This tutorial is for Guidebook app users. If you have received instructions to download a different app, please refer to those instructions!
In this tutorial, we will cover:
- How to Download the Guidebook app
- How to Access a Guide Inside the Guidebook App
- How to Navigate a Guide and Use Features
Watch this video to learn how to access a guide on the Guidebook app and how to explore the features within. If you haven't downloaded the Guidebook app yet, jump ahead to the next section, then revisit this video!
The steps below will give you access to the Guidebook app. If you have received instructions to download a different app, please refer to those instructions!
To download the Guidebook app, please follow ANY of the steps below:
- Visit http://guidebook.com/getit in a web browser.
- Open up the Apple, Google, Amazon, or Blackberry app store on your device. Then search for “Guidebook”.
When you have found it, tap to download and install the Guidebook app!
Desktop, laptop, or Windows device users: Please visit http://guidebook.com/browse to access guides via web browser.
For information on supported devices, please click here.
How to Access a Guide on the Guidebook App
Tap on the Guidebook app to open it!
Permissions:
- Allow push notifications so you don't miss any important announcements!
- Allow location services so you can use the Map features in the app. We can also provide location-specific guide recommendations, so you get better search results faster.
If you need to download a public guide, read on!
If you were given the passphrase for a private guide, skip to the next section.
If you were invited to an Invite-Only guide, skip to this section.
Public Guide
To access a public guide, tap in the "Find a guide" search box. Type in the name of the guide.
Then tap to download and open the guide.
If you received a passphrase in the download instructions for the guide, this means the guide is private. You will need to use this passphrase to find and access the guide!
To access a private guide, please tap on “enter passphrase”. Then type in the passphrase provided to you.
Tap to download and open the guide that appears.
Log in to your account in order to see restricted-access guides. You have to be on the invited users list in order to get into these guides! Again just log in first.
In-Guide Navigation and Features
1. Navigation Bar
Login
Log in to the guide to access the best features, including Interact, Attendee Check-in, and Messaging. If you have a Preset Schedule, you will need to log in to see your assigned sessions in the "My Schedule" menu item.
Tap the 
icon in the top-right corner of the app screen to sign up or log in to your account!
Navigation
Tap on the 
icon in the top-left corner of the screen to access the navigation menu.
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From this menu, you can access the various components of your guide!
Note: The guide-builder may have named the menu items differently or used different icons for your guide than what you see in these examples. Tap on the menu items to explore everything in the guide!
2. Key Features
Guidebook provides a few different tools to help you get the most out of your event experience!
If you choose to log in, you can check in as an Attendee and see who else is there! You can add a picture and modify your profile, if you would like to share information with other attendees.
The Interact feed is a great place to see what’s going on at your event! Read announcements, post pictures, find popular sessions, and have discussions with fellow attendees all in one place.
You can connect with colleagues without sharing phone numbers or email addresses with in-app Messaging.
3. Important Information
You can find everything you need to know about sessions in the Schedule! Tap on the dates at the top of the screen to navigate through the schedule. Tap on a session name to get more details.
You may see colorful dots on some sessions. These indicate “schedule tracks”, which are tags for sessions according to topic, intended audience, etc.
Below the session description text, you may see links to other items in the guide, surveys, PDFs, and/or website as additional resources.
Create your own custom schedule by tapping “Add to my schedule” or the plus sign 
symbol from sessions in the Schedule.
If you have a Preset Schedule, be sure to log in to see your assigned sessions here!
Now that you know what’s happening and when, we need to know where to go!
Lists
Outside of the Schedule, much of the guide content will live inside lists. Some common lists include:
- Speakers
- Sponsors
- Transportation
- Local Attractions
- Departments on Campus
- Staff Contacts List
- Resources / Handouts
If you have any questions, please contact the guide-builder or reach out to us at Support@guidebook.com. Please provide the name of the guide you are using so we may best assist you!
Hi Everyone,
A few users have been asking about the built-in 'Search' feature on the mobile web platform, as well as the permissions Guidebook requests upon install. I'd like to take a moment to clarify both of these questions!
Regarding 'Search', at this point in time, our Guidebook Web version lacks a fully-fledged search feature. Developmentally, the global search feature presents a much larger challenge to implement on the web platform than the app itself. In its stead, you can find Search functionality within the schedule module, and we strongly encourage using your web browser's native search feature (often called "Find in Page"). We know this is not ideal, and we hope to improve search moving forward. Thanks for your understanding and patience!
On app permissions, Guidebook does request access to several phone features upon app download. Many of these features are recommended to ensure a fantastic Guidebook experience -- access to the camera opens up use of the photo module as well as the attendee/connect networking feature, allowing push notifications permits event organizers to send vital information updates (Guidebook will never spam you with push notifications nor advertisements), and more beyond these features. We do acknowledge, however, that many users wish more privacy than others. By navigating to your device's settings, you will have the ability to manually enable/disable any of these permissions.
I hope this helps, and please let me know if you have any other questions!
Best,
Jacob
I want to click on a Guidebook schedule item, to add it to my Google Calendar or my iPhone's calendar. Those calendars have better features than guidebook and I am used to using them. Alternately, I would like a calendar feed that I can synchronize with my other calendar apps.
