REV23 Cloud v1.4 Template & Kiosk Changes

This Fall, REV23 Cloud is getting some major upgrades to Kiosk, Templates and the Template Designer with exciting new features that make your release forms even more flexible!

We designed our templates/forms to be pretty flexible, but as more and more of you started using this new app, there were some patterns that started to appear as far as what you were wanting. These changes aim to address all of these requests and make additional changes easier later.

Here is a summary of what’s new that you should be aware of, then we will dive a little more in-depth into some of these features, and the thoughts behind some of these decisions.

• The Template Designer has been redesigned and rewritten from scratch as a separate web app, decoupling it from the main web app, making it more accessible for iPad.
• Templates now allow configuration of Steps (the pages that appear in Kiosk) and Fields (the entry fields on those pages), allowing you to control the visibility and requirements of some of these elements, as well as some other new customizations.
• Templates can now be mapped (assigned) to individual service types, instead of being limited to the top-level category type. For multi-studio users, you can now override per studio if you need that level of granularity.
• A new top-level category type, Adornments, has been added to the app for more service types that did not fit into any of the previously available types.
• Kiosk (iPad) and Web Sign (web app) have been rewritten and polished.

Template Designer

Template Designer has a brand new separate web app. Originally, we planned to eventually bring a designer to iPad as well, but as one of the more complex pieces of REV23 Cloud, this was going to be pretty difficult. As we added these new features, it became obvious that this was no longer realistic as we rely too much on server-side code.

While we could have just enhanced the existing Template Designer code in the main web app, we decided to bite the bullet and separate it as it’s own app that is maintained separately and get’s a more neutral look that fits in with both web and iPad interfaces.

Templates 2.0

Up until now, Kiosk (and Web Sign) treated the Template mostly as your “disclaimers” section only. Kiosk had the set flow of instructions with the main customization rules being in your sections in blocks which is really what the content of your form was. So, while the final output PDF of your release form was able to be pretty tailored, many of you expressed wanting more customization in Kiosk itself. While we did add the ability for you to show/hide some steps such as Emergency and Physician contacts, we needed to allow you to do more.

Requirement and Visibility Rules

Some (not all) steps are now customizable in both their requirement and visibility. For example, about half of existing studios want to skip the final “take a picture of yourself” step. This is now easily done! This is a Visibility Rule.

Next, some (again, not all) fields are also customizable in the same fashion. For example, some need to ensure the Occupation field is provided. You can now mark this as being a required value in, you guessed it, a Requirement Rule!

A requirement rule on a Step controls the availability of the Skip button. If the step is marked as required, the skip button is not visible and will fall back to the field level rules.

Even better, requirement and visibility rules can be overridden for situations where a guardian is needed on the form. So, looking at that last example, you can make the Occupation field as needed, however hide it completely if the client is a minor. This gives you even more control over the Kiosk flow and the data you collect!

In the screenshot above you can see we are modifying the Emergency Contact step (UI not necessarily finalized). Here we have marked it Required and Visible, meaning it will not only show up in the Kiosk flow, but the skip button will be hidden. Notice Guardian Visible and Guardian Required are neither checked, nor unchecked. They are in a third intermediate state that will fall back to the regular option if not specifically defined.

Messages and more

Other new features in the Template include app/web overrides for the Start/Finish message which is used to provide more instruction to the client. Specifying a different version for app (iPad) vs web allows you to tailor that message to the context your client is filling out the form. For example, a finish message that says “Please hand this iPad back to the artist” does not apply in the web context. We have also added a new Guardian message which can optionally show if you want to provide added instructions to guardians on how they should fill out the form.

We have also added support for tokens in block text that will be replaced with other values. For example, you could have a block that says:

Initial here to give {{studio.name}} permission to use your photo in promotional materials.

When generated for display to the client it will read

Initial here to give Pawnee Tattoo permission to use your photo in promotional materials.

Finally, we have added a new Redirect URL option for the web which is an optional page to return your client to when using Web Sign.

