Overview

Checkin Map is a to have a, simplified, check-in system that is based upon a visual map that volunteers (or others) can use to find their serving area. It also allows the administrator to customize the serving need by providing each serving position with a integer range for the number of people needed to fulfill that position. Using the same map viewer they can then tell at a glance where they need more positions filled.

For example, you may have ushers at specific seats throughout your worship center and want an easy way to know that each position has been filled. Using the map functionality you can create a checkin system that tracks each position and displays those positions on a map, allowing you and your ushers to see exactly where they need to be.

The block is very customizable both with CSS and Lava. For example, out of the box this is what it might look like to your volunteer who walks up to a self-serve kiosk looking for a position to serve in.

Your volunteers don't need to know all the details, so they just see the title of the general area (or position) and how many spots need to be filled. As an admin, however, you might want a little more information available to you. By default any logged in user gets a bit more information.

Lava Customization

You can of course customize how those "buttons" look with CSS. But you can also change the content as well as the CSS classes that are applied to those buttons with Lava. Using one snippet of Lava code you can override the Title, Body, CSS Classes as well as the URL that is linked to.

Your Lava code is executed one tiem for each block that needs to be displayed. It will have the following variables defined already for you. The ones marked as [editable] mean that you can write to those variables and the new values will be used after your Lava has finished running.

• Title [editable]
• CssClass [editable]
• Url [editable]
• Item
  • Type - "Area" or "Position"
  • Minimum - Minimum number of spots that must be filled.
  • Maximum - Maximum number of spots that may be filled.
  • Need - Number of spots that still need to be filled.
  • Have - Number of spots that have been filled.
  • Active - "true" if check-in is active for this group, "false" otherwise.
  • DistinctPersonIds - Array of Id numbers for the people that are checked-in to this position or area. Use the PersonById filter to load the entire person object.
  • Group - The Group object for this item.

We also mentioned the body text of the button. Any text that is rendered out by your Lava code is used as the body text. You also have access to the standard Lava variables such as Context and CurrentPerson. In fact, using CurrentPerson is how we determine wether to show just the Need value or the entire Spots, Have, Need text.

Map Customization

Okay, so how much trouble is it to generate these maps and keep them up to date? Well it depends on how many positions you have. Each position is configured as a Group in the checkin system. The gist is that you do most of your work in the Checkin Configuration page like you do now. You will generate the structure, load in images and set minimum and maximum need levels for each position in there.

To start with you will create a new Checkin Area and have it inherit from the new Checkin Map type. Then create your structure underneath that. For example, you could create a child group called Worship Center and then a few children under that called Section A, Section B, etc. Finally under each of those you would create a group for each position to be filled. The structure of the tree is up to you. It can be two levels deep (map and work positions) or as many levels deep as you wish (map -> map -> map -> positions).

Anyway, you will notice that these Groups have a few Attributes that you can configure. The Background attribute is for the groups that will have groups underneath them. That is where you will load in your images that you want displayed behind the buttons. For any Groups that act as actual positions to be filled you will populate the Need attribute with the number of spots each position has. For example, you may want up to 3 greeters in your Lobby but only need 1. In this case you would enter the integer range as 1 - 3. What this does, by default, is make the title of the position red if nobody has checked in (not filled). It becomes yellow if 1 or 2 people have checked in (partially filled). Finally it turns green if all 3 positions have been filled.

There are two more attributes, Position X and Position Y. Leave those alone, they get filled in for you by the page we are going to talk about next.

Finally, each group that will have positions needs a location associated with it. You can use the same location for each position if you want but I would recommend keeping them associated with actual rooms. If all your positions are in the same room fine, just use one room for all positions. But if you have some greeters in the worship center lobby and some in the children's building lobby, use different rooms just for sanity.

In your Checkin system, there is a new page provided called Check-in Map Configuration. This will look very similar to the normal Check-in Configuration page you were just using. This is where you setup where the buttons show up on the map. Just click on one of the groups that have a background image associated with it. You will see what looks like a single button in the corner of the image. In truth all those position groups are just stacked up on top of each other. Use the mouse to click and drag those buttons wherever you want them.

Once everything is positioned where you want it, click Save and all those positions are saved as a percentage. This means that whatever device you display on they will show up in the right place.