Queue management for events, hiring days and accreditation
An event queue has one job the everyday kind does not: it has to survive a rush that lands in the first hour and then never happens again. Guests scan a QR poster at the door, take a number on their own phone and spread out around the venue instead of forming a line. You pay for the days the event runs, not for a month.
What an event queue has to survive
A clinic sees its visitors spread across ten hours. An event sees most of them in the first sixty minutes, and then the room empties. Everything that makes event queueing awkward comes from that shape.
- The peak is the whole story. Average wait is a useless number here. What matters is how many people are standing in the hall at ten past nine.
- Nothing can be installed. A hired hall gives you power, a screen if you are lucky, and a door. Anything that needs mounting or cabling is out.
- Everyone shares one network. Hundreds of phones behind one address look like one determined person to any sensible rate limit.
- There is no quiet Tuesday to test on. The first real use is the event itself.
The fix is mostly paper and screens you already have: a printed QR poster at the door, a board on whatever display the venue provides, and the guests’ own phones as the ticket terminal.
Four kinds of event day
They look different from the stage and almost identical from the queue.
| Day | What the crowd does | What the queue has to do |
|---|---|---|
| Guest check-in and accreditation | Arrives in one wave at the announced start time | Absorb the wave, spread people around the venue, keep the desk visible |
| Hiring days and interviews | More candidates than the lobby holds, each visit is long | Give an honest wait, let people sit elsewhere, show who is next |
| Volunteer selection | Several desks and several stages in a row | Walk a person from desk to desk and show where the jam is |
| Admissions season | A handful of hot days, then nothing | Run for exactly those days without a monthly commitment |
In all four, the win is the same and it is not the numbering. It is that a person with a number on their phone stops being a person standing in a corridor. They sit down, find a coffee, take a call, and the notification reaches them when the desk is ready.
The event day, step by step
- 1The day before: build and printCreate the queue, name it the way it appears on the invitation, and enter how many people you expect. Print the QR poster on an ordinary printer, one sheet for the entrance and one for the waiting area. Open the board on the screen the venue gave you and press the speaker button once so numbers are announced out loud.
- 2Doors open: the waveGuests point a camera at the poster and get a number. Staff at the desk add anyone without a phone in one tap. A tablet by the door works as a kiosk, with a printed paper ticket if you want one.
- 3The first hour: watch the desks, not the clockThe dashboard shows how many are waiting and how long serving is taking. That is your cue to open another desk, or to put one on a break with a stated reason so the wait estimate stays honest.
- 4Midday: keep the estimate truthfulThe wait shown to guests counts the desks that are staffed right now. When half the team goes to lunch the minutes grow at once, and if nobody is left people see that service is paused rather than a number that is a lie.
- 5Evening: close the dayBy hand or on a schedule. Numbering starts from one the next morning with a fresh quota, which is what you want for a two or three day event.
The venue Wi-Fi problem
This is the failure people do not see coming. At a venue the crowd shares one network, so to a server they are one visitor. Ordinary protection starts refusing tickets after a couple of dozen in a minute from that address, and the seventh guest is told they already have too many open tickets.
Shared Wi-Fi at the venue, on the Business plan, is the switch for exactly this. It raises the limits for one queue, for up to three days, and counts live tickets per phone instead of per address. It will not switch on without a daily quota or a room capacity set, because raised limits with no ceiling are how a queue gets flooded.
What it does not do
Worth being blunt. The per-phone count relies on a marker the browser sends, and a determined person can change it: it protects honest guests from double-tapping, not against somebody set on abusing your queue. If a photograph of the poster in a group chat would be a real problem, the rotating QR code on Business Pro is the answer. The code on the board changes every thirty seconds and a scan gives ten minutes to take a ticket, so a number can only be taken by somebody standing in front of your screen.
Several desks, several stages
A guest check-in is usually one stop. An accreditation or a hiring day is three, and the queue should carry the person between them rather than making them start again at each desk.
- Make each stage a service. Document check, interview, badge pickup: each gets its own ticket prefix, so a glance at a number tells staff where that person is in the process. Services are on the Business plan.
