Sponsor badge scanning system

Instructions for sponsorship administrators

To use the badge scanning system, it has to be claimed in the sponsorship system. This step has to be done by one of the administrators of the sponsorship. Actual scanning of badges at the conference can be delegated to any attendee.

To set up the scanning system, the administrator clicks the benefit inside the sponsorship dashboard (headline “already claimed benefits”, section "Opt-in attendee contact details"), and click the link inside that section. From this resulting page (which you may want to bookmark) you can both assign staff to doing badge scanning and review/download the results of the scanning.

The first thing you need to do, is to assign badge scanning permissions to the people working at your desk. Note that this includes yourself, if you are going to be there. To do this, you add each of these people by entering their email address and adding them. This requires that you use the same email address for them as their registration is made under, and their registration must be completed before they can be added (waitlisted attendees cannot be added until they are confirmed).

It is also required that their registration is connected to a postgresql.org community account. If they registered themselves then this is already done. If they were registered by somebody else, then upon registration they will have received an email with instructions for how to connect their email to their account. This process must be completed before they can be added as a scanner. If they have misplaced this email, they can contact us and we can send a new one.

Once your staff have been added as scanners, a link will show up on their attendee dashboard page. You can also have the system trigger an email sent to them with instructions, which will contain a link they can use without having to be logged in.

Setup instructions for badge scanners

Badge scanning can be done using a native app (recommended on Android), using the built-in barcode scanner of the web browser (safest fallback) or using a web app.

Native scanner app

For android users, this is the recommended way as it is fastest and most reliable. To do this, install the Conference Scanner app from the Google play store.

Once the app is installed, if logged in to the account in the browser, click on the link for Sponsor badge scanning and it should automatically open the app. If it does not open the app, choose Add conference in the menu of the app and copy/paste the link from the registration page.

Note! The link is personal to each person doing registration, so don't share it between different users!

Browser QR code scanner

As long as the browser of the phone is logged in to an account with scanning permissions, using the regular camera app (or Google Lens on android) and letting it open the website pointed to by the QR code in the browser will work to start the individual scanner app. As this is the native functionality of the phone it is very reliable, but a bit slower than the other options.

Web app

Using the link on their registration page, the people doing the scanning will be able to load the scanning webapp.

Note! The link is personal to each person doing registration, so don't share it between different users!

The webapp should work with most modern mobile phones and web browsers. In particular, it should work with Safari on iPhone and with both Firefox and Chrome on Android (Firefox provides a slightly better user experience on this platform for the app, but both work). Other browsers and platforms may work, but have not been tested. In order to make it work, it is necessary to allow "www.postgresql.eu" to access the camera on the phone. In some cases it will by default pick the wrong camera, opting for the “selfie camera”, in which case you should be able to reconfigure that to make it use the appropriate one.

Testing

The instruction email will also contain a link to a testing barcode, and we suggest that you ask all your staff working with the scanning to use that to verify that things work on their device well ahead of the conference.

Scanning

To scan an attendee, scan the QR code on their badge. Note that the scanning works for the code on the badge, and not for the code that’s on the ticket. Once scanned, a dialog with information about the attendee will pop up, and provide you with a chance to enter a note about each attendee as they are scanned. Hit store and the information about the attendee will show up on the administration page and be available for download.

If the same attendee is scanned more than once by different people, they will show up more than one time in the list, each with a different note. If the same person re-scans the same badge, they will get the option to edit the note written for this attendee.

Each attendee has the option to opt-in or opt-out of badge scanning. If an attendee has opted out, an error message indicating this will be shown when the badge is scanned. In this case, no information about the attendee is provided. The attendee will also have a list on their registration dashboard showing which sponsors have scanned their badges

It is possible for an attendee to change between opt-in and opt-out by going back to their registration dashboard page and update the preference. Such a change is immediate, and if they change to opt-in you will immediately be able to scan the badge. Once a badge has been scanned, they can no longer change back to opt-out, so there should be no risk attendee data “disappearing” once it has been scanned.

Badge scanning must only be done with the attendees consent. You may require it for participation in activities of your own, such as for example a raffle you are holding. You may not require it for example for people attending a talk on the sponsor track held by your staff, since that is part of the main conference.

Common issues and questions

"Sponsor badge scanning" does not show up on registration dashboard page

The link to scan only shows up on the registration page after the attendee has been added to the list of scanners. Once this is done, reload the registration page and it should show up at the top.

I get "Attendee not found" when adding a scanner

In order to be given access to the scanning, an attendee must be registered. The matching is done on e-mail address, so a common problem is that the attendee is registered with a different email address than the one being added -- typically using a personal address vs a company address.

I'm getting a "Not found" error when scanning in the browser

When scanning directly with the browser, a 404 error can be returned if the user logged in to the browser does not have permission to scan badges. A common reason for this is that the user is logged in to a different account than the one registered for the conference - such as logged in to a personal account when the registration was done with a company account.

Can a laptop/desktop be used?

The app should also work fine in a lot of regular desktop web browsers. We’ve seen success with sponsors who have a laptop on their sponsor desk and allowing attendees to basically scan their badge themselves by using the laptop’s built-in camera, as another option.