Tracking check ins for a youth center

[sarona_hub]

Hello, I am in the process of transfering the backside of the youth center where I work at to Airtable.
The main thing I wanna use airtable for is as a CRM of sorts, and I have a table where I have all of our contacts, categorized into members, interested (I guess leads of sorts) as well as people we work with, teachers, potential mentors and such.
I would like to use airtable to track when someone comes into the center. Ideally I would like it to be done using a tablet where they enter some id and it automatically adds a date and time of check in in to their record, but if not then it can also be done manually by the staff working at reception.

How do I approace doing something like that? Has anyone used airtable for something similar? As a membership manager for a rec center, youth club or similar things.

I feel like Airtable can be manipulated to a good fit for our center, but I am still confused by some of the features, field types and ways you can use it for things more complicated then simple lists.

[David_Skinner]

You could have a “Visits” table that links to the “People” table. When somebody visits, the receptionist creates a new record in the “Visits” table and links it to the record in the “People” table associated with the person visiting. See the example base I made below. The Check In time is automatically created. I included “Last Visit” and “Number of Visits” fields in the “People” table.

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[sarona_hub]

Wow that is awesome! Exactly the type of thing I was lookin for, and im def gonna implement it to our base.

[kuovonne]

If you want users to be able to check themselves in, you can create a form view for the “Visits” table. You can then share the form so that it is visible in a webpage on the tablet.

There would need to be a few tweaks. For example, for privacy reasons, visitors would probably need to type their names or ID numbers rather than pick from a list. The system is also subject to abuse if visitors do not put in their actual information. (Youth can get a little crazy and put in fake names.) The receptionist would then need to periodically check the visitor list and manually link it to actual people.

[sarona_hub]

sounds interesting, and could definitely take work off of the staff. But unless I’m wrong, theres no way they can type an id or phone and then have it linked to the correct record, right? Only if its done using a list, which like you said is open to abuse.

[kuovonne]

You can have visitors type in an ID or phone, and then have the receptionist link it to the correct record simply by copying and pasting the ID from the data entry field to a linked record field. The receptionist would not have to do a manual lookup.

Visitors could still type in fake names, and the receptionist would have to deal with typos, but it would preserve privacy and reduct the work for the receptionist.

[sarona_hub]

Wait, thats actually amazing! I fiddled around a little bit and I can just set up a tablet with a form for a phone number, and then at the end of the day just copy paste all the submissions and it automatically links if theres a corresponding record for the number. WOW!
Thank you so much.