Check-in System Part 1: Introduction

Last year we decided to take the plunge and develop our own children's check-in system that integrated into our custom membership system. Our membership system is written in ASP.Net with C#. Our first decision was to write the check-in system as a Windows forms application. We also wanted it to be flexible so that we could use it to also check-in our youth (I'll talk about the differences in another post) and in the future adults (for classes and other events).

What our developer David produced in simple incredible! He always creates great stuff, but this is the crown jewel of internal applications. The software allows us to completly change the interface look, screen layouts, screen flows, printing (one label, 2 labels, n labels, design of the labels, etc.) and sound effects all through a XML file. This XML file is attached the attendence types (childrens, youth, adult training class, etc.) which is attached to locations. When the application starts up you select the attendence type from a list of available types for the room you are in. Which type you choose will decide how the application will look and how it will act. For instance the main screen of the children's check-in looks like this.

While the main screen of the youth check-in looks like this (remember this is the same Windows application, just the look changes).

In future postings I'll discuss:

• Some of the ministry requirements that went into the system
• The check-in cards that we used
• Kiosk technology that we selected
• More details about the application
• The process of rolling out the system
• Reporting features built into the system
• Lessons-learned
• Future features