Jason Lee » Uncategorized

ACS CheckPoint Part 1 – Why Biometric

jasonlee — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 22:22:48 +0000

Its been just over a year since we launched CheckPoint, an ACS Technologies product, as the software we used to do electronic check in our Discoveryland (Children’s Ministry), birth thru 5th grade. Being a year out from that launch I am posting a series of posts evaluating the project and also documenting the launch of our second phase in our Jr Hi and Sr. High ministries.

This series of posts will not specifically look at ACS’ Checkpoint product or how to deploy checkpoint specifically, but you can review that by checking out the workshop Taught at the 2009 ACS Convention.

Part 1: Why Biometric?
Part 2: Why Vein Scanning?
Part 3: Installing M2sys Vein Scan Server & Configuring the Database
Part 4: Installing M2Sys BioPlugin Vein Scanning Client
Part 5: Configuring the M2sys Vein Scanning Client and ACS CheckPoint

The Discoverlyand launch used Finger Print Scanners and software made by M2sys. The parent uses the biometrics to authenticate to the system and in turn sees their family record on screen. The Choice to use finger print scanning was driven by two factors: speed of check-in and security.

CheckPoint already had the ability to use barcodes and phone number lookup but two concerns were identified with those methods used exclusively. The first concern is you could always leave the barcode in the car or at home and you would need to then check-in at a desk (taking time away from guest services) or use another method like name or number lookup. The concerns name and phone number lookup was it took longer for each person to check-in and we couldn’t require pre-registration before using express check-in. Name and Number lookup might result in you finding your family, but that might be from other involvement (giving, small group, etc) in the church and those vehicles for getting in the database might not include capturing family information. Resulting in a poor user experience where you can display your record but your children aren’t able to be checked into the system.

Discoveryland has established a process for registration that needs to be completed before you use express check-in for a classroom. This process includes parents agreeing not to drop children off and and run to the grocery as well as other logistics of how old is your child and what grade are they in. With this information we can, which a much higher percentage of accuracy, know that your check-in process will work more smoothly.

Once the pre-registration data is collected and entered into the database a family can be pre-register for express check-in with the finger scan.

With the finger scanning we were able to speed up the process of check-in as well as limit the usage of the system to those who have appropriately identified themselves to the Discoveryland team.

Next Part 2: Why Vein Scanning vs.Finger Print Scanning

A Field Trip with the Ret. Lt. Col.

jasonlee — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 01:00:33 +0000

As some may know our operations director, Jerry Croegaert, is recently Retired Lt. Col. Jerry Croegaert (ANG), Commander of the 169th Air Support Operations Squadron. Well today we took a field trip to see the old stomping grounds of our new leader. The 169th shares a base with the 182nd Airlift Wing (a C130 Unit). Jeremie, Linda, Melanie and I went along with Jerry to the Air National Guard base in Bartonville, IL.
The primary reason for our visit was information sharing with the Coms personnel on base. This was a great opportunity to see how they are doing all things IT as well as share our successes at Northwoods and the ANG as well as our struggles. It was interesting to learn that their operations are very similar to ours (well except people don’t die if we mess things up) and they struggle with many of the same issues as those in the CITRT community… Limited Budget, Expectations to provide cutting edge technology and support and train our users to utilize that technology.
One take away from our trip was the accountability from the top down of the organization of Technology Continuing Education. MSgt George Garcia will be sending over some samples of their online Education tools that I hope to digest and reuse in our environment.
I would share some photos from the DataCenter but we had to turn our cameras/phones in during that part of the tour.

Here are some photos from the rest of the base where we were allowed to take photos (Jeremie and I asked several times if it was ok to take photos in specific areas we didn’t want to see anyone get tackled like in the Terry Tate commercials.)

A C130 Taking off

A C130 in the Hanger

Our Team inside the belly of a C130

Now you see it…. Now You don’t

jasonlee — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:19:04 +0000

Last week our media director, the new user of the MacPro, called and said his files were gone off a directory on his windows machine. We use a shared directory on the PC in the tech booth as a temporary landing place for the media files that are going to be transferred to the hard drive based playback unit that plays all video for our main stage events.

We use this ‘transfer’ folder to stage the files to ftp to the Ederol since the internal FTP server on the Ederol is quite flaky and it helps sit right right at the unit to do the transfer (Roland said it doesn’t get any better so we found a good work around).

So a week after the MacPro and the newly reformatted G5 were in production we noticed files just disappearing out of the transfer directory. After closer inspection the files would copy over the network, then when the file is completely copied it deletes off the PC. File transfers from a PC to this directory work fine. So we decided maybe its a root permissions issue in the OS so we reformatted the PC… but the problem remains.

We have specifically narrowed it down to file transfer from two macs and it only fails if there are no files in this directory. If there is a blank .txt file in this directory all is good, if the directory is empty the copy from the Mac fails.

Worst thing about this is if we call either Windows or Apple support its going to be a blame game I am sure…

Nothing more frustrating than identifying the problem and having no solutions…. What are your Thoughts?

Midwest Earthquake??

jasonlee — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:24:48 +0000

I came in to the office this morning to hear that my co-workers were shaken awake this morning by the earthquake. It wasn’t that unbelievable since I know we are on a fault line and we have a extension of our Home-Owners insurance just for earthquakes, but I completely slept thru the whole event.

Our Campus Services Director, Mark, said his kids were shaken awake and noticed their ceiling fans moving and the noise was loud enough it sounded like a tree had fallen on the house.

Is it bad that you come to work completely unaware you slept through a 5.2 magnitude earthquake? What does it say about you when you can sleep thru an Earthquake? Is it bad when you are just a little bit bummed out that you slept thru an Earthquake?

Now I understand why we have Earthquake insurance on our Home-Owners Policy, not a bad investment of $6 per year.

Here is the report from FoxNews

Progress… Finally

jasonlee — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 23:06:06 +0000

Jeremie has blogged about why we are moving to our new DataCenter so i’ll show you some photos of the progress. The fire suppresion system was installed last week.

Thanksgiving Thoughts…

jasonlee — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 03:56:05 +0000

So thinking of what I am thankful for today in no specific order:

A great family to spend the day with (family and in-laws)
A wonderful wife who is my best friend and supports me in ministry
A awesome staff who serves tirelessly to support Northwoods’ IT needs
A growing relationship with Christ
A supervisor who is a helping me grow as a leader
Being part of a growing church family