How Do Kiosk PINs Work on Vome?

How Do Kiosk PINs Work on Vome?

1. What is a Kiosk PIN?

A Kiosk PIN is a personal code assigned to each user within your organization. Instead of searching for their name on an attendance kiosk, a user simply types their PIN on the PIN pad to pull up their own profile.

Once the PIN identifies them, every kiosk action works exactly as it normally would, including check in, check out, drop-in, and log hours.

PINs are unique within your organization. A user who belongs to more than one organization has a separate PIN for each.

2. How do I turn on Kiosk PINs for my organization?

Kiosk PINs are governed by an organization-wide policy. To set it up:

  • Open Manage Attendance Kiosks.
  • Click the Kiosk PIN sign-in banner at the top to open Kiosk PIN settings.
  • Turn on Enable kiosk PINs for this organization.
  • Choose your PIN format and visibility settings.
  • Save.

From the moment the feature is enabled, every new user is automatically assigned a PIN in the format you defined.

3. What format can PINs use?

You control the format through two settings:

  • PIN character set, with the options Digits only (0-9), Letters only (A-Z), Letters and numbers, or Any characters (no restriction).
  • PIN length, which sets exactly how many characters a generated PIN contains. The default is 4.

The Any characters (no restriction) option is intended for organizations importing PINs from another system that want to allow arbitrary values without format checking.

If you change the character set or length later, existing PINs are left alone. They are not regenerated or removed, even if they no longer match the new format.

4. Can users see their own PIN?

That is up to you. The setting Users can see their own PIN on their profile controls this.

  • When enabled, a user can view their PIN for your organization on their own profile.
  • When disabled, the PIN is hidden from the user's profile view.

A user who belongs to multiple organizations sees each organization's PIN separately, and only for the organizations that allow it.

5. Can I generate PINs for users who already exist?

Yes. At the bottom of the Kiosk PIN settings, check Generate PINs for all current users when I save, then save.

  • Only users without a PIN receive one. Users who already have a PIN keep it unchanged.
  • The generation runs in the background, and you will receive a notification when it finishes telling you how many new PINs were generated and how many users already had one.
  • If your chosen PIN length is too short to produce enough unique PINs for your organization's size, generation stops and the notification tells you to increase the PIN length before running it again.

6. Where does a PIN live, and can I edit it manually?

A PIN is a field on each user's profile, so you can manage it like other profile data.

To edit one user's PIN, open their profile and select Edit kiosk PIN. From there you can type a specific PIN or click Generate new PIN to rotate it. A manually entered PIN must follow your organization's format and cannot already be used by another user.

You can also bulk-import PINs from a spreadsheet using Mass import, where Kiosk PIN is available as a mappable column. On import:

  • Numeric values are accepted and stored as text.
  • A value that does not match your PIN policy is skipped for that row rather than failing the whole import. This does not apply when the character set is Any characters.
  • A value that duplicates another user's PIN is skipped for that row.

Kiosk PIN is also available as a sortable column on the Database page.

7. How do I decide whether a kiosk shows a PIN pad?

Each kiosk decides this on its own, independent of the organization-wide policy. In a kiosk's settings, open the Kiosk PIN pad section and choose one of three modes:

  • Disabled, which shows name search only and no PIN pad.
  • Additional, which shows both the PIN pad and the name search.
  • Only, which shows only the PIN pad and hides the name search.

Because this is per kiosk, different kiosks in the same organization can use different modes.

8. How does the PIN pad interact with the Name visibility setting?

The kiosk's Name visibility setting governs how the name search behaves, so it applies only when the name search is shown.

  • In Disabled mode, only the name search is used, so the name-visibility options fully apply.
  • In Additional mode, both appear, and the name-visibility options apply to the name search.
  • In Only mode, the name search is hidden, so the name-visibility options do not apply on that kiosk.

When a kiosk is set to Only, the Name visibility section shows a note explaining that the PIN pad has replaced name search on that kiosk.

9. How does a user sign in with their PIN at the kiosk?

On a kiosk where the PIN pad is shown, the user sees a pad headed Enter your PIN with number keys, a Clear key, a backspace key, and a Find me button. The user types their PIN and selects Find me. When the PIN matches their profile, the kiosk identifies them and the standard kiosk actions proceed exactly as they would after picking the person from the name list.

On a kiosk in Only mode, the PIN pad is the only way to self-identify. On a kiosk in Additional mode, the user may either type their PIN or use the name search.

10. What happens if the PIN matches but the user is not on a shift?

The kiosk greets the user by name and explains the situation, for example: "Hi Alice, we found your profile, but you haven't been added to a shift on this kiosk yet. You can join an existing shift or start a drop-in below." Options to join an existing shift or start a drop-in shift appear beneath the message.

11. What happens if the PIN does not match anyone?

The kiosk shows the message: "No user found with that PIN. Try again."

12. Can I include a user's PIN in an email?

Yes. When composing a one-off email, sending a bulk email, or saving an email template, you can insert the dynamic variable $kiosk_pin alongside variables like $first_name and $last_name.

When the email is sent, $kiosk_pin is replaced with each recipient's PIN for your organization. If a recipient has no PIN, the variable is replaced with an empty value rather than leaving the raw text in the email.

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