Arena Remote Check-In

Questions for those of you using the KFS solution:

1.  Are you running Premium or Select?

2.  Are you self hosted or Shelby hosted?

3.  Can you print labels for children's check in?

We are currently Premium self-hosted but our roadmap is to transition to Select Shelby-hosted later this year.  

Thanks!

Hi Betty,
I can answer much of those questions for you.

1 & 2. It will run on any flavor of Arena, it is the ability to install it that is the discriminator. Currently it can be installed on both Premium and Select as long as they are self hosted. We are working with Shelby Systems on being able to install on Shelby Hosted clients.

3. The way the module works is that it emulates a kiosk. If that kiosk is properly configured to print labels it should work. I'm not personally aware of any churches printing labels through it. I too would like to hear from any on how they are using it.

Thanks Guy.  

I guess another question related to Sunday mornings would be handling both worship checkin (4 services  - Sanctuary 3 times and modern worship one time) without labels and also children's checkin with labels (each children's class group has sessions that match with the 3 worship times).    Guess we may also be giving up on rosters for youth and adult Sunday school as well so that adds some more options.   Having a hard time getting my mind wrapped around this whole situation.   Definitely a new world compared to how we have been doing things for years.   

Also, is this something individuals would access on their own phones or do churches have staff/volunteers hanging around with tablets checking people in?

We are currently using the KFS mobile check in module for "in person, walk up to the kiosk check in" but not yet for mobile check in.  We are currently printing child, parent and volunteer labels as part of the current check in process. We plan on testing this week/next week the mobile part of this module as we also would like to get this up and running prior to holding in person services but to date don't have any experience with that piece.  But if you had any further questions about the label printing part feel free to reach out to me. 

Wendy Zwart
Christian Fellowship Church
wzwart@cfcwired.org
703-858-2702

Let me answer your last question first. Our Mobile Checkin solution was built with the intent of being used by members accessing it on their own mobile devices (actually commissioned by srhutson's church who posted above). Since it works by mimicking an Arena kiosk, it could actually be used by roaming volunteers as you mentioned or actual kiosks as wzwart mentions below.

Speaking to different worship services, sanctuaries and children's checkin, I would say there are a few ways you could go about it. All of them controlled by how you setup your kiosks. At the end of it all, it is still occurrences people are checking into. So, your services could be set up as different occurrences within the same Attendance Type and you could use the same kiosk to handle them. 

The only nuance would be that for every separate "kiosk" you would need to allow people to checkin through, you would need a separate page with our module on it, and consequently a way to get them to that page to check in to. 

Thanks Guy,

This all makes sense.  Right now we only use Arena check in for children/nursery.   We have 11 kiosks each with it's own kiosk-connected local printer.   As Ashleigh mentions in her post below, I am thinking for the mobile solution we would have to use a network connected printer since obviously each phone does not have a local printer.  

I have a hard time envisioning one poor, lonely network-connected label printer doing the work of 11 kiosk connected printer at busy check in times.   Not to mention our local network capacity to handle the load.   Also we currently use "membership required" so if someone enters a phone number not currently in Arena, or the number is in Arena but children not in a class group, we send them to the children's welcome desk to fill out a form    

I am curious if we move away from "membership required" how your module handles the situation where either (a) someone is not in Arena or (b) no one in the family is in one of the classes or services available for check in.   

Thanks for taking the time to engage with us on these questions.