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Where’s my staff is actually two applications in one, where the first is an attendance recording application that works through NFC technology that we currently find in mobile phones; and the second is a location detector based on GPS technology and is used to locate the positions of employees who work outside the company’s premises.
Where’s my staff in fact supports all mobile phones operating on Android 4.0 systems or later and all operating mobile phones on IOS 8.0 or later. It’s also noteworthy that the application automatically switches to QR technique when using mobile phones that do not support the NFC technique.
Review list of mobile phones supporting NFC technique. .
NFC stands for Near Field Communication which is a technique that enables devices (like mobile phones and NFC tags) to communicate without any physical contact at near distances. This particular technique operates within a frequency of 13.56 MHZ. Taping the mobile phone upon the paying machine is amongst the widely known and used purposes of NFC technique. Not to mention that this technique enables mobile phones to exchange information through osculation or “Android Beam”.
QR technique or what so called “Quick Response Code” is a code the somewhat resembles the regular Barcode that comes in a squared shape or two dimensional shape. Any mobile’s camera is able to detect this code and decode it as well.
The GPS technique or the Global Position System is a technique that already exists in all the smart phones, its primary task is to detect the location of the phones through satellites or transmitter towers by telecommunication providers.
In this very case, where’s my staff works through passing each mobile phone onto the NFC tag placed inside the company upon arriving and upon leaving the company. This NFC tag is regarded as the company’s unique code where the employees can only register their attendance by passing their mobiles phones onto this tag. As soon as the application captures the company’s unique code it will automatically save the date and the time, then sends these data to the admin’s account via Internet. Yet, if the employee’s mobile phone is not connected to the Internet, the data will be safely saved -thanks to cloud storage, we can work anywhere and anytime- until it is connected to the Internet later on and then it sends them to the admin’s account. The same process takes place if the mobile phones used don’t support NFC technique, however instead of passing the mobile phones onto the tag you simply direct the phone’s camera to the QR code found on the tag.
Where’s my staff works in this case through the GPS technique where each employee clicks on the “check in” button in the application upon their arrival and then on “check out” when they leave their location.
You can purchase the NFC tag from the applications official website
buy nfc
or from any specialized store, it must be noted that tag’s characteristics should be as follow:
Mifare Ultralight
Currently the application is free of charge. However, there are 3 programs for pricing the application:
No, this application works only upon the users’ consent. So, no tracking can be done without the user approval.
This application is supported by all sort of mobile phones that operates on Android 4.4 or later systems, as well as IOS 8 or later.
You may visit the link below to know which mobile phones support this technique. NFC World
You can order the tag from the company’s website or you can buy it from any store that offers communication tools. The tag’s price ranges between $0.5 and $10 according to its material.
The accuracy of the application ranges between 96% and 99.9%, especially that we use Apple and Google locators in our application.
The admin’s account is set to be the primary account through which you can add, trace or follow up,
save and edit all sorts of information you gathered about the employees. You might as well request different kinds
of reports and monitor the attendance and track in real time the working hours of the employees. In order to create
the admin’s account you should:
Field’s Name | Description |
---|---|
Company’s Name | Company’s Name The name of your company or organization. This name will appear in all reports and you may adjust it later on in Profile. |
Company’s Domain | Company’s Domain The type of activities your company carries on. You can choose from the list. |
Username | The name of the user used to log into the admin’s account. It may contain letters and numbers and it doesn’t matter if they are capital or small letters |
The electronic mail to which you will be sent a verification code in order to activate the account | |
Password | Choose a password for the admin’s account. It may consist of letters, numbers and characters. In case you forgot your password, you may click on “forgot password?” in the home page where you entered your E-mail so that you’d be sent a code to reset your password. You may, at anytime, change your password in Profile. |
Password again | Password again Enter the password again for confirmation |
click on the top left in the home page,
a list of options will appear, afterwards click on Profile.
Here, you may edit any information related to the company or organization.
Notes
It is noteworthy that if the employee works both outside and
inside the company, and the employer wants to track him/her in both cases,
the GEO and NFC features must be turned on at the same time.
To know more about how “where’s my staff” operates.
more
click on on the top left of the home page,
then a list of options will appear in front of you, click on Employees, then at the bottom
of the page you will find a list of the employees you’ve previously registered along with
their unique codes next to their names. You may activate
the application on all the employees’ phones in one of the following methods:
In case you wish to use this application to control the attendance and the working hours of
the employees inside the company.
