The Check In Feature is a feature that allows you to bring a reservation and queue managing system into your app. With it employees can add customers to a queue and customers can check in once their waiting time is over.

In this article we’ll go over a couple of ways that the feature can be used in different types of apps, how to set it up, how it’s used within your app, some pro tips that we think will help, as well as links to a couple of related articles. First let’s go over some of the use cases for the Check In Feature feature.

When you think of an app that could benefit from a queue management system, chances are you immediately think of a Restaurant App. The Check In feature is perfect for sit down restaurants to manage guests who are waiting to be seated. Some additional use cases of this feature could be:

As we mentioned earlier, the main function of the Check In Feature is to give your app’s administrators and employees a way to manage a queue for waiting visitors or customers, and a way for those people to see their place in the queue. First let’s go over how to set it up, then we’ll go over how it’s used within your app.

Setting up the Check In feature is extremely easy! Once added to your app there’s two things you need to do. If you don’t know how to add a feature to your app we encourage you to check out this article. The first thing that you need to do is to enable the settings that you want to use in the feature. The settings that you can enable are:

Activate push notifications/SMS

Enabling this will allow automatic push notifications to be sent to the customer once certain parameters have been met. The automatic notifications that you can enable are:

Allow parties

This setting allows customers to make reservations with a party of people ranging from one to six members.

The second part in setting up the Check In feature is assigning the user tag “admin” to all of the users that you want to give access to the admin side of the feature in your app. We’ll go over this part of the feature in just a moment. If you don’t know how to assign a user tag to a user in the App Dashboard, then we encourage you to check out this article. This means that all employees and managers that need access to the admin side of the feature will need to have their own in app profiles. If you don’t know how to set up in app profiles then we recommend you check out the article we just linked to above.

Once you’ve enabled the settings for the feature that you want and assigned the admin role to at least one of your employees or managers with the “admin” user tag, the Check In feature is all set up and ready to be used. Next let’s go over how it’s used within your app.

There are two different user types for the Check In feature. These are Admins and Customers.

Admins are employees or managers who have been assigned the “admin” user tag which gives them access to controls in the feature that allow them to add customers to the queue, along with other control options.

Customers are given access to information in the feature such as their place in the queue and an estimated wait time. Here is how a typical reservation is made:

The Customer either calls ahead or shows up in person to place a reservation. The Admin then opens the Check In feature on their phone and taps on the plus button in the lower right hand corner of the app:

They then record the Customer’s name, phone number, and email address, as well as party size (if the “Allow parties” setting is enabled). Once that information is recorded they tap “Add To Queue”:

The Customer will then be able to see their place in the queue, the estimated wait time, their status, and when they were added to the queue:

If they need to cancel their reservation all they need to do is tap on “Need to leave?” then verify that they want to leave:

Once they tap on “Confirm” they will be removed from the queue on the Admin side of the feature. When the Admin is ready to admit the Customer they will tap on the three vertical dots next to the Customer’s listing in the queue:

This will bring up the options to “Accept” which marks the Customer as checked in, “Eject” which removes the Customer from the queue, “Mark Late” which notifies the Customer that they’re late and need to check in soon, and “Call” which allows the Admin to give the Customer a call at the provided phone number:

Congratulations! You now know how to set up the Check In feature as well as how it’s used within your app for both Admins and Customers. Next we’ll go over some Pro Tips that we think will help you utilize this awesome feature.

Having worked with apps for years, we’ve learned a thing or two. So, to both help your app stand out and help you take full advantage of the Check In Feature, here are some tips you should consider.

Pro Tip 1: Add it to your side menu

While you can place this feature in your app anywhere, we recommend adding it to your side menu for quick and easy access. Assuming that people will want to make reservations on a regular basis, it makes sense to put the feature in a place that can be accessed anywhere within your app. If you would like to learn more about the Side Menu you can do so in this article.

Pro Tip 2: Limit who has Admin access to the feature

While it may be tempting to add all of your employees and managers as admins so that anyone can help customers make reservations, we recommend that you limit that level of access to just the employees who deal with incoming customers directly. This helps prevent customers from accidentally being added or removed from the queue.

In addition to this article, we recommend checking out the following related articles so that you have a better insight into how to best use our system:

Still have questions? No problem! Reach out to us and we’d be happy to help :)