Question

Photo of Jeremy Turgeon

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Add On Check In

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The option specified in the title of this post exists in check-in areas as the check-in rule. It sounds like it saves a parent's preferences when checking in their child but doesn't behave this way.

Example: A child who is 3 1/2 wants to check in. This puts him in both Preschool A and Preschool B classrooms, so his parents choose Preschool A. When they come back next week, it asks them again, and so on. Shouldn't this mark their record with a default value? 

The same goes for grades, which seems like an even easier issue. If a child is 6 and chooses Kindergarten, shouldn't it mark their grade as such for future reference?

It seems like the wording of this option should do this but a quick glance of the check-in documentation didn't turn up anything.

Thanks!


  • Photo of Michael Garrison

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     Jeremy,

    I believe the logical disconnect here is that you're referencing check-in groups which are set to check-in by age or grade, and not require group membership. The "Add on check-in" option won't do much for these group types, as far as I know (but see the end of this answer).

    The "Add on check-in" option might better read "Add to group on check-in", as a reminder that it's very specifically designed to work with Groups. Grade is a person attribute, not a group, and likewise classes into which people can check-in are locations rather than groups.

    Here's how I believe that option is actually intended to be used:

    Let's say you are checking in the "Women's luncheon" group, having already configured that group to take attendance, to work with check-in on a schedule, etc. Let's say that this group is set up as you identify, with the "Check-in rule" set to "add on check-in", and that Joy is already a member of the group, but this week she's bringing her friend Faith.

    Joy checks into the group (of which she's already a member) like normal and gets marked as having attended. Then Faith steps up and puts in her phone number. She will also be found and allowed to check in, and be recorded as having been present at this event. But since she wasn't already a member of the group, she'll now be ADDED to the group as a member. That way when someone goes to communicate to all the members of the Women's luncheon group, Faith will be included without anyone having to go into Rock and add her as a member manually. And in future weeks if someone were to fill in attendance on the group manually through either the Group Toolbox or the Group Viewer, Faith will now be marked as either present or absent, now that she's a member of the group.

    It's a slick option, but doesn't seek to do what you're looking for it to do. Those options are prompted every time because (as I understand them), those options COULD change every time the service occurs. Perhaps they chose Preschool A because it's less-populated than Preschool B, but next week that's not the case. And I believe I'm correct in saying that in the normal "by grade" check-in type groups, if a child doesn't have a grade already noted in Rock, they won't be able to check-in to any grade-based check-in groups. The "add to group" option doesn't work here because the normal weekend service check-in type isn't a group-based check-in filter, it's an age or grade-based check-in filter.

    At the risk of speculating, I think that if you left "Add on check-in" selected for an age- or grade-based check in group, they will indeed be added as a member to the group to which they checked in, but since you can't normally see these check-in groups in the Group Viewer, you won't notice the difference.

    Is that any clearer?