How team events work

Verigate started as one phone at one door. Then venues with a front door, a patio, and a VIP entrance asked me for the obvious thing: let every door see the same guests. A team event does exactly that. Several phones scan for one event, a ban added at one door shows up at the others, and the organizer gets one report at the end. Guest records travel end-to-end encrypted, so Verigate’s server, which passes records between your phones, can’t read them.

What a team event is

One organizer — usually the manager’s iPhone — and up to 10 Staff phones work one event together. Every phone scans for the same event and sees the same guests, Ban list, and VIP list. Each Staff phone works one door with a name the organizer gives it, so every record says who checked the ID and where. Admit/Deny is always on in a team event: each check ends with a decision that the whole team can see.

Everything else about Verigate stays the same. Scanning, verdicts, and the possible-fake warning work exactly as on a single phone, and outside a team event your records never leave your iPhone.

Who pays

Only the organizer. Starting a team event needs Verigate Premium on the organizer’s iPhone, and that covers up to 10 Staff phones. Staff join free: no account, no subscription, no per-device fee. A Staff phone with its own Premium simply keeps a little more once the event is over (see below).

What you need

• Verigate 2.0 or later on every phone, iPhone or iPad with iOS 18 or later.
• A device that supports Apple’s App Attest. Recent iPhones and iPads do; Macs and the iOS Simulator don’t. If a device can’t take part, Settings → Team says so instead of failing halfway.
• An internet connection for starting and joining. During the event, a phone that loses signal keeps scanning; its records wait on the phone and go out when it is back online.

Starting and joining

1. Organizer. Open Settings → Team and tap Start a team event. Choose an open event or create one. Its name, location, and doors go to every Staff phone, so set them up the way you want staff to see them.
2. Organizer. Keep the Team screen open. It shows a code under Staff scan this code that refreshes on its own.
3. Staff. On the Staff phone, open Settings → Team and tap Join a team, or choose Join a team when a fresh install asks how you’ll use Verigate. Scan the organizer’s code. The phone then shows a short code of its own.
4. Organizer. The phone appears under Waiting to join with the same short code. Check that the codes match, then add it with a name and a door.
5. Everyone. Scan. The Staff phone picks up the event, its door, and its name by itself; there is nothing to set up on it.

The matching code is there so that nobody standing near the organizer can slip an unknown phone onto the team: a phone only joins once the organizer adds it.

During the event

• Every door sees every guest. Scans and Admit/Deny decisions from all doors reach the other phones as soon as they are online. History shows the team’s records next to your own.
• Ban and VIP lists. The organizer’s lists go to every phone. Staff can flag a guest at the door, and a Staff phone can turn a VIP into a ban, but only the organizer can lift a ban or take someone off the team’s list.
• The organizer stays in charge. From the Team screen the organizer can rename a Staff phone, move it to another door, and add or remove doors. While the event runs, Remove phone takes a phone off the team: its place frees up for another phone, and its name can be given again. A phone can also leave on its own (see Leaving an event), and End closes the event for every phone. Each phone shows when it last synced, and the event shows when it started.
• Staff see their place. On a Staff phone, the Scan screen shows the team event and the door it works; the door and name are read-only because the organizer sets them.

Ending and the report

When the night is over, the organizer taps End team event. Verigate’s server keeps accepting late records for 72 hours, so a phone that was offline at closing time can still catch up. The organizer’s report — one report with every door’s scans and decisions, as CSV or PDF — is in Settings → Team → Event reports and stays on the organizer’s iPhone.

As soon as every phone has sent its last records, the organizer’s iPhone deletes the event from the server by itself — usually within seconds of End, as long as Verigate is open on it. If a phone can’t connect (a dead battery, a phone that already went home), the organizer doesn’t have to wait: Delete event from server now deletes it at once, and whatever that phone still holds never arrives. If nothing deletes it, the server removes an ended event on its own within 14 days, and an event that was never ended at all once it is 30 days old. I’d still recommend ending every event: the 30-day rule is a safety net, not a plan.

On the Staff phones, End stops scanning for the team right away, and each phone goes back to its own events. For up to 72 hours it keeps sending any late records. The team’s records leave the Staff phones the next time they connect after the event is deleted from the server, or after the 72 hours of late records are over, whichever comes first. At that point the phones drop the guest records they received from the team. A Staff phone with its own Premium keeps the scans it made; a Staff phone without Premium removes those as well, so a borrowed phone goes home clean.

Leaving an event

A Staff phone can leave at any time with Settings → Team → Leave team event. Leaving happens on the phone itself, so it works offline. Before it goes, Verigate tells you what will be removed and whether any records haven’t been sent yet — those never reach the team. Leaving works after the organizer’s End too, so the phone can join another team event right away instead of waiting for this one to close. A phone that left — or that the organizer removed — can join the same event again: scan the organizer’s code, and the organizer adds it like the first time. A removed phone drops the team’s records at its next sync, the same way as after the event, and says that the organizer removed it.

What Verigate’s server can and can’t see

The organizer’s iPhone creates a key for each event and hands it only to the phones the organizer adds. Guest names, dates of birth, document fingerprints, flags, notes, decisions, and even staff and door names are encrypted on the phone that makes them. Verigate’s server never gets that key.

What the server does see is what it needs to deliver records: random IDs for the event and the phones, public keys, whether each Staff phone has Premium, and the type, time, and size of each record. Google Cloud, where the server runs (us-central1, United States), keeps request logs with IP addresses for 30 days. Everything an event leaves on the server is deleted with the event. The privacy policy has the full list, and the terms cover who is responsible for what.

Questions

Do my staff need an account or a subscription?

No. They install Verigate, tap Join a team, and scan your code.

Can I have more than 10 Staff phones?

Not in one event yet. If you need more, write to me — it tells me what to build next.

What happens if the Wi-Fi drops at a door?

That door keeps scanning. Its records wait on the phone and go out when it reconnects; the Scan screen shows that it is offline and how many records are waiting.

Can a Staff phone use its own events while it is on a team?

While it is on a team event, it scans for that event. When the event ends or the phone leaves, it goes back to its own events.

Can you read my guests’ details?

No. I don’t have the key, and neither does Google. The server only stores and forwards encrypted records.

Something doesn’t work.

Email me at support@verigateid.app. I’m the only developer, so you’ll hear back from the person who wrote the code.

Download on the App Store (opens the App Store in a new tab)