Visitors and contractors
/visitors. Needs module.facilities, which comes with the campus operations
add-on. From 0.21.0.
The front office’s sign-in book. Visitors and contractors sign in and out at a kiosk on the counter, or the office signs them in here. The register then answers the two questions a paper book is kept for: who is in the building right now, and who was here on a given day.
There is no new plan, price or add-on for it. A school with campus operations switches Facilities on under modules and grants the permissions below. No built-in role other than Owner holds them.
The register
Section titled “The register”| Tab | Shows |
|---|---|
| On site now | Everybody signed in and not yet signed out. Print list prints it on its own, for an evacuation |
| Today | Every visit since midnight, signed out or not |
| History | Visits between two dates, searchable by name or company |
| WWCC | Contractors whose Working With Children Check is expiring, expired or not recorded |
| Records | Visitor and contractor records, where a WWCC is recorded and a record can be deleted |
| Settings | Host notification and WWCC reminders. Only with visitor.configure |
A visit that is being held at the office says so on the row until it ends. A visit whose host was not told says so as well, so somebody at the office can pick up a phone instead.
Campus-scoped staff see only their own campus’s visits, the same as the rest of the desk. Visitor records never reach the client or parent portals, search, or any roster sync: a visitor is not a person record.
Signing somebody in at the office
Section titled “Signing somebody in at the office”Sign someone in needs visitor.manage.
| Field | |
|---|---|
| Campus | Required once the school has campuses. Defaults to your campus when you have only one |
| Been here before? | Find an existing visitor or contractor, so their record and WWCC carry over |
| Type | Visitor or contractor |
| Name, company, phone | Company and phone are optional |
| Card number | Optional, for a contractor you are issuing a card to. They can then tap it at the kiosk |
| Here to see | A staff member from the roster. Leave it blank for the front office |
| Purpose | Required |
| Badge number | Optional |
The campus decides which host notification setting applies, whose on-site list the visit is on, and which kiosk can sign it out, so it is settled before anything else happens. A campus you are not scoped to is refused.
Signing out from the register also needs visitor.manage. At the kiosk,
visitors sign themselves out.
Host notification
Section titled “Host notification”On by default. When a visitor or contractor signs in to see somebody, that
staff member is emailed at the address on the roster, through your email
connector. Separately, staff with visitor.view at that
campus get an alert on the desk for every sign-in, whatever this setting says.
A visitor the person they came to see was not told about is a safeguarding question before it is a courtesy, so switching this off is a recorded decision rather than a quiet one:
- It needs
visitor.configure, which is separate from reading or working the register. - It can be set for the whole school and overridden per campus under Settings.
- Every change is recorded in the audit log with the old and new value.
- Every sign-in records whether host notification was on at that moment, so a visit made while it was off says so in the log, not only on a settings page somebody may since have changed back.
- The Visitor arrived email cannot be switched off in email messages. The register setting is the only switch.
The audit entry for a sign-in names the visitor and the host, and is written before anybody is emailed. If the email fails, the sign-in and its audit entry stand and the register shows the host was not told. If the audit entry cannot be written, the sign-in does not happen and nobody is emailed.
A host with no email address on the roster, or a school with no email connector, is recorded as not notified.
Working With Children Checks
Section titled “Working With Children Checks”A contractor’s WWCC is recorded as sighted: somebody with visitor.manage
looks at the card and records the number, the state or territory that issued it
and the expiry date, under Record WWCC on the WWCC or Records tab. Plugboard
stamps who recorded it and when from their own sign-in.
Plugboard does not check a registry. A recorded WWCC means a staff member saw a card, not that the check was verified with the issuing authority. Follow your state’s own verification process where it applies.
The kiosk has no WWCC field. A number a contractor types in themselves would be a record of a claim, not of a sighting.
| Status | When |
|---|---|
| Not required | A visitor |
| Not recorded | A contractor with no number or no expiry recorded |
| Expired | The expiry date has passed |
| Expiring soon | Expires within the reminder notice. The expiry day itself still counts as current |
| Current | Otherwise |
Held at the office, not turned away
Section titled “Held at the office, not turned away”A contractor whose WWCC is expired or not recorded is signed in and held at the front office. The kiosk tells them a staff member needs to see them before they go in, the office gets an alert that stays until somebody deals with it, and the visit is flagged in the register and the audit log.
This is deliberate. Refusing the sign-in would not stop a contractor walking in; it would stop the record of them walking in. The register is the evacuation list, and a person on site who is not on it is the worst failure this feature can have. Some contractors are lawfully exempt, or carry an interstate check or a renewal receipt, and a person at the office can decide that where a tablet cannot.
At the kiosk, a visitor chooses their own type. A contractor who chooses Visitor is recorded as a visitor and is not held. That is true of a paper book too. The office sees every sign-in in the register and the audit log, and is the control.
Renewal reminders
Section titled “Renewal reminders”Once an hour, each contractor whose check expires within the notice period, or
has expired, produces one reminder for each stage and expiry date: an alert on
the desk for staff with visitor.manage at their campus, and an email to the
reminder recipients when there are any. Recording a new expiry date starts the
reminders afresh.
Under Settings, set how many days’ notice to give (30 by default, 1 to 120) and who is emailed. Leave the recipient list empty for desk alerts only. The Contractor WWCC renewal email itself cannot be switched off.
Retention and erasure
Section titled “Retention and erasure”Visits are deleted with the rest of the school’s personal data once they pass its data retention window, whether or not the visitor signed out. A visitor record goes once no visit inside the window refers to it. A school with no data retention window set keeps the register’s history until somebody deletes it.
For an erasure request, delete the visitor on the Records tab. That removes
the record and all of its visits, is recorded in the audit log, and needs
visitor.configure. A staff member’s subject access export lists the visits
they hosted by when and why, never who the visitor was.
Permissions
Section titled “Permissions”| Permission | Allows |
|---|---|
visitor.view |
See the on-site list, today, history and the WWCC tab |
visitor.manage |
Sign people in and out, record a WWCC, add and edit visitor records |
visitor.configure |
Register settings, changing a contractor into a visitor, and deleting a visitor record |
visitor.view and visitor.manage are free Participant
permissions: a receptionist who signs
visitors in is not a paid seat. visitor.configure is Technical. Changing a
contractor into a visitor needs it because a visitor needs no WWCC, which would
otherwise be a way round the hold.
Not yet
Section titled “Not yet”- No pre-registration of expected visitors and no badge printing.
- Not in the mobile app.
- No registry check of a WWCC, in any state.
- Visitors are not included in demo mode.
Troubleshooting
Section titled “Troubleshooting”| Symptom | Cause |
|---|---|
| Visitors is not in the navigation | Facilities is off, the licence does not include campus operations, or you do not hold visitor.view |
| A visit is missing from a campus’s on-site list | It was signed in to a different campus, or to the whole school at a school with no campuses at the time |
| The register says the host was not notified | Host notification is off for that campus, the host has no email address on the roster, the email connector is missing or disabled, or the email failed |
| A contractor was not held although their WWCC has expired | They chose Visitor at the kiosk. Correct the record; changing a visitor’s type needs visitor.configure |
| No Settings tab | You do not hold visitor.configure |
| Nobody received a WWCC reminder email | The recipient list under Settings is empty, so reminders are desk alerts only, or the email connector is not set up |