At Meeting Room 365, we create a simple visitor management kiosk for enterprises around the world. During a recent hackathon, we challenged ourselves to recreate as much of the current visitor sign-in experience using No-code tools, to see what we could learn.

The result was a re-imagining of the Visitor sign-in experience for companies that only occasionally need to have a visitor sign in.

We also used this as an opportunity to build and launch Custom Displays, which can create a Managed Kiosk Display from any URL.

The display we’re building includes:

• Unlimited visitor sign-ins (Free)
• Unlimited badge printing (Requires AirTable Pro)
• Limited document signing (10 documents per month via SignRequest, unlimited for $7/mo)

Entire build process (3 minute time lapse video):

Full Instructions and guide

The entire process can be completed in just a few hours. See the individual steps below in the full guide.

What you’ll need

1. A suitable Tablet & Stand (iOS, Android, or FireOS)
2. An AirTable account (Pro plan is optional for Badge Printing)
3. A Free Zapier Account (for document signature)
4. A SignRequest account (for document signature)
5. A Meeting Room 365 account (for tablet / device management)

1. Clone the Visitor Management Template in AirTable

The first step is to clone the pre-created Visitor Sign-in Template, created by AirTable. This provides a very basic sign-in form for your visitors, that can be hosted on any tablet device.

This is also a good time to add a few more fields to your new AirTable, if you need them. We added Email and Signed NDA fields to our AirTable to facilitate Document Signature, which we will set up in this guide.

Once you are complete, be sure to copy the Sign-in Form Share URL from AirTable.

If your Share URL doesn’t have the work embed in it, be sure to add it after https://airtable.com/, so that it reads something likehttps://airtable.com/embed/AAAAAAAAAAA — otherwise, this will create an error when trying to embed it into other apps, like Meeting Room 365.

2. Add the Badge Printing Block

Next, we will add the badge printing block to our new AirTable. You can skip this step if you don’t require badge printing.

This generates a printable PDF badge for each visitor sign-in, suitable for a variety of devices, including the Brother QL series, Dymo, and others. Typical badge printers use standard 2 1/4in X 4in labels, print in black & white, and connect to the PC or Mac you have in your reception area.

To install the badge printing block, open your AirTable, and select the Visitors table.

Next, select Blocks in the top right corner, to open the Blocks pane.

We are currently awaiting publication of our Badge Printing block

Finally, click Install a Block and search for Badge Printing. Once our block is live, you will find the badge printing block (by Meeting Room 365). No account is required to use this block.

Here’s a demo of the badge printing block in action:

3. Set up your Badge Printer

Next, you’ll want to set up your badge printer where you’ll be working. Typically this works just like any other printer, but you might want to ensure this is set as the default printing device, with the correct label size, before someone else uses the workstation.

4. Create a Custom URL Kiosk in Meeting Room 365

Next, we will create a custom kiosk in Meeting Room 365. This allows you to download the Meeting Room 365 app, to manage all your tablet kiosks from a centralized web portal.

This also helps you lock down your tablet, so that users can’t exit the app, or navigate to another web page.

Simply sign in to your Meeting Room 365 Admin Portal (https://admin.meetingroom365.com/), select Create a New Display, and Custom URL. You will be able to enter the AirTable Form URL from the previous step.

Note: You will need to use AirTable Embed form URLs, which begin with https://airtable.com/embed (instead of just https://airtable.com/)

Testing your Sign in Kiosk

You can test your sign-in kiosk integration with Meeting Room 365 by visiting the Meeting Room 365 App, and testing your Display Key.

A shortcut for this is to just type mr365.co into your browser, which will redirect to https://app.meetingroom365.com.

Next, enter your display key into Meeting Room 365, and you will be redirected to the Visitor sign-in form you created in the previous step.

5. Set up your Tablet Kiosk (iOS)

Next, we will set up our Tablet Kiosk. You can use any tablet, but in our example, we use an iOS device to keep things simple.

The Meeting Room 365 app is available for iOS, Android, and FireOS (Amazon) devices.

6. Setting up Document Signature with Zapier & SignRequest

Next, we’ll set up document signature with Zapier and SignRequest. This step is optional, and you can skip this section if you don’t need visitors to sign an NDA.

First, you’ll need to download and customize the NDA template attached, or provide your own (in PDF format). You can find a copy of the NDA template in Word format as well.

Before we get started, you’ll need to upload your modified NDA template somewhere on the internet, and keep the URL for that template handy.

Next, you’ll want to create a new Zap in Zapier, connecting AirTable to SignRequest, which Sends a new SignRequest when a new record is created in AirTable.

This will email a request to sign an NDA to each visitor who completes the visitor sign-in form.

You can follow along with our video below to see more detailed steps:

Signing a Document (from the Visitor’s Point-of-view)

Each time a visitor completes the form in the Visitor sign-in kiosk, they will receive an email requesting that they sign an NDA.

Below, you can see what the visitor will see when they sign the document:

7. Let Employees add their own contact details to AirTable, so they can be notified when a visitor arrives

Next, in this optional step, we can create a form to be shared with Employees, so that they can add their own contact details to AirTable, and be notified when visitors arrive.

You can follow along with the full setup process in the video below:

8. Create a Splash Page with Carrd.co

Optionally, you can create a Stylish splash page with Carrd.co for your visitor sign-in kiosk, which links to your AirTable form.

Once completed, our Kiosk will show a stylish splash page to each visitor. Once they click on the “Sign in” button, they will be asked to complete the sign in form. When it is submitted, the tablet will be redirected back to the Splash page.

You can view the complete steps to create a splash page in Carrd.co via the video below:

To make this work, we will create a new Display in Meeting Room 365, which links to our Carrd.co splash page. We will also update our AirTable sign-in form to redirect to our Splash page each time a visitor completes the form.