Hi David,
Thanks for the feedback; while we don't currently offer these features, we've certainly received a number of requests for similar functionality. I've tagged on your notes to the feature request board for our product team, and we'll definitely let people know when our team has a chance to develop such a tool. I appreciate the suggestion!
Cheers,
Jacob
Just some feedback on giving users instructions on how to download a guide: it might be good to unify the symbols, language, buttons used across iOS/Android and different versions of those operating systems.
In the process of building a poster and drafting an email for our event to show users how to get our guide, I realized that on iOS 7 (which many people are still using) the button says "redeem code" but on iOS 8 the button says "use code." On iOS 7 there is a "Scan" button but on iOS 8 there is a very small icon to scan that does not actually include the word "Scan." I haven't had the opportunity to test the full experience with an Android device yet.
It is hard to include the steps to download/install the app when they are slightly different depending on the device/iOS version. Many of our attendees can figure out how to install our guide with somewhat nebulous instructions, but some are not very tech savvy and I know they are going to get frustrated when we tell them to look for a "Scan" button and they don't see one.
Other than this, I LOVE Guidebook and I am having a blast building our guide. It is so easy!
Stephanie,
This is phenomenal feedback! Thanks so much for taking the time to read through our article and to leave such a thoughtful note -- I'll relay this information to our development team, and we'll hopefully release some more consistent verbiage through our app platforms.
One of the reasons for the discrepancy, at least between Apple devices and Android units, is that mobile app trends/designs are actually quite different between the two operating systems. We've tried to create a mobile experience that adheres to the 'vibe' of the platform so that the usage feels familiar and cohesive.
That being said, there's always room for improvement, especially between system versions on the same platform. I'm really happy to hear about your great Guidebook experience so far! Please let us know if you have any other suggestions -- you're always welcome to write in your thoughts to support@guidebook.com.
Have a great rest of the day, and happy building!
-Jacob
We're finding that our users are having trouble navigating to the menu in the iOS version. It seems like they expect/hope that the menu items will be on the initial view when opening the app (when we used the app last year that is how it was), and it isn't super obvious to them that tapping the "3 stacked lines" icon will open the menu, as many of them are not super tech savvy (this symbol is ubiquitous with menus, but our audience isn't super familiar with it). Maybe even adding the word MENU next to the symbol might help those not familiar with this symbol.
Also, tapping to open the menu but swiping to close the menu is not ideal, as our users want to tap the same spot to close the menu but there is a button there that closes the entire guide and goes back to the main menu of the Guidebook app, and then they have to go back into the guide.
I am super excited to use Guidebook again for our event this year, but I feel like some of the UI changes since last year have made navigating the app a little less intuitive than it used to be.
Hi Stephanie,
Thanks for some more terrific feedback, and I'm sorry to hear the UI change hasn't blown you away. We decided to switch to a drawer view layout in order to provide a more consistent experience across all devices (we took feedback like yours from earlier on this article into account), and to keep up with industry-wide standards to which end users are now accustomed. More information about the switch can be found here: https://guidebook.com/mobile-guides/updated-ios-layout/.
While any change can initially be met with resistance and confusion, we really believe that most users will have a more consistent and enjoyable experience with the new view. We certainly plan on continuing to iterate and improve our product moving forward, and your feedback is invaluable! If you have any further thoughts you'd like to share with our team, I encourage you to send us an email at support@guidebook.com.
Thanks for your understanding, and I hope you're having a great day!
-Jacob
Is there a way to delete old guidebooks? I've got lots of them that are years old and no longer useful and filling up memory. No mention of how to delete that I can find anywhere.
Hi Waz,
If you tap and hold on any of your downloaded guides, you should have the option to 'Unsync' and delete those guides! Hope this helps!
can you use the same app for a multi-date event?
Hi Frankie!
We typically recommend different guides for events with multiple dates. However, every guide use case is different! I'm going to open a ticket thread with you so I can learn more about your use case.
Can you make it so each attendee can add person events to their calendar? I have set up some personal meetings outside of our event sessions and it would be helpful to have them all in the app. I have added them to the "to do" list but then they don't show up in my schedule. Otherwise I will just have to use an external app TOO to be able to have everything in one place.
@Morgan -- great question. Currently, this is not possible in our system. However, our engineering team is actually working on creating this feature as we speak! We hope to unroll this functionality in the near future -- stay tuned :)
Hi- hope this is the right place to ask. Is there some way to share or make viewable my "My Schedule" list? Not a preset schedule, just events I've selected from the main schedule. It'd be very convenient if my friends and I could all see each other's plans inside the app, to coordinate.
@Decian -- thanks for the question! You're more than welcome to comment, and you can also use support@guidebook.com for questions. Currently, we do not offer a way to share your own schedule, but I totally hear you on the use case. Let me file a feature request with our dev team -- we're always looking for ways to improve the product. Thanks again!
I'm in Guidebook and have linked my WPO20CONF account to my FB & LI accounts, but can't link to Twitter. I've rebooted both Guidebook & Twitter a # of times, but still can't get in. I'm very active in Twitter and have trained conference attendees for the event starting next week, so this is an ironic frustration! Can you help?
Hi Anne,
Thanks for reaching out! I'd be happy to help with that. This issue is likely related to Twitter's authorization settings on your device. I'm going to open up a support ticket on your behalf and we can take it from there.