Joining as a guide

Guides use the same app as travelers, and type into the same one box to get in. What is different is what happens next: your code says who you are, and a four-digit PIN says it is really you. The two together open guide mode — the roster, the megaphone, headcounts, the group map, and the emergency vault.

Your code and your PIN

Your office gives you a six-character code. It is not a traveler's code and it is not a password: on its own it opens nothing at all. Treat it like a key that only works with the other half, and keep it to yourself — together they open the whole group's roster, including care notes and emergency contacts.

The other half is a four-digit PIN that only you know. You choose it the first time you sign in, and you type it every time after that. Nobody in the office ever sees it, and nobody there can look it up.

You cannot choose that PIN whenever you like, and that is on purpose: your code gets printed on packets and sent in texts, so on its own it must never be enough to invent a PIN with. The office opens a window instead. Being put on a trip opens one for a week, and so does the office clearing a PIN you have forgotten — so most of the time the door is already open when you first sign in.

If the week has run out — you were staffed in June for a trip in October, or you have only just gotten around to installing the app — the app says so plainly: "Before you can choose a PIN, your tour company has to let you set one." Call the office and ask them to press Let them set a PIN on their Guides page. It takes them a moment, they never see the digits you pick, and then you type your code again.

Signing in

Tap the link your office sent you — it walks you through getting the app on your phone — then open it.
On the Enter your trip code screen, type your guide code and tap Join my trip. It is the same box travelers use; the app works out who you are.
The app greets you by name and asks for your PIN. The first time, you choose it: four digits, typed twice, then Set my PIN and sign in. Every time after, you type it once and tap Sign in. If the name at the top is not yours, tap Use a different code. If instead the app says to ask your office first, see above — they have to open the window before you can pick a PIN.
If you are leading more than one trip right now, the app asks which one. Tap the trip you are working today — the one running today is marked Happening now.
The confirmation says "You are set up as the guide". Answer the one question about notifications (you can change this later from the guide home screen), then tap Continue.

Signing in downloads the roster and the itinerary to your phone, so your tools keep working with no internet — the point of the whole system. Sign in somewhere with a connection, before the day you need it.

Eight wrong PINs in a row locks sign-in for fifteen minutes. If you have forgotten your PIN, stop guessing and call your office. They can clear it without ever knowing what it was — that lifts the lockout straight away, so you do not have to wait out the fifteen minutes — and then open the window for you to choose a new one on your next sign-in. Nothing on your phone is wiped to do this.

What guide mode gives you

The guide home screen is eight oversized buttons and nothing else:

Message Group — send a note to everyone at once. See Messages.
Headcount — count the group at a stop. See Roster and headcount.
Roster — names, needs, and phone numbers.
Locations — who is sharing, on a map. See Locations.
Today — the day's plan, the same one the guests see.
Flights — gates and delays, as the airline last said.
Documents — the trip's confirmation and policy numbers, the same list the travelers carry.
Emergency — every number you might need. See Emergency.

When your code is replaced

The office can issue you a new code at any time — end of season, a guide moving on, a lost phone. The old code stops working that moment, and every phone signed in with it is signed out: yours, and on every trip you lead, not just the one that prompted it. That is deliberate, because a lost phone is lost for all of them. Your PIN is not touched and does not change.

If that happens to your phone, the app tells you plainly with a card that says "Your guide code has expired." Everything already saved stays readable, but nothing new comes in and nothing sends. The fix:

Get your new code from the office.
On the guide home screen, tap Leave this trip… and confirm.
Sign in again with the new code and the same PIN you already use.

Leaving the trip deletes anything still waiting to send — including messages you wrote while offline. The app warns you when that is about to happen; if a queued message matters, write its text down before you leave the trip.

Handing the phone back at season's end

Same control, calmer circumstances: Leave this trip… on the guide home screen removes the roster and everything saved for the departure from the phone. Ask the office to issue you a new code as well — that is the belt to your suspenders: once they do, the old code opens nothing, on any phone.