Everyday tasks

For front-desk and student-services staff: adding people, handling photos, and getting cards ordered.

The daily loop

Most days look like this:

1. Check the dashboard. Anything needing attention is at the top.
2. Clear the photo review queue. Approve the good ones, reject the rest with a clear reason.
3. Add new people to an order as their photos are approved.
4. Submit the order when you have a sensible batch, or at a set time each day.

Adding card holders

One at a time

Card holders → Add card holder.

Only first and last name are required. Everything else can be filled in later, but two fields are worth getting right immediately:

• Student or staff ID — must be unique. This is what links the record back to your student system, and what most barcodes encode.
• Card expiry date — drives the renewal reminders and prints on the card.

Custom fields are for anything specific to you — year level, meal plan, room number. They can be printed on the card by referencing them in a template as {{custom.yearLevel}}.

Many at once

Card holders → Import CSV. Export from your student system, upload the file, and check the column mapping.

The importer handles the things real exports contain:

• Excel’s byte-order mark
• Comma, semicolon, tab or pipe separators — detected automatically
• Quoted fields containing commas and line breaks
• 31/12/2027, 12/31/2027 and 2027-12-31 date formats
• Student, STU, learner, S all meaning the same thing

Import modes

Mode	Existing record	New record
Add only	Reported as an error	Created
Add and update	Updated	Created
Update only	Updated	Reported as an error

“Add and update” is what you want for a termly refresh from your student system.

If any rows fail, you get a CSV listing the row number, the field and the problem — fix those rows and re-upload just that file.

Handling photos

Uploading on someone’s behalf

Open their record, go to the Photos tab, and use the uploader. You can drag a file in, choose one, or use the computer’s camera with a framing guide.

Getting people to send their own

Card holders → select people → Send invites. They get an email with a link that expires in 48 hours.

Anyone with no email address, or who already has an account, is skipped and counted — a 300-person invite run does not fail because four people have no email on file.

Self-service must be turned on in Settings. If it is off, the invite buttons still appear but no invite is sent.

Reviewing

See Photo guidelines for what to look for and the keyboard shortcuts. The short version: A approves, R rejects, arrow keys move, and rejection reasons are emailed to the person, so write them as instructions.

If your organisation issues digital IDs

Check the top of the review queue. If there is an amber warning there, approving a photo issues that person’s ID — the credential becomes valid immediately and they are emailed a link to add it to their phone. There is no order and no print run in between, and no second chance to catch it.

Bulk approve does the same thing once per photo. Approving forty issues forty.

Nothing changes about how you review — the same things make a photo good or bad. What changes is that a careless approval is now a credential in someone’s hand rather than a card you can pull from a print queue.

The confirmation tells you what happened: “Approved. ID OT-000021 issued and emailed to the card holder.” If you only see “Approved”, nothing was issued.

See Mobile wallet and digital IDs for the whole picture.

Ordering cards

The quick way

From a card holder’s page, Add to order. This drops them into your current draft order, creating one if you have none open. Do this as you go, then submit the accumulated draft at the end of the day.

The batch way

Orders → New order. Search and select, or filter to a department and use Add all. The picker only lists people with an approved photo, so nobody is silently dropped.

Choose the template, the priority, and when you need them by. Then either submit straight away or save it as a draft to add to later.

Printing it yourself, or sending it to CardOffice

Every order asks who prints it. Print it ourselves is your own printer or the print bundle. Send to CardOffice has us print and courier the cards to you: pick a delivery service, check the address, and the form shows the quote — cards, any rush fee, delivery, GST — before you confirm. You are invoiced on account once it ships. See Sending orders to CardOffice.

Only people with an approved photo can be ordered

A card cannot be printed without one. If you select people who do not have one, the order tells you how many were skipped.

To find them: Card holders → More filters → Photo: No photo yet.

Following an order through

draft → submitted → in production → printed → shipped → completed
                 ↘ cancelled

• Draft — yours to edit. Add and remove people freely.
• Submitted — sent for production. Details are now frozen.
• In production — the print room has it.
• Printed — cards exist. Each one is registered with a serial number.
• Shipped — on its way, with tracking if the carrier is recognised.
• Completed — done.

Cancelling an order pulls any queued cards out of the print queue. Cards already printed stay printed.

Reprints

On a printed order, each card has a Reprint action. Choose the reason:

Reason	Charged?	Also does
Print defect	No — our cost
Damaged	Yes	Marks the old card damaged
Lost	Yes	Marks the old card lost — it stops verifying immediately
Stolen	Yes	Marks the old card stolen
Name or details changed	Yes
New photo	Yes

A reprint uses the person’s current approved photo, so a new photo is picked up automatically.

Reprints go into your current draft order, so a morning of requests becomes one order rather than fifteen.

Reporting a lost or stolen card

Open the person’s record, go to Cards, and use Report on the active card. The card stops verifying immediately.

This is the action that matters if your cards open doors — do it before arranging the replacement.

Searching and filtering

The search box matches names, IDs and email addresses, including partial matches, so john finds Johnson and 2026-004 finds STU-2026-0041.

Useful filters under More filters:

• Photo: No photo yet — who still needs chasing
• Self-service account: Not invited yet — who to send invites to
• Card expiry: Expiring within 60 days — renewals to plan for
• Status: Inactive — people who have left but whose records you keep

Filters live in the URL, so a filtered view is a link you can send to a colleague or bookmark.

Exporting

Export on the card holders or orders list downloads what you are currently looking at, filters included, as a CSV that opens correctly in Excel — macrons and all.