Where check-in settings live (and which one wins)

Check-in’s flexibility is its superpower and, at first, its most confusing feature: the same setting seems to appear in three places. The trick is knowing that settings live in four layers, and which layer wins. Learn this once and every check-in question becomes easy.

The four layers

1. Hubb defaults sit underneath everything, so check-in works out of the box with nothing configured.
2. Check-in Global Settings (under Site Settings > Events) come next: your site-wide starting point, in two halves. The overrideable settings, like the default profile, leader term, kiosk background, security mode, leader password and open/close times, apply everywhere unless a group or event overrides them. The site-wide-only settings at the end of the page, the label logo, the MADI field, the child number field and the group for one-off guests, apply everywhere full stop.
3. Check-in Group settings override the layer above, inheriting down the group tree: a setting on a group applies to its child groups and their events unless something below overrides it again. This layer is where the real work belongs, because a setting placed on a group travels with it: set the crèche group’s profile once, and every event the crèche is ever checked into uses the right profile automatically.
4. Event Check-in settings sit on top, for things that are genuinely about one event or series: which groups check in, and any one-off overrides.

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The gotcha: stored values

1. Three settings, the check-in profile, the open time and the close time, get frozen per check-in group the first time attendance tracking or a kiosk is launched for an event. Every later kiosk for that event uses the stored values, which keeps multiple kiosks consistent, and also explains the classic mystery: “I changed the profile but the kiosk hasn’t changed.”
2. To unfreeze them, open the event for editing, go to its Check-in Groups tab, find the group’s row and click the orange reset arrows. The next launch looks the values up fresh through the layers, then stores them again.

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Good to know

• The rule of thumb for where a setting belongs: site-wide identity (logo, MADI field) in Global Settings; anything about how a type of group behaves in that group’s settings, via its profile; and only genuine one-offs on the event.
• A profile can technically be set at any layer, which is exactly why we recommend always setting it on the group: one home, no surprises.
• If check-in is only for your children’s work, you can disable check-in at the global level and enable it just on the children’s groups, which keeps the rest of your calendar out of the kiosk list.