At school we have a dedicated tablet for visitors with the Vistab software – a fantastic visitor management tool. We asked, they kindly obliged, if the COVID-19 contact tracing questions could be added to their software.
In order to capture this they reset all visitor and contractor information so as to make each one a ‘new person’ for their next sign in event (this is to capture the required information for Level 2 lock down).
It worked really well while it was just staff onsite. However, on Monday, when school reopened it was a different story. It was painful to watch, and it took everyone a long time to sign in. Meaning we had a real problem with a bottleneck of people trying to sign in, both parents & staff at the office. Right where we didn’t want it.
Safe physical distancing became a nightmare as most parents needed help navigating the screens.
So, I had to come up with a solution, fast.
Below is a simple workflow using Google Forms, Sheets & Docs to create a simple QR code.
Note we are using this just for parents, we already have their contact details stored in our student management system.
The form asks for their email for both sign & sign out, this is in order to be able match their data (each time a form is submitted it creates a new line in the response sheet) if you want to use a vlookup formula, or similar, to take it one step further and analyse how long someone was onsite there must be at least one cell with the same data to use for matching functions.
Pros – it is really fast.
Cons
- it is dependent on the parent having their phone (and data)
- iPhone and some later model Android phones can use the camera which recognises the QR code, otherwise a QR/barcode scanner app is required. In saying that QR codes are popping up everywhere & having an app will just become normal.
Instructions:
- Make a copy of the form and the response sheet (the sheet has the QR code formula in it), links at the bottom of this post.
- Open the form and choose SEND
- Select the ‘Link’ icon
- Shorten & Copy the URL code
- Paste the copied shortened form URL into cell A1 on the QR code tab in the response sheet. To prevent any glitches when you copy the QR code to the poster I suggest taking a screenshot (use the PC snipping tool or CMD 4 on a Mac) and paste it back as a static image into the sheet (In my example I’ve used cell C5)
- Associate the form with the sheet
- Navigate to the sheet in your drive. (It will create a new tab called Form Responses 2, but that doesn’t matter)
- Add any other questions you need. For a larger school it would be expedient to add who/what/where/why etc.
💡 Before you copy & paste the QR code onto the poster and print a whole lot of them – remember to test it!
Keep safe, sane & healthy
Copy of Covid-19 Contact tracing form
Copy of Covid-19 Contact tracing form responses sheet
Hot tip 🔥 : Make sure they keep their device open on the ‘submit new response’ so they don’t have to come back to the office to re-scan the code when they leave.