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Engage

Card Reader Purchasing and Setup

Engage's card reader technology integrates with the Events tool to help campuses successfully track event attendance for events within their systems. Campuses can use their campus ID cards alongside card reader hardware to accomplish this task. This overview will help you understand what card reader equipment you need and how to get started with the process.

Purchasing Equipment

The first decision for a campus in setting up the card reader system is to decide what type of card reader hardware to purchase. When looking at which hardware to buy, keep in mind that your device must meet the following three requirements if you intend on swiping/tapping users in real time:

  1. Device provides keyboard emulation. You will know if a device provides keyboard emulation if you connect it to a computer, open any text editing application such as Notepad and then swipe or scan a card ID; if information from the card appears in the text editor, then the device is likely working through keyboard emulation. Devices are often also available as being HID-compliant instead of providing keyboard emulation. HID-based devices may still work and act as described in the example above, but often require additional software or drivers to be installed on the computer to which the device is connected.

  2. Device inserts carriage returns (i.e., the "enter" key) after each swipe or scan. Some devices do not insert carriage returns by default, but can be configured to do so. Please consult with the device hardware vendor for more information. Note: it is not explicitly required that your device insert carriage returns after each swipe--if it doesn't, you can always hit the "enter" key manually or press the submit button on the card ID entry screen.

  3. No encryption: The device should not encrypt card/mobile ID data. This function is typically reserved for devices that process credit card information (i.e. Square Readers).

So long as the hardware can meet the criteria above, Engage supports physical cards with magnetic strips and/or RFID chips as well as mobile ID credentials stored. Engage does not support QR code based mobile credentials. The piece of data that should be collected is the unique identifier of the card/mobile ID (typically a number string of 5-9 characters). For Card IDs with Magnetic strips they typically have 3 tracks, or areas of information. It is important to know which track the unique ID number is on before purchasing a card reader appliance so that you are sure the appliance can read the appropriate track.

Anthology does not explicitly endorse any vendor, specific brand, or hardware model.

We recommend that you only purchase one type of device. Our system runs an expression against every card swipe in order to isolate the ID number. For this reason, we require your card swipe output to follow a consistent format. If you fluctuate between devices, this format could change and cause swipes to fail. If you are able to confirm that two devices produce the same format, both can be used without issue.

System Configuration

After you acquire a device, complete the following steps to ensure Anthology has the necessary data to effectively use the card swipe system.

  1. Send test swipes: Using your new device, swipe or scan several test cards into an notepad document and then send it along to Anthology Support. Be sure to identify the unique ID in each string. This will allow us to write an expression into Engage that isolates the ID number and ties it to the correct user account.

    Example: Let's say you swipe your card and it looks something like this: ;STUDENTNAME&078?0012345. Somewhere in the string there should be a unique identifier that is specific to the student. Most of the time this is the student ID. Make sure to identify the student ID, or whichever unique identifier you're using, in the example you send to support.

  2. Load unique card identifier: In order for Engage to understand the data that is collected and associate it with users the system first needs to be configured to identify the specific unique information that is contained on the magnetic stripe, barcode, RFID, or NFC of an ID card or mobiile device.

    You can associate card IDs with user accounts through a user import. Ideally, this would be accomplished by an automated user import, if included in contract package, but can also be accomplished through periodic manual user imports.

    This is an important step and cannot be skipped. If a user does not have a card ID associated with their account, swiping their ID will result in an attendance listing for "Unrecognized User." Although this will add to the total attendee count of the event, you will lose the ability to track the user's individual event attendance history.

    For campuses leveraging mobile credentials where the users ID is stored in a mobile wallet instead of a physical card, ID information must be submitted via an alternate process. Please Contact Anthology Support to access the import template.

When these steps are complete, you'll be ready to swipe! Check out our article on tracking event participation to learn more about how to utilize your card swipe system with Engage events.