As of the 20.1 release in April 2020, the MatrixMaxx Meeting Badge Builder offers the ability to add a QR code to your badge templates. Based on our User Survey in early 2020, this functionality was of interest, so we are introducing it to get reaction and feedback. If response is positive, we will expand it.
What is a QR code?
A QR (Quick Response) code is a type of machine-readable barcode.
QR codes are generated based on agreed-upon industry standards. We have incorporated a Python QRcode library (https://pypi.org/project/qrcode/) into the MatrixMaxx product in order to generate these codes.
To create a QR code, we are (basically) taking a bunch of words/letters/numbers, convert them to binary, and then the zeros become white areas and the ones become black areas. It’s a little more complicated than that, but it’s a purely mechanical transformation from the data we’re encoding to the visual black/white QR image. The key thing to keep in mind: the more data we add to the code, the BIGGER it becomes! So we can only put so much data into a code meant for an attendee badge.
What the QR code contains
In addition to the attendee ID of the individual, the QR code holds the following 5 fields, which we are pulling from the individual RECORD rather than the REGISTRATION (e.g., we are pulling Title from the Individual Record and not the Meeting Badge Title):
- Name
- Title
- Organization name
- Email address
- A ‘note’ which contains the meeting name attached to the registration.
How to add a QR code to your badge
When creating a badge template (see Badge Builder Intro video) you now have a new option to add a QR code. (Janna will cover this in her May 2020 overview session! RSVP to watch it live on May 20th!)
We recommend making the QR code on the badge at least 1×1 inches. To get the QR to an appropriate size that looks good on the badge and is big enough to be scanned, double click the field and adjust the image size.
Before bulk printing your meeting badges, testing this QR code is important! Please print a test badge using the printer, quality, and paper stock you’ll be using — before doing your large bulk run — and verify that the QR code can be properly scanned! If not, you may need to adjust the size of the QR code, the quality of the print setting (QR code require a high print quality), or the paper stock.
How can the QR code be used?
There are 2 key use cases that we considered in coding this first version of QR support …
Attendees sharing contact information
To support the networking that in-person meetings facilitate, attendees may use their phones’ built-in QR scanners to scan each others badges for basic contact info. The 5 pieces of key info (name, title, organization, email, and meeting name) will be saved into a contact record on the user’s phone, and then they can add additional information manually.
Staff tracking ‘attendance’ at Sessions
Association staff may track who attended a session by scanning the badge QR code and selecting an event to associate the attendee with. All the staff member will need is a phone/tablet/device with a camera and an internet connection.
In advance of the session, the staff member should log into the MatrixMaxx meeting module on their device and link to the ‘QR Code Scanner for Event Attendance‘, which is linked from both the main Meeting Report section and also from each individual meeting’s ‘event’ accordion section.
Staff will then be able to follow the on-screen instructions to scan the QR code and associate that attendee with an Event in the meeting. You will be able to see this attendance in the attendee’s registration in MatrixMaxx under a new section called ‘Event Attendance (Scanned from QR)‘
A demo of staff tracking attendance (Timestamp 21.56)