- Tie desks to stages. A desk is only offered tickets for the stage it handles. Leave a desk unassigned and it serves everybody, which is what you want for the opening rush.
- Watch where the jam builds. Waiting counts per stage tell you within minutes whether to move a person from interviews to document checks.
2 desks run on the free plan. 10 fit the Business plan, and30 fit Business Pro, which is also what an event pass includes.
Paying for days instead of months
A three day hiring campaign and a monthly subscription are an awkward fit. The event pass exists for that: a term of 1 to 14 days, paid once, with nothing renewing afterwards.
| Event pass | Monthly subscription | |
|---|---|---|
| Term | 1 to 14 days | A month at a time |
| Payment | One payment, nothing renews | Renews until you stop it |
| What you get | Business Pro features and the service points you paid for, from 30 | Business Pro from $79 a month for 30 service points |
| Worth it when | The event is shorter than two weeks | The queue keeps running after the event |
The price is a share of a month of Business Pro with the same number of service points. A day of a pass costs more than a day of a subscription, because you need all the desks at once and only for a moment, and there is a floor: short passes all sit at about a third of a month, so a one day event and a five day event cost the same. A pass is never more expensive than a month, which is the point at which you should simply buy the month.
Service points are the only thing counted. Queues, staff accounts and guests are not, so a second registration line or a fourth person on the rota does not change the price.
Rehearse before the doors open
The most useful thing you can do is run the whole thing once, with your own team, in an empty room. When you sign up, Business Pro is switched on for 5 days and no card is asked for, which is enough to build the setup and walk through the day.
- Take a ticket from a phone that is not yours and follow it to the end.
- Have each desk press Next once, so nobody meets the operator screen for the first time in front of a crowd.
- Read the board from the furthest point a guest will stand. If you squint, make the layout bigger.
- Test the sound: browsers keep pages muted until a human clicks the speaker, including after a restart.
After the doors close
What is left is the part that goes in the report: how many people came through, how long they waited, when the peaks were, and which desk carried the load. For a hiring day that tells you how many interviewers to book next time; for accreditation it answers how early to open.
If the event is large enough that there is no room for error, the setup can be done with you: the queue built to your scenario, a rehearsal the day before, and somebody on hand during the event days. That is a paid service quoted per job, arranged from the events page.
Common questions
Three things. The whole crowd arrives in the same hour rather than spread across a day, so the peak is the only thing that matters. The venue is temporary, so nothing can be installed, mounted or wired. And everyone is on one shared network, which ordinary queue software reads as a single person trying to grab a pile of tickets. An event queue has to handle all three or it fails in the first twenty minutes.
No. Pointing a phone camera at the QR poster opens the queue in the browser. There is no app and no signup, the ticket page is available in sixteen languages, and it works with VoiceOver and TalkBack. Anyone without a phone is added by a staff member in one tap, or takes a number at a tablet kiosk by the door, which can print a paper ticket.
It is the classic one. Hundreds of guests behind one address look like one very busy visitor, and rate limits start refusing tickets. Shared Wi-Fi at the venue, on the Business plan, raises the limits for that one queue for up to three days and counts live tickets per phone instead of per address. It needs a daily quota or a capacity set, so the raised limits cannot run away with you.
Yes, on the Business plan. Document check, interview and badge pickup become services with their own ticket prefixes, and each desk is tied to the stage it handles, so a desk is only offered its own tickets. A desk with nothing assigned serves everybody, which is what you want for the first hour of an accreditation.
An event pass runs for 1 to 14 days and is paid once, with nothing renewing afterwards. It carries everything the Business Pro plan gives plus the number of service points you paid for, starting at the 30 that plan includes. The price is a share of a month of Business Pro with the same number of service points: short passes sit at about a third of a month, and a pass is never more expensive than a month.
Take the ordinary subscription: past a fortnight it works out cheaper than a pass. Business Pro is $79 a month for 30 service points, with extra ones added one at a time, and you can stop paying when the season ends.