A paper list and a pen will not keep up with 300 people. An event check-in app with QR codes will, if you plan the doors, the crew and the Wi-Fi. This guide walks through that plan. It uses the AttendBeacon event platform as the example, but most of the steps apply to any tool.
What you need
For 300 people you do not need special hardware. You need:
- A ticket with a QR code for every guest. The AttendBeacon event platform emails one with every registration. The code is signed, so a copied or edited code is refused at the door.
- A few phones with a camera. The scanner runs in the browser, on Android and on iPhone. There is nothing to install.
- A crew that knows what the colours on the screen mean.
- A plan for the people who will not have their ticket ready.
Step 1: Decide your doors
A door is any place where you scan. Every event has one entrance. You can add more:
- a session room with limited seats, such as a workshop
- an area, such as lunch, the VIP lounge or the evening party
Each door admits the ticket types you choose. It can have a capacity, so a full room refuses new people. You choose whether somebody may come back in after leaving, and whether you scan people out as well as in. The workspace shows a live count of who is inside.
For a 300-person conference, start simple. Use one entrance, plus a door for each workshop that has fewer seats than people who want them. Every extra door needs crew.
Step 2: Get tickets onto phones before the day
The ticket arrives by email with its QR code. Attendees can also open it in the event app, which keeps the ticket on the phone and opens it without a network. If you set up Apple Wallet and Google Wallet passes, attendees can add the ticket to their wallet in one tap.
Send a reminder the day before. Ask people to have the code ready before they reach the desk. A queue moves at the speed of the person still searching their inbox.
Step 3: Set up the scanners
Open the scanner on each phone you will use, and choose the door. The camera reads the code and the screen answers at once:
- Green means welcome: the first scan at this door.
- Amber means the ticket was scanned here before and is let in again. Take a second look, because a ticket can be handed back over a fence.
- Red means do not let them in, and says why: cancelled, not paid, a ticket type this door does not admit, the room is full, no re-entry, a code that is not genuine, or a ticket for another event.
Scanning somebody out never fails. A door should never stop people from leaving.
If you have USB or Bluetooth barcode scanners at a desk, they type the code straight in. For 300 people, phones are usually enough.
Step 4: Plan for bad Wi-Fi
Venue Wi-Fi often struggles once the room fills up. The scanner holds the event's ticket list in memory while it is open. Without a connection, it decides on the phone and queues the scans. When the connection is back, the server checks each scan again and lists any it decided differently, so you can follow up.
Two habits make this work:
- Open the scanner while you still have a connection, before the doors open.
- Do not reload the page while you are offline. The list lives in the page's memory, so a reload has nothing to come back to.
Mobile data on the scanning phones is a good backup for the venue's network.
Step 5: Brief your crew
Invite your crew into the same event app your attendees use. Give each person a shift at a door. Their tools follow the shift: a door volunteer gets the scanner for their door during their hours, and nothing else.
Ten minutes before opening, walk through the colours together. Agree who handles a red result, so the scanning line keeps moving. Put one person next to the line, not in it. That person finds guests by name, corrects a misspelled name and registers walk-ins.
Step 6: Handle walk-ins and lost tickets
Some people will not have their ticket on their phone. Some will not have a ticket at all.
- Lost ticket: find the guest by name at the desk and check them in from there.
- Walk-ins: register them at the door. They pay on their own phone, or at the desk by card or cash.
- Self check-in: a room screen can show a QR code that changes every thirty seconds. Attendees scan it with their own phone, and the door's rules still apply. This helps people who already have the event app open, and it takes them out of the line.
- A kiosk: on a tablet, attendees scan or find themselves and print their own first badge.
Step 7: Badges, if you want them
Badges are optional at this size, but they help people talk to each other. You can print them before the day or at the door. From the browser you can print on a 4 × 3 inch badge, a CR80 card, a 62 mm label roll or A6, with name, job title, company and a QR code. For a label printer at the desk, the print agent drives Zebra and Brother printers.
Printing at the door adds a step for every guest. If you do it, put the printer after the scanner, not before it. A corrected name shows "reprint needed", so nobody walks around with the wrong badge.
Step 8: Rehearse
Do a test run a few days before, with real phones and printed tickets:
- scan a valid ticket, the same ticket again, and a cancelled one
- switch a phone to airplane mode, scan, switch it back and watch the queue send
- time ten scans at a normal pace
Use your own timing to decide how many scanning phones you need for your arrival peak. That number beats any rule of thumb, because your venue, your crew and your guests decide the speed.
When the doors are open
Follow arrivals as they happen in the workspace. Alerts in Microsoft Teams or Slack can tell your team when the doors open and how arrivals are going. After the event, the reports show the arrival curve, no-shows and room occupancy. Use them to plan next year's doors.
For the attendee side of this, see Building an event app that installs without the app store.