Scan guests at the door
Work the scanner and the guest list through a whole door shift, including offline.
Owned by Door Staff · 8 steps · about 20 minutes
Why this exists
This is the door shift from the staff side, and it is designed around one constraint: the person holding the phone should never have to make a judgement call, and should never be blocked by the network.
Everything a door needs resolves to a verdict plus a reason. Ticket holders scan; guest-list names are searched and checked in; a walk-in a manager vouches for gets an override that is recorded as an override rather than quietly issued as a normal entry. The audit trail is the product here — after the night, the difference between "we let 40 people in on the list" and "we let 40 people in and here is who authorised each one" is the whole point.
Offline is a first-class mode, not a fallback. A venue manager pulls a signed bundle of the night's valid credentials to the device up front; scans queue locally and are pushed back in a batch. The bundle and the push feed carry pass secrets, which is exactly why door staff cannot download them from a browser — it needs a manager session or the reader's own device token.
Before you start
- An employee session (door staff, venue manager or admin) for the scanner.
- An event with issued passes and, ideally, a guest list with entries.
Practise with
| Persona | Password | Note | |
|---|---|---|---|
| door_staff | door@club.test | door123 | the door shift persona |
| venue_manager | manager@club.test | manager123 | the only non-admin who can pull the offline bundle |
| admin | admin@club.test | admin123 | provisions readers and rotates the signing key |
Steps 1–4 — Door Staff
their manual →-
1Open the scanner and select the reader you are working on before the first guest arrives.Expected result The reader picker and a scan surface.Watch out for Selecting the right reader matters: the reader is what defines which zones you are admitting to.
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2Scan credentials one after another and act on the colour. Green: in. Red: read the reason to the guest, do not improvise.Expected result Green with holder and zone, or red with a reason code.Watch out for The same credential scanned twice is red with 'already used'. That is a passback guard, not a system error — the second person holding that screenshot is the problem it exists to catch.
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3For guests with no ticket, switch to the guest list and search by name.Expected result Matching entries with their bucket, their plus-one allowance and whether they are already in.Watch out for Search by the name on the list, not the name on the ID — comps are listed by whoever the promoter invited.
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4Check the guest in, with their plus-ones counted.Expected result The entry flips to checked in and the plus-one count is decremented.Watch out for Plus-ones are an allowance, not a suggestion. Over-admitting here is what makes the promoter's allocation meaningless.
Steps 5–6 — Venue Manager
their manual →Prepares the device for offline work and watches the door from the dashboard.
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5Before the doors open, pull the offline bundle for the event onto the device.Expected result A signed bundle of the night's valid credentials.Watch out for Door staff cannot do this from a browser and should not be asked to: the bundle contains pass secrets, so it needs a manager session or a provisioned reader's device token.
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6Watch the door from the access dashboard during the shift — live scans, reds, and the readers that are actually reporting in.Expected result Readers, recent scans and revocations.
Steps 7–8 — Admin
their manual →Provisions the reader and owns the signing keys behind every credential.
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7Provision a new reader when a device is added, and note the device token it issues.Expected result A reader row with a rotatable token.Watch out for The token is the device's identity. If a device is lost, rotate the token — do not delete the reader, or you lose its scan history.
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8After the night, review the scan log: greens, reds by reason, and every override.Expected result The full scan ledger for the event.Watch out for This is the record you will be asked for when a capacity or a comp question comes up weeks later. It is append-only by design.