Lockdown Mode

Lockdown is an emergency child-safety control. When activated, every active check-in session for your church is placed into a state where no one can check out -- not via the Verify & Check Out panel, not via security code, not with the quick-checkout admin override, and not for volunteers. Lockdown is intended for situations where you need to know that every child is in a known room with a known volunteer until the situation clears.

This is a critical safety feature. Read this article in full before you ever need to use it.

When to Use Lockdown

Lockdown is appropriate when there is an active threat or unresolved safety concern that means children should remain in their classrooms. Examples include:

• Custody dispute. A parent or non-custodial adult is on the property attempting to retrieve a child without authorization.
• Suspected attempted child removal. Someone unknown to volunteers is asking for a child by name or refusing to show a security code.
• Active police, fire, or weather event that has the property on shelter-in-place orders.
• Lost child. A child is unaccounted for and you need to freeze the rest of the system until they are located.
• Drill. Practicing your church's child-safety response plan.

Lockdown is not for routine situations:

• Don't use it because a parent forgot their security code -- an administrator can complete the checkout from the Verify & Check Out panel (for a child, choose the authorized pickup person, or tick "Override pickup authorization").
• Don't use it for a long line at pickup -- end the session normally instead.

Important: Lockdown is a safety tool, not a discipline tool. Activating it freezes pickup for every family in every active session. Use it only when the safety benefit outweighs the disruption.

Who Can Activate Lockdown

Only users with the administrator role can activate or deactivate lockdown. Regular check-in volunteers and station staff cannot activate it on their own. If a non-admin attempts to activate it, the system shows "Only administrators can activate lockdown."

This is intentional. Lockdown is a heavy intervention and the decision belongs with church leadership.

Recommendation: Make sure at least two on-site administrators have admin accounts on every Sunday morning, so an admin is always available to activate lockdown if needed.

How to Activate Lockdown

1. Sign in as an administrator and open the Check-In module from the left sidebar.
2. Activate the Lockdown control. (Lockdown is admin-only; non-admins do not have access to it.)
3. Confirm the action when prompted.
4. The system applies lockdown to every active check-in session for your church (not just one). All sessions are flagged as lockdown-active and the system records who activated it and when.
5. A success banner appears: "Lockdown activated on N active session(s). All checkouts are now suspended."

What Happens During Lockdown

While lockdown is active:

• The Verify & Check Out panel is blocked. Entering a security code shows: "Checkouts are suspended during lockdown." and the Confirm Check Out button is disabled. Attempting the checkout returns: "Checkouts are suspended during lockdown. Contact a church administrator."
• Quick checkout is blocked. The same error message appears.
• Volunteer checkouts are blocked. Volunteers stay marked on duty until lockdown clears.
• New check-ins still work. Families arriving during lockdown can still be checked in -- this matters if a family arrived late and needs to be accounted for. (If your safety policy requires no entry during lockdown either, end the session manually before activating.)
• The self-service kiosk continues to display normally for new check-ins; the kiosk has no checkout function, so nothing leaves through it.
• A red "LOCKDOWN ACTIVE -- All checkouts suspended" banner appears on the Classroom Roster, along with who activated it and when.

Communicate the Lockdown to Volunteers

Lockdown only enforces what the software does. It does not notify your volunteers automatically. Your church's safety plan must include:

• A way to alert classroom volunteers (radio, text group, runner, paging system).
• An instruction to volunteers: keep all children inside the classroom until further notice.
• A point person who is responsible for managing the floor while lockdown is active.

Critical: Do not rely on lockdown alone. The software prevents checkouts, but the people in the rooms are what keep children safe. A radio or group text is a non-negotiable companion to this feature.

How to Deactivate Lockdown

Deactivation is intentionally protected by an extra step: the signed-in administrator's password.

1. Sign in as an administrator and open the Check-In module.
2. Use the Deactivate Lockdown control.
3. Enter your account password in the confirmation dialog.
4. Confirm.
5. The system verifies the password. If it matches, lockdown is cleared on every session that had it active.
6. A success banner appears: "Lockdown deactivated on N session(s). Checkouts are now permitted."

If the wrong password is entered, lockdown remains active and the system returns: "Invalid password. Lockdown remains active."

Why the password? Lockdown deactivation is the moment children start leaving with adults. Requiring a fresh password confirmation reduces the risk of an accidental deactivation (a misclick) or an unauthorized one (someone walking up to a logged-in admin's tablet).

After Deactivation

Deactivation does not auto-checkout anyone. It simply restores normal checkout behavior on every session that was previously locked. From this point forward:

• Security-code checkout works again at the Verify & Check Out panel. For children, you still also choose an authorized pickup person before Confirm Check Out is enabled (an admin can tick "Override pickup authorization" instead).
• Quick checkout works again.
• Volunteer checkouts work again (volunteers do not require a security code).

It is a good idea to manually verify the rooms after deactivating, especially if lockdown was triggered by a real safety concern. Walk each room with a volunteer or radio in hand and confirm that every child is still with their assigned class.

Positioning Lockdown in Your Child-Safety Plan

Lockdown is one piece of a broader safety plan. A typical church plan looks like:

1. Prevention. Verified background checks for all children's volunteers, two-adult rule in every classroom, signed pickup authorization on every family file.
2. Detection. Volunteers trained to refuse pickup without a security code and to escalate immediately if pressed.
3. Response. A clear escalation path: classroom volunteer alerts a hall monitor, hall monitor alerts the on-call administrator, on-call administrator decides whether to activate lockdown.
4. Resolution. A point person who manages the situation, coordinates with law enforcement if needed, and decides when to deactivate.
5. Debrief. After lockdown deactivates, document what happened: what triggered it, who was involved, how long it lasted, and what could be improved next time.

Lockdown is a tool for step 3. It does not replace any of the other steps.

Drilling Lockdown

We strongly recommend practicing lockdown at least twice a year, ideally outside of an actual service:

1. Schedule a drill on a non-Sunday morning.
2. Run a fake check-in session with a few staff members listed as "children."
3. Have an admin activate lockdown.
4. Walk every room and confirm the volunteer response.
5. Deactivate lockdown.
6. Debrief: what worked, what was confusing, what needs to be added to your written plan.

Drills surface real-world issues (a missing radio, a volunteer who didn't get the alert, a confusing button location) without the pressure of a real emergency.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does lockdown survive a page refresh or browser restart? Yes. Lockdown is stored on the session record in the database, not in the browser. It stays active until an admin deactivates it.

Does lockdown affect future sessions started after activation? No. Lockdown is applied at activation time to sessions that were active at that moment. New sessions started later will not be in lockdown unless an admin re-activates.

What if the activating admin is unavailable to deactivate? Any administrator's password will work for deactivation -- it is not tied to the specific user who activated. As long as another admin is on site and can authenticate, they can clear lockdown.

Is lockdown recorded? While lockdown is active, each affected session stores who activated it and when, and that detail appears on the Classroom Roster banner. Note that deactivating lockdown clears those fields from the session, so capture the details (or a screenshot of the banner) before you deactivate if you need them for a post-event debrief.

Can a family member self-checkout from the member portal during lockdown? The member-portal pre-check flow doesn't perform checkouts -- it only creates pre-check-in QR codes. So there is no self-checkout path that would bypass lockdown.

Related Articles

• Check-In Process -- The standard check-in and checkout flow.
• Security Codes and Labels -- Why every checkout is code-verified, and why child checkouts also require choosing an authorized pickup person.
• Unclaimed Children -- Companion safety workflow for end-of-service.
• Troubleshooting -- What to do when lockdown is activated by accident.