Handing tokens out

Download the Tokens guide as a PDF

Covers the two steps that put a working token in someone’s hand: handing it over, and the person linking it to themselves. They happen in that order and cannot happen in the other one.

Handing over

Hand them out like stationery, and keep the spares locked up like keys. Possession is the whole authority here: whoever physically holds an unlinked token can link it to themselves. There is nothing to configure before you give one out and nothing to write down after.

You do not need to record who got which one. The pairing is made when the person links it, and the Portal shows it on their row: a token column that says one thing only — this person has linked one. Until somebody does, a token appears nowhere in the Portal at all, so there is no state in which you know a token exists but is unclaimed.

Handing one out early is fine. A token can be linked before its owner has filled anything in, so giving them out at induction, alongside the invitation, works — the token simply shows nothing to a scan until the contacts behind it exist.

Passing one on means the first person releases it. A company cannot reclaim a linked token: unlinking is theirs alone, and archiving somebody does not touch what they carry. Once released, the token is blank again and the next person links it the same way — with no trace of the previous holder behind it.

Caution

That also means a token stays live when someone leaves, until they unlink it or you ask us to switch that token off. Taking the token back is not what ends it.

Binding a token to a person

A token you have handed out is still blank. It points at nobody, and scanning it shows nothing until the person it went to links it to themselves.

Only they can do the linking. There is no bind control in the Portal, for anybody, at any level. That is not an omission: the link is what turns a printed QR into someone’s emergency contacts, so it has to be their act and not a decision taken about them.

Two ways, both from their phone. They open My tokens in their own Spherum card, choose Add a token, and either scan the QR or type the SPH-T-… ID printed on it. Scanning is the normal path; the printed ID is there for a code that won’t read, a cracked face, bad light.

One confirmation, and it is live. Linking is the consent — there is no separate activation step and nothing for you to approve afterwards. From that moment a scan shows what that person chose to share.

One person, several tokens. Somebody carrying two is an ordinary case, and both point at the same contacts. A token from another company is no obstacle either: what matters is that they hold it.

Note

A token that somebody else has already claimed will not link, and the app says only that the token was not found — the same answer a typo gets. It never reveals that a token belongs to someone, or to whom.