Managing details of visiting children

Managing visitors

The Check-In system makes it easy to securely collect basic details about visiting children and parents/carers and record their attendance at your various events and gatherings.

Visitors are not immediately added to the Children module. Instead, when a visiting child is checked in, their details are added to a separate Visitors section in the module. A visitor data retention period is set in the Children module's settings (see later) and a daily automated housekeeping task purges data for visitors who have not checked in for the retention period. While this process purges visitor contact details, visitor child names are retained against historic group attendance data.

Multi-site customers

Visitors are added to the same Site as the session into which they were first checked in. Suppose that a visitor attends a session for a different site in the future. In that case, they are checked in as a new visitor to that site, meaning that when viewing the Visitors list as "All Sites", you'll see them listed separately for each site they registered/attended.

From the Visitors section, you can Edit or Delete a visitor or Add child to add them directly to the Children module. Adding a visitor as a child removes the Visitor profile but retains the child's details and historic group attendance against the new child profile.

Like children, visitors have a profile. Click on a visitor's Name in the list above to view their profile. From here, you can Edit, perhaps, to add further information. Subject to your Data Protection Policy, you can Add child to the Children module, which removes the Visitor profile and retains the child's details and historic group attendance against the new child profile. Recent attendance for each visitor is also listed on their profile page.

From the Visitors section, you can easily communicate with the parents/carers of selected visitors using the batch Actions to Send email or Send SMS.

You can further filter the Visitors list using Search and Advanced Search - ideal for identifying new and recent visitors or those who have checked in multiple times, for example.

Top Tip! Welcoming visitors more effectively...

Whenever a visiting parent or carer completes the Visitor check-in process and submits personal data about their visitor child, a confirmation email is always sent to the parent's or carer's email address (if an email address is supplied on the Visitor form). That confirmation email contains full details of the personal data that was submitted.

However, you might prefer to send a more welcoming message to your visitors. This can easily be done by creating a Preset 'visitor welcome' email and setting it as the "Success" Confirmation Email. ChurchSuite will automatically append the data submission confirmation to the end of your Preset email before sending.

Having created your visitor Preset email, head into the Children module's settings and navigate to the Visitors section on the Check-In Options tab:

to select your Preset Confirmation Email - click Edit to make changes.

Managing visitor data retention

Data Protection legislation provides that organisations should not retain data any longer than needed. This also extends to data that is not being maintained or kept up to date or no longer serves a useful purpose.

ChurchSuite automatically removes visitors after a pre-defined period. When a visitor profile is deleted, a text record of the visitor's name is maintained against their historic group attendance for safeguarding record purposes.

The retention period is shown at the top of the Visitors section:

You can change the visitor retention period in the Children module's settings. To do so, navigate to the module settings and click on the Check-In Options tab.

Scroll down the Connect Options to the Visitor Settings. Set the Delete visitors after setting as appropriate - click Edit to make changes. Note that the date of deletion is related to the date they last checked in, not the date they were first added as visitors. In this way, visitors who return periodically are not unhelpfully removed from the system, making it easier for visiting parents/carers to check their children in when they re-visit without having to re-enter all their details again.

Importing child visitor information

You may find it useful to import your visitor data held in other systems or from past events or groups you've run. This will be useful if you're planning to use the Check-In system and want those previous visitors to be able to check in easily without having to re-enter all their details again. Here's how to import child visitor information.

You can import visitors in CSV file format. The child's first name, last name and date of birth are required fields. The date of birth is required for the Check-In system to determine which groups they should be assigned to when checking in. Make sure that the first row in your CSV file is the header row that contains the field names of each column in your data - these column headings are used to map the data in the CSV file to the various visitor profile fields.

Working within the Visitors section of the Children module, click Import visitors.

Scrolling down the Import visitors page, you'll find useful information about preparing your file in the correct format and ready to import. You can also Download an example file to use as a starting point for your data.

After preparing your CSV file, select Choose file, navigate to the file and select it. Next, click Upload CSV File.

The CSV file data is uploaded (not imported at this stage). A preview of the first five records in the file is shown. Note the CSV Header column, used to choose the Visitor field in ChurchSuite that the data should Import As. Make any changes necessary, noting that any fields with a yellow exclamation mark will not be imported - typically, because the importer doesn't recognise the CSV Header in your CSV file. This can be fixed by selecting the correct field to Import As. Once you are happy, click Import All Records at the end of the list to complete the process.

A summary now lists each visitor's data, ready for import. Any records with a yellow warning triangle have errors detected. Valid rows in your CSV file show with a green tick. Select Edit from the visitor Actions to fix invalid data (or Remove an invalid row entirely).

You can Process valid visitor records at any time. Invalid records will not be processed and will remain in the list until edited and resolved, or removed. You can also Pause an import at any time and Delete an import entirely.

To resume a partially imported or paused import, return to the Visitors section and click on Import Visitors. Incomplete/partial imports are listed on the Imports tab. From the import Actions, select Delete or Resume the import.

During processing, remain on the page until the process is completed. Once completed, you'll be taken back to the Visitors section to see the newly imported visitors alongside any existing visitors.