Sign In App

Developer blog - October

In recent months our developer blog has been a bit quieter than usual as the team worked on and released big updates, such as version 4 of our iPad app, our new companion apps and the contactless features many sites now rely on to operate safely.

While most of the attention is on the major releases, the development team has continued to work on smaller features and improvements that can really make a big difference, often following feedback or suggestions from our fantastic Sign In App community.

In this article we’ll take a look at 15 recent changes to Sign In App that may have flown under the radar;

1. You can now copy a site’s settings when creating a new one

It’s easier than ever to set up a new site using an existing site as a template. When you create a site, you’ll be asked whether you want to start with a blank site or copy the settings from another site. All custom fields, messages and features will be copied. Please make sure to review the options as some text may be specific to the existing site.

2. When visitors or staff agree to a message, send a copy of the signed PDF to members of your team

You can already send PDF copies of agreed messages to your visitors if you take their email address during a sign in. With a recent update, you can now also send a copy to one or more of your team members. Simply toggle on “Email a copy of the agreement to the visitor” in the Message options and then add the “Additional recipients”.

3. For each portal user, you have the option to select which sites they can see

Prior to this change, you could select portal users to have access to a single site, or all sites. To give you more flexibility, you can select individual sites for each portal user to access. To choose which sites a portal user can see, go to Manage > Portal users and click to edit one of your users. The available sites will appear with checkboxes.

4. Personal fields can now appear on the evacuation list in the portal

You’ve always had the option to pick and choose which custom fields appear on the evacuation list. This can be helpful when you need to know a person’s host or contact information in the event of an emergency. When we introduced personal fields for repeat visitors (such as staff) you told us you wanted the option to show these too. This month we’ve started rolling out these new features starting with the portal. For each personal field you can select it to show on the evacuation lists in the portal with app support coming soon.

5. When setting up an Azure AD synced group, you have the option to exclude photos

Depending on your site and circumstances, you may not wish to show photos of your repeat group members such as staff or students. In those instances you can now opt to exclude photos from the sync process. For synced groups with photos turned off, a placeholder icon will appear instead. These options appear when creating the group.

6. Pre-registration emails now have a customisable subject line

In the group options for a standard visitor group, you can customise the contents of a pre-registration email to include specific instructions or information. The one part you couldn’t customise was the subject line - until now. This new option is especially useful if you would like to choose between whether the site name or account name shows in the subject.

7. Attach documents to pre-registration emails

In addition to customising the subject line, you can also now add attachments to your pre-registration emails. This can include important health and safety information, pre-arrival documentation or company information. As this can be customised for each visitor group, it’s easy to provide specific information for each type of visitor ahead of their arrival.

8. Easily see who has companion app connected

With more and more staff using companion app to sign in both on site and remotely, it’s more important than ever to know who’s successfully set the app up and is ready to sign in. We know you need tools to help manage companion app use, so we’ve started with a simple icon that shows you at-a-glance who’s got the app connected.

9. Set a different retention period for visitor photos

Data retention options in Sign In App allow you to quickly and easily control how long data is retained on a group by group basis. With this latest change, we’ve taken it one step further. Because we know visitor photos may be a more sensitive classification of data, we’ve added the option to set a different retention period for visitor photos, giving you more control than ever before.

10. Contactless now checks you’re ready to leave site

Since its introduction earlier this year, contactless sign in (via the iPad or Sign In Points) has proven to be one of our most popular features, providing a safe and secure method for signing in that’s key to many sites. Following user feedback, we’ve added a simple check when tapping the sign out button at the end of a sign in, just to make sure guests are really leaving the site. Just another example of a small tweak to improve the user experience.

11. Configure and enforce your password policy

Portal users have access to sensitive visitor information, so it’s important to make sure everyone has a secure password and authentication options enabled that are appropriate for your site. With this update you can now set password expiry, prevent password reuse and even enforce 2FA (Two factor authentication).

12. Name your notification rules

Notification rules are a powerful way to stay up to date with who’s on site. The flexibility of the advanced filters allows you to set up notifications based on the answers to questions or site occupancy as people sign in or out of site. With so many ways to use notifications, we wanted to give you a better way to organise the rules you have set up. You can now name each of your rules to help understand at a glance what each rule does.

13. Set up ‘greater than’ or ‘less than’ notification rules

In addition to naming rules, you can also now use ‘greater than’ or ‘less than’ logic when setting up advanced filters. Perfect for generating a notification based on a temperature field or site occupancy limit (e.g. When temperature is greater than X).

14. See more information about your synced groups

Information such as last sync date/time and any filters that have been applied now appear directly above the group member list. This can help when troubleshooting as you’ll know exactly when the data was last copied across and which groups we’re syncing with. If you have a group member who isn’t showing, this information can help us understand why.

15. Access group members using the client API

Our client API is continuing to grow and it’s great to see the different ways in which the information is being used, from custom reports to digital signage and dashboards, there are lots of different ways to extend your Sign In App experience using the client API. Our most recent change introduces the ability to pull a list of repeat group members ( i.e. staff) and all of their associated information such as QR codes and RFID tags.

If you have suggestions for improvements, please let us know. While we can’t promise to implement every idea, we love hearing your feedback. We take everything onboard and if there are changes which will benefit the Sign In App community, you may find your suggestion included in a future update blog!

If you’d like help implementing any of the above new features, please contact the customer experience team at support@signinapp.com.