Setting up the badge printing kiosk is simple to do and only takes 5-minutes.
Pre-requisities
Before you begin, please ensure you have the following:
- Windows 11 laptop, PC, or tablet (Surface Go / Pro)
- Administrator rights to install software
- You’ve downloaded the latest Just Attend Kiosk software version
Installation
Extract the ZIP file that you downloaded and double-click on the Just Attend.MSI installation file
Follow the installation steps in the wizard. Windows may alert you to about the origins of the installation media, please accept these, this isn’t a concern.
Once you’ve completed the installation you’ll notice an icon on your desktop for the kiosk software
Double-click on the icon to launch the kiosk.
You’ll need to launch the software once so that it will build it’s cache folder structure.
Installing the print settings file
By default the print settings file isn’t included in the installation. This is because it’s custom made for each badge printing event. The kiosk doesn’t need one to operate. If it isn’t found, it will use it’s built in standard template for the adhesive backed labels.
Open Windows File Explorer and type in %appdata% into the navigation bar and press enter
The following folders should show
Click into the JustAttendKiosk folder.
Copy the printsettingsv2.json file supplied by us to this location
Restart the kiosk application
If you’re using a custom image background for your badges, please upload them to this location as well.
Setting up the kiosk for use
Now you’ve installed the kiosk software it is important that you connect your peripherals like the printer and QR code scanner.
Launch the application and sign in with your email address and password
Next, select the conference you want to print badges for
Now you’ll enter the admin area of the kiosk and you’ll need to set up each part before launching into kiosk mode
First, Select Your Printer
Now go into Set Camera or Reader and check the box for the reader
Now set an admin PIN number for the machine. This will be used to exit kiosk mode back to admin or to override any invalid tickets or to issue reprints
The conference settings is optional. Here you can name the kiosk for reporting reasons. If untouched it will use the computer name as the default.
If you select Always allow invalid tickets then the kiosk will only check if the ticket belongs to the event being checked-in. It will ignore the ticket entry dates and if the badge has already been printed. We recommend this setting is turned OFF for your live check-in process.
Now you can enter Kiosk Mode
Kiosk mode
Kiosk mode is configured for zero touch use by attendees. If they are in possession of their ticket bar or QR code they can scan it using the reader and the kiosk will print their badge and check them in instantaneously.
Once their badge has been sent to the printer, the kiosk will return to the kiosk home screen ready to check-in the next person.
If the attendee cannot find their ticket, they can search for their ticket using their e-mail address or phone number
Our kiosk is optimized for touch screen use. However, we do recommend using a USB keyboard as it is a more natural experience for attendees in a high pressure situation. Using a physical keyboard will be naturally quicker for people to use when typing in email addresses vs a touchscreen.
You can exit to the admin area at any time by clicking on the Admin button and entering the kiosk PIN.
The following ticket validity checks can be overridden by using the admin code.
- If the ticket scanned is not valid for entry at the time of scan
- If the ticket has already been printed and checked-in
Bulk badge printing
You can use the kiosk software to pre-print your badges in bulk. This might be useful for your VIPs if you want to offer them a more white-glove experience.
From the admin menu, click on Bulk Ticket Printing
From here you can print the badges you need
First select the ticket you want to print in bulk, then select what attendee role within that ticket you want to print (default is all)
For example if you have one event ticket that is assigned to all attendees, speakers, and volunteers and you want to print the volunteer badges only, select the ticket, then uncheck all attendee types except volunteer.
By default the bulk printing will not print our badges of people who already are checked in. But if you want to, you can check the inc. already checked in option to print them regardless.
If you want to print the badges but not check people in, check the Don’t check-in, just print option. This is useful if you want to use the mobile app to check people in and issue them a pre-printed badge.
Bulk printing will split the filtered results into print buckets of 10 badges per run. You must select which bucket to print. The reason for this is that if something goes wrong with the printer, perhaps the paper is not aligned or the design isn’t quite right, you’re only going to waste 10 badges instead of potentially 1,000’s!
Badges are printed in alphabetical surname order. Exhibitor tickets are grouped together by exhibitor name to make it easy for you to print an exhibitor’s group badges.
Troubleshooting
The kiosk will log everything is does to the log files located in %appdata%\JustAttendKiosk\Logs folder
Application logging is logged in the JAKiosk.txt file and the registration check-ins are logged in the registrations.txt file.
We recommend you delete the JAKiosk log file between events to make it easier for you to troubleshoot.
If any problem occurs, please email [email protected] with a description of the issue and attached the JAKiosk.txt log file to the ticket.
What can cause slow check-ins
If you’re experiencing slow check-ins where the software appears to be running slow then this can be down to a few of situations:
- The internet connectivity is slow and the ticket being scanned is not yet in the local cache of the kiosk
- The kiosk has lost it’s internet connection. Maybe the venue portal wifi access token has expired
- Your kiosk machine has a problem with the network adapter driver or hardware.
The latter issue we have only experienced once whereby the machine being used had a hardware fault its network adapter that caused intermittent connectivity drops.
Reliability and resilience
The kiosk software is extremely fast and reliable. It is built purposefully for speed and environments where the internet connectivity is inconsistent.
It will download all entries to its local cache every 30 seconds. Any check-in validation is performed locally rather than by ‘calling home’ to the server.
As you can see from the log above, from scan through validation, and sending it to print takes 4 milliseconds.
Once printed it will add the ticket to its pending outbound queue to logs the check-in and print with the server. Here you can see that our system from scan to badge print in hand takes 5 seconds.
