Issues with Check-In Look-ups and Duplication of Entries

[tomchicago]

We finally launched off our check-in kiosks after a lot of prep work.
Now we are finding issues when checking children in and quirks that result in a lot of erroneous entries in the main PowerChurch Plus membership profile database.
Here are some real-life scenarios that were uncovered:

• The Check-In system provides only one way to search, & that is using the guardian’s name. They cannot search for the child’s name, & so when there is a different last name (which I would guess is anywhere from 25%-50% of the time), they add the new unit.
• The system also requires that the child be in the same “household unit” as the one dropping them off. So when someone other than the parent drops them off, they have to add that person to the same household as the child even though this person is already in the database. For example, Danny Aguayo drops off his nephew, but since they are not in the same household unit (although technically they live at the same address), the children’s worker had to add Danny to Ruth’s household so now Danny is in the database twice. This is the same situation with Damien Reyes/Addison Lopez. In this case, the guardian & the child are not even related. This is also the case with Anthony Salgado/Carmen Galvan, who are related but don’t live in the same place. Right now, the only way I can think of to accommodate this is for the workers to continue adding these duplicates & for me to go in every Monday & tag these duplicates so that they don’t appear in our directories, mailing lists or other reports. But they’ll still be in the database. I’m making full use of the “Notes” sections so that the original & the duplicates can be distinguished, but over time I imagine the database might get very complicated.

This has the potential of becoming a nightmare over time when there are so many 'unconventional' guardian/child relationships....something not that unusual for us in our Chicago urban environment.

SOMEONE - Please help us or let us know that this program is going to be improved upon!
Otherwise, I could be faced with running a separate instance of PCP and Check-In on a totally different server system...which would not be an elegant solution.

[NeilZ]

We finally launched off our check-in kiosks after a lot of prep work.
Now we are finding issues when checking children in and quirks that result in a lot of erroneous entries in the main PowerChurch Plus membership profile database.
Here are some real-life scenarios that were uncovered:

• The Check-In system provides only one way to search, & that is using the guardian’s name. They cannot search for the child’s name, & so when there is a different last name (which I would guess is anywhere from 25%-50% of the time), they add the new unit.

I'm running it during our VBS this week,and I'm able to pull up kids and parents using just the last name during the Check-In procedure.

• The system also requires that the child be in the same “household unit” as the one dropping them off. So when someone other than the parent drops them off, they have to add that person to the same household as the child even though this person is already in the database. For example, Danny Aguayo drops off his nephew, but since they are not in the same household unit (although technically they live at the same address), the children’s worker had to add Danny to Ruth’s household so now Danny is in the database twice. This is the same situation with Damien Reyes/Addison Lopez. In this case, the guardian & the child are not even related. This is also the case with Anthony Salgado/Carmen Galvan, who are related but don’t live in the same place. Right now, the only way I can think of to accommodate this is for the workers to continue adding these duplicates & for me to go in every Monday & tag these duplicates so that they don’t appear in our directories, mailing lists or other reports. But they’ll still be in the database. I’m making full use of the “Notes” sections so that the original & the duplicates can be distinguished, but over time I imagine the database might get very complicated.

I've been seeing something of the sort ... I would like to be able to check in someone using the check-in not of same household (or something like that) but at that lookup, it will not find a child, but brings me to the enter new family screen. I have no problem with that, as I'd like to have the actual parent's information, but if the child is in the system somewhere, the name should be pulled up.

This has the potential of becoming a nightmare over time when there are so many 'unconventional' guardian/child relationships....something not that unusual for us in our Chicago urban environment.

SOMEONE - Please help us or let us know that this program is going to be improved upon!
Otherwise, I could be faced with running a separate instance of PCP and Check-In on a totally different server system...which would not be an elegant solution.

[Zorak]

When you look up anyone, whether it is parent/spouse/child or anyone else living in the same household, you will come up with everyone in that household that can be checked in. It expects that the parent will be the one checking the child in, but you certainly can look up the child's name instead.

When you bring up the person, there is a "Check in non-family member" button to check in someone from another household.

It sounds like you might benefit from giving us a call in technical support with some of these questions.

[NeilZ]

When you look up anyone, whether it is parent/spouse/child or anyone else living in the same household, you will come up with everyone in that household that can be checked in. It expects that the parent will be the one checking the child in, but you certainly can look up the child's name instead.

That's the result I'm seeing.

When you bring up the person, there is a "Check in non-family member" button to check in someone from another household.

Maybe I tried something wrong, I'll check it out tonight to see what happens and jot down what I find.

[tomchicago]

Our bookkeeper also manages PowerChurch for the membership profiles along with the accounting data.

We have a lot of instances like this: a family becomes part of the church - the husband and wife have different last names (certain cultural traditions...). The children may have either of the last names. In some situations with blended families, three or four different last names (kids may have father's last name from a previous marriage).
Layer on top of this grandma/grandpa or aunt/uncle involved at the church and at times taking care of the kids.
Layer on top of this single moms with kids who have a different last name from some other father and relatives with different last names involved with the kids.
Bring all of this to the check-in station and wow.

I think what we were remarking on earlier is that with these kinds of interrelationships and if in fact they have already been established in the membership profiles, doing a check-in search by the child's Last AND First name would be effective if it pulled up the names of those in the system already established in a guardian relationship and if there, select the person doing the check-in.

We have a lot of units that share common last names, so the list to look at and scroll through when doing the last name search can be a hassle for the check-in person when a crowd of people are trying to get checked in.