It's been awhile since we lifted our heads up from our computers and we are excited to share some of our recent improvements! Here are some of the highlights.

Auto-filled Locations

We introduced a new way we handle auto-filling locations. It used to be that if only one location would match your profile, it would auto-fill your location and prepare your check in. However, since many parents don't need to be checked in, that didn't work very well.

We changed this so that if you've never been checked in before, you will be auto-filled to a location, but not auto-selected. That means for new people, you'll need to simply click the checkbox next to their name.

We also remove the prepared check if a person hasn't checked in after two weeks.

Stronger Location Restrictions

We realized that if you added an age restriction on your location, you used to be able to check in if you had no birthday. Yikes! So, we've updated how the location filters work. Now, an attendee must have a birthday to check into a location with age restrictions. Grade restrictions have been updated similarly. Nobody can squeeze through without having the right data.

Adult Supervision Required

The "check in by" setting used to include all members of a household. Which meant that Jeff, the adult, could be checked in by Emily, the infant. That's a lot of responsibility for a 1 year old.

Now the list only shows adults. If you're still seeing children in the "checked-in by" section, edit their profile and set them as a child.

Design Changes

Speedy Station Access

Now, the "Become station" button is accessible from every page. This should make it a bit easier if you're making changes on an event, and you want to jump to station mode to test it out. When you click the "Admin" button on the bottom in a Station, it'll bring you back to the page you were on.

But what about mobile, you ask? It's still there, in the handy dandy options menu:

Easy Attendee Access

The majority of the time when you go to the people page, you need to access the attendees instead of the administrators. So, we've swapped them.

Better "Guts"

Check-Ins was built on a web framework that is no longer being maintained. Thankfully, we have a healthy development culture here at PCO, so we are able to step back, evaluate, and remove things that aren't working. For you, that means we'll be able to focus more on what we really love doing — building new features!

If you're a geek who's interested in the techy side of PCO, we talked more about this decision on this blog post (towards the bottom).

Onward!

We love churches, and we love what we do. Now that these updates are out the door, we are working on some big updates we're not quite ready to mention. We'll bring you those reports as they happen. #wink