Group Shuffle user manual

Overview

Group Shuffle puts your event’s attendees into groups the moment they check in on GatherUs. A presentation screen at the venue shows the groups filling up live.

You can sort people in one of two ways:

• Random even split. Each person joins whichever group is smallest at that moment.
• Questionnaire rules. Each person is placed by how they answered your GatherUs registration questions, for example everyone in job-role: Director goes to Group A.

You connect your GatherUs location once. After that, every event you create at that location is ready to use straight away.

How a check-in travels:

1. An attendee checks in on GatherUs.
2. GatherUs sends the check-in to Group Shuffle through a webhook.
3. Group Shuffle finds the right event and sorts the person into a group.
4. The venue screen updates within seconds.

Getting started

You connect GatherUs once per location. GatherUs gives each location one webhook and one signing secret, and sends check-ins for every event at that location through it.

1. Create your account

1. Go to https://gatherus.today/group-shuffle/signup/ .
2. Enter Your name, Email and a Password of at least 8 characters.
3. Click Create account. You land on your dashboard.

If you forget your password later, click Forgot your password? on the log-in screen and then Email me a reset link.

2. Connect GatherUs (4 steps)

Your dashboard shows a Connect GatherUs box until the first real check-in arrives.

1. Add the webhook. Copy Your webhook URL from the dashboard. In GatherUs, go to Admin → Webhooks, click +, and paste the URL.
2. Subscribe to the check-in event. Under Event types, tick Event Check-In Created (event_checkin.created), then click Save and continue editing. Ticking other event types does no harm, because Group Shuffle ignores them.
3. Copy the signing secret. Copy the Secret key from GatherUs, paste it into the Signing secret field on your dashboard, and click Save secret. The secret must match GatherUs exactly. It is stored encrypted.
4. Check someone in. Check one real person in on GatherUs. Anyone will do. The dashboard checks for the arrival every few seconds.

When the check-in arrives, the box changes to Connected. Group Shuffle has now learned your registration questions, and every event you create from now on is ready straight away.

If nothing seems to happen, click I have checked in, confirm everything worked. You get either “connected” or the exact reason it failed. See Troubleshooting.

A test check-in does not connect you. The test button only proves the URL and secret work. Its questions are invented, so Group Shuffle learns nothing from it. Only a real GatherUs check-in completes setup.

3. Create an event

There are two ways to create an event:

• From a waiting check-in (easiest). If someone checks in to a GatherUs event you have not set up yet, it appears under Check-ins waiting for an event. Click Create an event for this. The filter is filled in for you, and everyone waiting goes straight into the new event.
• By hand. Click New event, enter an Event title, and set Claim check-ins whose GatherUs event title contains. Click Create event.

How the title filter works. Because one webhook carries every event at your location, the filter decides which check-ins belong to which event:

1. An event whose filter appears in the GatherUs event title claims the check-in. If several match, the oldest event wins.
2. If no filter matches, an event with a blank filter (a catch-all) takes it.
3. If there is no catch-all either, the check-in waits under Check-ins waiting for an event. Nobody is lost.

A blank filter suits a location that runs one event at a time. Give each event its own filter when several run at once.

Running an event

Each event has four tabs: Groups, Attendees, Presentation and Setup. An event opens on Groups.

Choose how people are sorted

Under How should people be sorted?, pick one mode and click Save mode. Saving a mode moves nobody. Existing attendees keep their groups until you reshuffle or re-run the rules.

Set up groups

• Add group creates one group with a name you choose. Add numbered groups creates several at once (Group 1, Group 2, and so on). You can have 1 to 50 groups.
• Rename or Delete a group in its row. When you delete a group, its members are spread across the groups that are left.
• People who check in before any group exists are placed as soon as the first group is added.

Adding a group mid-event. With a random split, adding a group moves the fewest people needed to keep every group within one person of the others. The most recent arrivals are moved first, so early arrivals keep the group they were given. Anyone you moved by hand stays put.

Reshuffle all puts everyone into new random groups. It also clears every move you made by hand, so you are asked to confirm first.

Write questionnaire rules

A rule says: if the question contains these words and the answer contains these words, put the person in this group.

1. In Add a rule, fill in Question (or leave it as Any question).
2. Fill in Answer contains (or leave it as Any answer). Every rule needs at least one of the two.
3. Choose a group in Put them in.
4. Set Priority. Lower numbers run first.
5. Click Add rule.

How matching works:

• Both boxes suggest real values from your attendees’ check-ins, so you can pick from a list instead of typing.
• Part of a word is enough, and capital letters are ignored. design matches Design track.
• Several words mean “any of these”. Separate them with commas, for example director, manager, lead.
• Multiple-choice answers are checked one by one. A rule for government catches someone who ticked Government along with three other industries.
• Questions use their short name (the slug), such as job-role, not the full question text. The Attendees tab shows exactly what arrived.
• The first match wins. Several rules can point at the same group.
• Anyone who matches no rule goes to an automatic Unsorted group, so nobody disappears.

Changing rules does not move anyone who has already checked in. To apply new rules to them, click Re-run rules on existing attendees. People you moved by hand keep their group.

The Setup tab lists Questions your attendees answered, with the latest answers for each. A question marked not in latest was missing from the most recent check-in. It is kept so your rules keep working, but your questionnaire may have changed.

Manage attendees

The Attendees tab lists everyone who checked in, with their group and answers. Use Search to find someone by name or email.

• Move puts a person in a different group. They are then marked pinned, and automatic sorting, rebalancing and rule re-runs leave them alone. Reshuffle all is the only action that clears pins.
• Delete removes an attendee from the event.
• If someone scans in twice, Group Shuffle recognises them and does not create a second attendee.

Show the groups on a venue screen

1. Open the Presentation tab.
2. Click Copy next to the Presentation link, or click Open presentation.
3. Open the link in a browser on the venue screen. No log-in is needed, and it updates by itself every few seconds.

Under Display options you can tick Hide full names to show “Ada L.” instead of “Ada Lovelace”. Click Save.

Treat the link as public. Anyone who has it can see the screen. If it leaks, click Generate a new link. The old link stops working immediately, so update the venue screen too.

Settings reference

Settings sit in two places. Location-wide settings are on your dashboard, and each event’s settings are on its Setup tab.

The Setup tab also shows What GatherUs has told us: the matching GatherUs event, and the time of the first and latest check-in. Recent deliveries lists each webhook call with its time, status and detail. When something goes wrong, that list is the first place to look.

Troubleshooting

Start with I have checked in, confirm everything worked on the dashboard. It names the most important problem. The table shows what each answer means and how to fix it.

Common questions

My event is empty, but people have checked in. Compare the event’s filter with the GatherUs event title. The filter must appear somewhere in the title. Also check Check-ins waiting for an event on the dashboard. When you fix the filter, the waiting people move into the event right away.

Someone is in the wrong group. Move them on the Attendees tab. They stay pinned there.

My rule matches nobody. Open a person on the Attendees tab and look at their answers. Rules match the question’s short name (such as job-role) and the exact answer text that arrived.

I don’t run a waiting event here. Click Not running this here to discard those check-ins. They come back only if someone checks in again.

The venue screen stopped updating. Check that the screen is online and the link has not been replaced. If check-ins show on your dashboard but not on the screen, ask the site administrator to check that caching is off for /group-shuffle/live/ and /wp-json/.

Pages show “not found” after a plugin update. This one is for site administrators: open Settings → Permalinks in wp-admin once and click Save.

Can I have more than one event running at once? Yes. Give each event a filter that matches its own GatherUs event title.