Let outside attendees check in with a booking pin

Every other way of checking in at the panel identifies a person — a QR code, a staff card, a passcode, a face. An attendee from outside your organisation has no account for any of that to match, so none of them work for them.

The booking pin does. It identifies the booking instead: a short code generated when the booking is made, printed in the invitation email, and typed on the panel. Anyone holding it can check in, with no account and nothing installed.

1. Turn on Booking pin as a check-in method

The check-in methods are set once for the whole organisation, on User identify settings. Turn on Booking pin.

Leave at least one other method on. A booking pin only exists once a booking does, so it is never offered to someone walking up to a free room — turn everything else off and walk-in booking stops working, which is what the warning at the top of the page is about.

2. Choose how long the code is

Booking PIN length sets the number of digits, from 3 to 8. Six is the default and a good answer: it is what the panel’s number pad expects and what the email prints.

Shorten it only for a panel people will use in a hurry, and only if you are comfortable that a shorter code is an easier code to guess.

3. Let attendees use the code

This is the step that decides whether an attendee ever sees a pin, and it is easy to miss because it lives somewhere else entirely — on the policy the room uses, not on the check-in settings you just changed.

Open the policy, and on its first page, under Check in/out, check that Allow attendees to check-in / check-out / extend at the booking panel is on. It is on by default — but a policy someone has already tightened is exactly the kind that will have it off.

With it off, the pin goes to the organiser alone and the attendee’s invitation arrives without a code — the room is not broken, the attendee simply has nothing to type. With it on, everyone invited gets it.

While you are on the policy, check that booking email notifications are not disabled on it. If they are, no invitation is sent at all and there is no code to find.

4. Invite them by email

Add the person to the booking the ordinary way, by typing their address into the attendee field and choosing Invite by email. They are recorded as an Outsider — an attendee with no account, and none is created.

5. What the attendee receives

They get a Meeting invitation email carrying two separate things.

The code appears in the body, under “You may use the following code to check in booking”. Where the booking still needs approving, it is shown with “Active after approval.” — it exists, but it will not work at the panel yet.

The calendar invite is attached as a file, so the meeting drops into whichever calendar they use and they can accept or decline from there. Rooms always attach it; desks and equipment attach it only when the policy says to.

6. Checking in at the panel

At the door, the attendee taps Check in. Where more than one method is enabled the panel asks first — Choose authentication method — and the booking pin is the teal tile. Checking in at the booking panel covers the rest of what that screen offers, and why a button can go missing from it.

Then the number pad, with a reminder of where to find the code.

Two things worth knowing before someone asks:

• The same code also checks out and extends, not just checks in. An attendee who needs another twenty minutes can take them at the panel.
• The check-in is recorded against the organiser. The pin identifies the booking, and the booking’s organiser is who the panel credits — so the attendance record will not name the attendee who actually stood there.

7. Check it worked

Book the room, add an address you can read as an attendee, and open the mail. The code should be in the body and the calendar file attached. Type the code at the panel and the booking should check in.

If the mail arrived with no code in it, the cause is almost always step 3 — the toggle is off, or the room is on a different policy from the one you edited.