Kiosk Updates

Both Kiosk (iPad) and Web Sign (web, obviously) are being rewritten from scratch. Yes, I know, the app isn't even that old... why are we already redoing this?! Well, the app was in development for quite a while before its release, with Kiosk being one of the first designed things, as it was essentially the most important. Our code patterns on iPad evolved a lot and this was the last bit of ‘old code’ and the updates we wanted to make to this were so broad we decided to just bite the bullet and start over.

Service Type Mappings

One of the first things we needed to address was visibility of service types, especially in a piercing context.

Today, templates are mapped at the Category Type level only, which is limited to the five… core types: Tattoo, Piercing, PMU, Microblading, Removal, and now the new sixth type, Adornments, which is somewhat of a catch all for things like tooth gems, permanent jewelry and other accessories.

The first step of Kiosk is “what are you having done” where the client select from a menu of these categories (if you’ve never seen this that means you only have one of these service category types registered in which case this step is skipped). We needed to know the template to use before doing anything else.

For piercings this got a little dicey. Minors shouldn’t see an array of genital piercing options, and this needed hidden.

Step one to fixing this issue was allowing you to map templates at a lower level. So, you can now override the template mapping for individual service types if you’d like. If you do not override the template at this level, it will just use the template for the category type. Our default setup now does this by having the piercing category type use the minor eligible release form but overrides genital piercings to use the form which does not allow minors.

In the screenshot above you can see how this new mapping inheritance works. All piercings use the Release Form for Adults & Minors. You can see where we have overridden the Nipple service to only allow the Adults template. The other service types that show the template name dimmed show you that it will fallback to the top level mapping since no assignment exists.

The Chicken and the Egg dilemma

Step two in hiding certain service types from minors was we needed to change the order which we collect client information, moving it first so we know their age.

But wait… earlier in this blog post we said Templates now allow you to customize visibility and requirement rules. Ok, so we need the customer data before we show service types but we need to know the service type to know the template to use to know what customer data we need... yikes.

First thought, we move the customer lookup screen… the ones which can scan the driver’s license barcode or use the name, birthdate and email/phone and sends an existing customer a code to load their existing profile. At least this way we would have a birthdate. A few minutes later we found this wouldn’t work great. If I take my driver’s license out, scan the barcode, then get asked about what I want done, I’m probably going to put it back in my wallet then put my wallet back in my pocket… then I’m going to select the tattoo service type, fill out a few more pieces of required information, then get asked to take a picture of the front. Then I’d be annoyed.

There was only one practical choice, which was to simply collect the birthdate up front. By doing this, other than acting as a general pulse check to make sure your client can read, we can now quickly build the list of services the client is eligible for, then decide which template we need to use. So now, the Welcome screen that shows your studio logo/name now includes a birthdate entry, similar to entering a liquor website. While we tried a few other possible scenarios, this was the cleanest and most elegant.

New pages

We have also added two new pages to Kiosk that collections more data.

• Service Details: For each service type the customer selected, they can now provide some info on placement and design. This can of course be skipped if you do not want this entered by the client and would prefer to add it to the session yourself.
• Opt-In: The customer can now be prompted for Email/SMS opt-in. It’s important to note that this does not actually affect anything in REV23 Cloud, since any communications from our app are transactional (i.e. one-time passcode, release form copy, etc.) and do not require consent to send. However, some countries require explicit consent to send marketing messages. We now allow you to simply collect this information and store it in the customer profile. It is up to you how you manage this with your communications providers. But, one solution would be webhooks. When a customer unsubscribes from your mailing list, you could create a webhook to update the REV23 customer’s opt-in preferences. This would be how I handle it anyways, but if you want to do it manually, that’s fine too. The point is you can now collect this data.

Wrap up

We hope you like the changes that are coming to REV23 Cloud to improve your customer experience as they fill out your release forms! With a more flexible flow than ever, we’re convinced that REV23 is the best digital release form app for the industry, and we think you’ll agree!