However, if you desire to track employees outside the company then you may skip this step.
Review NFC tag Where do I place the tag?
NFC tag is an electronic micro chip of size 4cm and of thickness 1mm. This tag doesn’t need any source of energy as it is a passive tag that has its own unique code. Most mobile phones operating on Androids interact with this tag just by passing it upon the tag from about 3cm away.
The exterior specifications of the NFC tag:
You will further use the UID of the tag as a unique code for your company or organization.
In case you’ve purchased the NFC tag from the website of Where’s my staff, you will find attached
the UID of the code in the bottom of the letter.
However, if you have purchased the tag from elsewhere, you will be able to know the code by following those steps:
Some smart phones do not support the NFC feature, so we do need a substitute which is the QR.
For more info about QR kindly review General Definition-What is QR technique?
We will print the UID of the NFC tag as a form of QR code and paste it on the NFC tag as shown below
In general, the NFC tag should be attached inside the company, and the best place to do
that is at the closest point to the company’s entrance gates, you might as well want to consider the following:
The admin’s account is the main account through which you can add, trace,
save and edit information about employees’ work and attendance.
You can also, demand several kinds of reports and monitor in real time the attendance and track work hours
of the employees.*
*all users of the application must be connected to the Internet
It is the page that displays the information of attendance and working places of the employees on the map.
All information that appears on the home page is occurrences of the present day.
This page is divided into 3 sections:
The green shows the employees who checked in and didn’t leave yet
The red shows those employees who checked in and out
When putting the cursor on the employee’s photo, different information will appear to you on the right side of the screen, like his/her name and the time of arrival and departure
Here you may adjust or edit any information related to the company or organization.
Field’s Name | Description |
---|---|
Set Company Location | Locate the company or organization’s position on the map. The purpose of locating the position is to help the application avoid manipulating the attendance registration or even a delusive attendance registration from outside the company |
Company Name | The name of your company or organization. This name will appear in all of the reports |
The electronic mail through which you will able to communicate with the support department, and through which you’ll get a code in case you forgot your password | |
Phone | A phone number to communicate |
Fax | A fax number to communicate (optional) |
Tag | The company or organization’s NFC Tag and QR code. In case you have purchased the NFC tag from the application’s website, you will find attached the code of tag at the bottom of the letter. If you have got the NFC tag from somewhere else, you will be able to know the code by following the steps in the guide. Review NFC tag- How to know UID of the tag |
Image | The logo of the company or organization. In case you don’t choose one, the system will automatically display the initials of your company’s name. This image will appear in all of the reports and at the top of the home page in the admin’s account. You can also change the colors of the application for the employees as the logo’s color .for more info about changing the colors of the application review guide – Application Employees- Settings-Colors- Restore. The image should be according to the following specifications: 400*400 pixels, JPEG, Max size 2MB |
Change Pass | If you wish to change the password |
The admin’s account contains 6 different kinds of reports, all of which can be transformed into Excel format.
This page is currently unavailable in this issue.
This page is currently unavailable in this issue.
To log out of the admin’s account.
The employees’ application is an application for the smart phones found on google play store and App store, through this application, employees can register their attendance. This application was designed in a user-friendly interface to ensure the ease of use for all the users. It also doesn’t require the permanent internet access. Not to mention that this application doesn’t include any ads banners.
Permissions | The reason |
---|---|
ID Searching for accounts on the device |
In order to activate the employee’s account |
Location The precise location (related to the GPS) |
In order to locate the position of the employee when turning GEO and QR features ON.
Note: detecting the employee’s location can be done only upon their consent when they click on Check in. Consequently, the admin cannot track the employees without their consent. |
Camera To capture photos and videos |
When using the application through QR, the application requires accessing the camera in order to capture the QR image. This image will not be saved whatsoever but will be analyzed to decode the QR code. |
Receive Internet Data | In order to activate the application and edit any data entered by the admin on the employee’s account. |
The full access of the network | In order to send the data saved on the application the admin’s account. |
Display the connections of the network | In order to ensure whether or not there is a connection with the network and based on this you’ll be able to edit some of the properties. |
Control Near Field Communication | In order to interact with the NFC tag attached in the location. |
Never put the device on silent mode | In order to alarm the employees and remind them to check out when leaving their work. |
To use accounts on the device | It is one of the most important permissions, in order to allow the application to use google maps to track the locations as well as access google’s services. |