Badge Print Station

A print station is a PC at your registration desk with a label or badge printer attached. When a guest arrives, staff scan their QR code with the Event Vault app (the BADGE PRINT page), and the station prints that guest’s badge straight away.

Open it from the console menu under Guests & Tickets → Print Station and leave it running on the desk PC. While a station is active, the console asks before you navigate away from the page, because leaving it stops the station.

Before You Start

• A badge layout saved to the event. In the badge designer, design the label or badge and use SAVE / LOAD LAYOUTS to save it to the event. For a label printer, pick one of the label-size presets.
• A moderator or administrator account on the desk PC.
• QZ Tray on the desk PC (recommended). It’s a small free program that lets the page print silently to the printer you choose. Without it, the browser can still print (see Printing without QZ Tray below).

Setting Up a Station

The page has two parts: the Stations list on the left (every desk of the event and whether it’s printing, with the current desk highlighted) and the settings of that desk on the right. Click a desk in the list to see its settings.

1. Create the station. Click NEW above the Stations list and give the desk a name (Desk A), its pool (see below) and the badge layout it prints.
2. Set up this PC. The first time, a checklist walks you through installing QZ Tray and trusting this console. Steps tick themselves off as they’re detected, and the list folds away once the PC is ready.
3. Check the station. The preview shows the chosen layout with a test guest. Name, pool and layout can be changed here later.
4. Printer. Choose QZ Tray and pick the printer, PDF files to test without a printer, or Browser.
5. SAVE, then TEST PRINT. The test print saves first, prints a badge for Test Guest and asks whether it came out right. If it didn’t, NOT RIGHT lists the usual causes.
6. ACTIVATE PRINT STATION. The station starts printing.

Nothing is written until you press SAVE (TEST PRINT and ACTIVATE also save first). The heading shows Unsaved changes while you have edits. If someone changes the same station on another PC while you’re editing, you’re told and can RELOAD their version.

Pools: Several Desks

Phones scan into a pool. Stations in the same pool share its work: if one desk is paused or goes down, its jobs move to the others in the pool after a minute. A single-desk event never needs more than the first pool, Main desk.

Use separate pools for separate lines, such as Main desk and Speakers desk. Rename a pool with the pencil next to its name in the Stations list.

Jobs never move between pools by themselves, because a badge printed at the wrong desk is a badge nobody is sending the guest to. Moving work is a person’s decision:

• COVER: this station prints the other pool’s badges as well as its own, until you STOP COVERING or the station closes. Phones keep scanning into the other pool and show where labels print.
• MOVE JOBS HERE: takes the jobs waiting in the other pool now, once.

Both are on the POOLS button of a running station. When a pool has had nobody printing for five minutes and guests are waiting, every other station shows a red alert with both buttons.

Running the Desk

A running station shows its state in large type at the top, readable from across the desk:

Under it, the scan bar names each guest staff scan with the app and plays a tone: one high beep for a guest queued, two beeps for something to look at (such as a reprint), and a low tone for a problem. Use the speaker button to mute it.

The queue below is grouped:

• Needs you: held, failed or interrupted jobs, with PRINT NOW, RETRY, REPRINT or DISCARD.
• Waiting: jobs on their way, including ones waiting for a desk that’s down.
• Printed here: the last badges this window sent, with REPRINT and FAILED for a label that didn’t come out right.

The buttons along the bottom:

• PAUSE: for paper out, a jam or a closed desk. With QZ Tray, the station also pauses by itself when the printer reports a problem, and resumes when it’s fixed.
• PRINT A BADGE: search a guest by name, email or organisation, for guests without a phone or QR code.
• DEACTIVATE: stop printing on this PC.

The station keeps the screen awake while it runs.

Printing without QZ Tray

Choose Browser under Print with. A browser can’t choose a printer or print without a dialog, so both are set up once on the PC:

1. Set the label printer as the Windows default printer, with the label size as its default paper size.
2. Close the browser and start it with the kiosk shortcut shown on the page (COPY it into a desktop shortcut).
3. Open the print station in that window and run a TEST PRINT.

PDF files prints nothing: every badge is saved as a PDF into a folder you choose. Use it to try layouts and app scanning without a printer.

Troubleshooting

• QZ Tray asks to allow every print. The certificate isn’t being read. It must be in C:\Program Files\QZ Tray, named exactly override.crt, and QZ Tray must be fully restarted (right-click its icon → Exit, then start it again). Then allow once with Remember this decision ticked.
• Wrong size, cut off or rotated. The layout’s label size must match the labels in the printer. Set the label size as the printer’s default paper size in its Windows preferences, or try Rotate and Orientation under Print settings → Advanced.
• Faint or blotchy QR codes. Raise the print darkness in the printer’s preferences, set Colour to B&W, or set Resolution to the printer’s own (often 203 or 300 dpi).
• A print dialog appears (Browser printing). The browser wasn’t started from the kiosk shortcut.
• Labels keep failing. Press PAUSE so jobs go to another desk while you check the printer. The station suggests it after two FAILED presses in a row.
• My printer isn’t listed. Microsoft Print to PDF, XPS and OneNote are left out on purpose: they open a save dialog QZ Tray can’t answer. Use PDF files to test without a printer.