Pre-register
Pre-registration moves typing off the reception desk. The guest sends name, firm, and QR target before they exist in the building. We compile the 250×122 face in Cleckheaton — or onto an owned badge from your account — so check-in is clip this bezel, not a kiosk queue.
Lobby products ask the guest to finish a form on a tablet, then push a face over Bluetooth. Our hire path asks you to finish the list before the courier. The crate arrives already named. That is the speed: seconds of clipping, not minutes of typing while the next taxi pulls up.
A known visitor day — clients, candidates, chapter guests — is this workflow. Import or paste. Send magic links so each person sets a QR action. We programme. You greet. The printer stays in the cupboard.
If nobody sent a list, there is nothing to compile. Pre-registration is a habit, not a feature flag. The designer will not invent surnames.
People records, events, and magic links for QR are live on the account. Import a directory, attach people to a date, let visitors pick LinkedIn or a booking URL. Faces update before dispatch or during an active hire window.
That is not an NDA vault. If you need a signed PDF, complete it in the tool you already use, then put the person on the badge list. We will not pretend a tick-box on a kiosk is a contract-lifecycle product we do not operate.
Host notification by Slack or Teams is not a promise on this page. Email between humans still works. When we add pings, this answer will date the change.
The intended next machine is simple: a guest on a Google Calendar or Outlook meeting becomes a People row and a compiled face. Booking tools that emit iCal would do the same. That connector is not live as of September 2026. This paragraph is a spec, not a screenshot.
When it ships, the invite is the ticket and the badge is the stub. Until then, export the attendee names and paste. Do not wait for OAuth to run next week’s visitor morning.
We will not sync desks, parking bays, or occupancy cameras. Those belong to workplace platforms. Our calendar, when it exists, mints badges.
Pre-registration does not abolish the unlisted guest. Order spare badges. Add the name during the hire window. Count them like conference organisers count on-the-door sales.
SMEs that refuse spares will improvise with tape. That is a choice. The hardware cannot expand its own quantity in the foam.
A column in a spreadsheet, twenty-five badges, one greeter. Magic links if you care about QR. Book dates early enough for Cleckheaton to programme and the courier to move.
A recurring reception can buy devices and refresh overnight from the account. Pre-registration is then “the list is in People before 9am,” not a courier. Hire overflow for the annual open day. Same compiler.
Compare kiosk-led pre-reg on vendor sites if your compliance team requires on-prem tablets and document capture. Our speed is the finished face, not a GDPR animation.
How the badge works explains ship-state versus lobby-state in more detail. Integrations lists what tools we will and will not connect. The visitors hub is the pillar for both office and event check-in.
Monday: the organiser pastes twenty-two names, marks four as visitors, the rest as hosts. Magic links go to the visitors for QR. Tuesday morning the box is on the table. Bezels already say Priya, Dan, Marcus. Nobody types at the glass. Coffee happens. That is the product.
If a twenty-third person arrives, the organiser uses a spare from the quantity they actually ordered, updates the face if the hire window is live, and clips. If they ordered twenty-two, they improvise. We will not scold you in the foyer. We will have said “count walk-ins” on the kits page.
A corporate visitor day is the same physics with a different template. Guest bars instead of MEMBER bars. Host faces for the people doing tours. Twenty-five is the size we see most. Fifty if a coach is coming. The visitor-days page is the vertical; this answer is the timing.
Night-before changes are normal. Faces can update before dispatch if we still have the kit. After dispatch, the hire window is the remaining lever. Do not email a new spreadsheet at 23:40 and expect a dawn courier. Physics includes vans.
A tablet demo with one actor looks instant: QR, flash, LED, smile. A real lobby with eight people, a slow Wi-Fi, and a badge that has not been charged since last Thursday is a different film. Ship-state moves the failure to our programming line, where we can see it before you have a queue.
Kiosk pre-reg still wins for true walk-up traffic every weekday, especially if legal wants a signature at the glass. We are not competing to own that glass. We are removing the glass from mornings where the list was knowable.
Group invitations by CSV are the bulk version of pre-reg. Joan describes CSV group invites on their visitor solution page. We already import lists. The difference is whether the next step is a tablet or a crate. Pick based on whether the guests are a cohort or a trickle.
Ad-hoc requests at a tablet — Joan lists QR or typing on arrival — remain the right tool for unexpected couriers. Our spare-badge path is the equivalent for a hire window. Neither path is moral. They are clocks.
Before arrival means the name exists in People or the designer while the kit is still in Yorkshire, or at least before the guest reaches the glass. Magic links let the guest pick a QR destination without standing at a tablet. Import lets the organiser skip guest typing entirely. That is the live stack as of September 2026.
Calendar-created visitor rows are the next stack. They are specified, not live. Do not paste an OAuth screenshot from another product into a tender as if it were ours. The calendar-integrations answer exists so procurement can see the honesty in writing.
Host notification by email or Teams is a workplace-platform feature. We are not that notifier today. If the host must know the guest is in the lift, keep the process you have — a message, a receptionist, a calendar alert from Outlook. Our job is the chest. Mixing jobs is how you buy a second inbox you will ignore.
Legal consent banners on a kiosk are not pre-registration of a badge face. They are a signature capture. If you need them, keep them. They do not require us to become a document vault. The NDA can live in the system you already paid for. The name can live on e-ink.
Walk-ins are the enemy of ship-state. Count them. Add them to quantity. A twenty-five kit with three blanks (or three generic VISITOR bars you rewrite in the window) is cheaper than a kiosk you will use twelve times a year.
Plus-ones appear in visitor-day lists after the coach leaves. If the hire window is live, update. If it is not, a Sharpie on a spare is the honest fallback. We would rather you had the spare.
Unnamed contractors who “always come on Thursdays” are a buy-to-keep pattern: a small owned tray with CONTRACTOR bars, names updated from the account. That is still not a workplace OS. It is a cupboard.
If your building forbids unnamed people on site, ship-state is your friend: no face, no clip. A kiosk that can mint an unknown name at the glass is more convenient and less strict. Pick the strictness you actually run, not the one in a product video.
A magic link lets the guest pick where the QR points before they arrive. LinkedIn. A booking page. A company site. That is live. It is not a substitute for a kiosk consent screen. If legal needs a banner, keep the banner. Do not ask the QR to be a contract.
Organisers who skip magic links still pre-register: the name is in People, the face is compiled, the QR can be a single URL you chose. Both paths are pre-registration. Only one lets the guest choose. Neither path requires a tablet tripod in the foyer.
If the guest never opens the link, you still have a name on a chest. The QR may be a default. That is acceptable. A blank film because someone ignored email is not acceptable — compile the name anyway.
Large firms will route magic links through their own email system. We send a link. Their filter may eat it. Have a paste-the-URL fallback. That sentence is operations, not a delight metric.
We can often take a corrected CSV while the kit is still on Bradford Road. After it is in a van, the remaining lever is the hire window on units we already shipped. Those are different queues. Write the booking reference in the subject line. Do not send a new spreadsheet to a generic inbox without dates.
If two organisers edit People at once, last write wins like any account. Team invites exist so that fight happens in one place. Spreadsheet-in-email plus People plus a hallway whiteboard is how names diverge. Pick one source before we programme.
Chapter mornings we attend still fail this way when a last-minute visitor is added after the crate is taped. We then use a spare or a hire-window update. The spare is cheaper than pretending the compiler is psychic.
Pre-registration speed is measured in foyer seconds stolen from typing. It is not a claim about your entire security posture. Keep your sign-in book if the insurer wants ink on paper. The bezel can still match the line.