the welcome desk.
"This pass is for the 11:00 am." The pass is for another time. The screen says when that time opens here. To come to the open time instead, the parent changes the pass on their phone, then scans again.
"Mateo and Lucia were checked in at 9:04 am." The pass has been used. It never prints again. A family who lost a tag asks the welcome desk.
"This pass isn’t valid any more." It was cancelled, or its time has ended. The parent gets a new one on Your week.
"This card has been cancelled." The parent asks the welcome desk, or uses a door pass.
"Everyone on this card is already checked in for 9:00 am."
"Too many tries." After 5 codes that match nothing in a minute, the station opens nothing, not even a good pass or card, until that minute is up.
"Your children are checked in, but the tags didn’t print." The check-in stands. At the check-in station, find the family and press Reprint tag beside each child. The family needs the stub to collect their children: someone from the office prints it at the station with Reprint stub. A room's roster can reprint a tag with Reprint tag, but never a stub.

Leave self-serve

To use the device for anything else, someone from the office signs in on it and turns the station off.

Press Staff at the top right. The sign-in page opens, saying "Open the sign-in link on this device." The station is still on. Back to self-serve goes back to it.
Type your email and press Email me a sign-in link.
Open the link from the email on that same device. If the device opens links in a different browser, type the six-digit code from the email instead and press Sign in with code. If you've set a password, you can use I have a password instead.
On Leave self-serve, press Turn off this self-serve station.

The station is cancelled and the check-in station opens, signed in as you.

Someone who isn't an admin or in the Check-in role sees "Only the office can turn off a self-serve station." They can only press Back to self-serve.

Back to self-serve signs out whoever signed in on that device, and the station carries on. If nobody touches the leave page for 2 minutes, it does that by itself, so nobody is left signed in at the door.

If someone from the office opens the check-in station on a device that's still a self-serve station, Turn off this self-serve station shows above the search there too.

Cancel a station from Settings

You can cancel a station from any device, if it's lost or you can't get to it.

Open Check-in, then Settings.
Under Self check-in, find the station under Self-serve stations. Each one says when it was set up, by whom, and when it was last used, like "Self-serve station · set up Oct 22 by Dana Okafor · last used Sunday 9:41 am".
Press Cancel, then Cancel the station.

It stops working the next time someone uses the station, or within a minute. The device shows the sign-in page with "This self-serve station was turned off by the office." To use it again, set it up again.

What a self-serve station's screens never show

A self-serve station's screens show a family's name, and each child's first name and room. Its screens never show allergies, care or pickup notes, children's last names, a pickup code, a search or a list of families, apart from the family's own tags and stub in the print preview. That preview shows on an iPad, or on a laptop that isn't set up to print with no dialog. The station can't open Today or a room's roster, and has no access to the rest of Trellis without a sign-in. The only way off it is Staff, which needs a sign-in.

Still stuck? Ask Silas