children's check-in

One of the many Arena tasks I have on my plate includes examining how we might use Arena’s built in “check-in” capabilities for our two self-serve, multi-campus environments (Children’s and Students).  Since there is no Arena documentation (as of yet) describing how check-in might work within the parameters of our environment, I have asked the Arena team to analyze our basic requirements and propose whether or not Arena can provide a solution for each of our environments.  In a nutshell they are:

  • Student Check-in: Students check themselves in 30 minutes before the event start time in the location/room of the event.  They are allowed to check-in (we use their phone number but are possibly OK with using a barcode type tag) provided they are within the age/grade range defined for the event.  They receive a nametag which prints out right at the kiosk.  At any given time there could be multiple events happening in different rooms on the same or different campus for which the student may be eligible to check into. (gory details: http://codersforchrist.com/cs/files/folders/blog/entry27.aspx)

  • Children’s Check-In: Parents or Guardian’s check their children in as much as 20 minutes before the event start time at one of the kiosks in a central location at the campus they are at.  Once they swipe their family based barcode tag, each of their children (related to their family’s HeadOfHousehold) can be checked in to the event (determined by the system based on matching event criteria with the child’s attributes).  At any given time there will usually be an event happening on each campus for which the child will match. (gory details: http://codersforchrist.com/cs/files/folders/blog/entry26.aspx)

Because I've talked with several other church IT directors over the past few years about the way our check-in system worksstudent check-in (and shared our code in some cases) I know our needs will be similar to other churches.  I will report back here with Arena's response and findings when I receive it.