Geofence attendance

On the map, you mark areas around your offices. When a user with his/her smartphone enters the area, Clock In will be inserted. When user leaves the area, Clock Out will be inserted automatically, without user interaction. This is the Geofence attendance.

Geofence zone Setup

In the web application, you manage the individual marked areas.

Basic

  1. In the User menu - Attendance - WiFi, BLE and Geofence attendance, you can add a new area with the + Geofence button.
  2. The map and the green-colored circular area are displayed. You can move and zoom in with the map so that the circular area covers the territory where the user should be clocked in/out automatically.
  3. You also need to set what happens when a user enters and leaves the area. What activity should be started (eg Work), on which project (e.g. Building 1) or on which department. After saving the changes, the new geofence area itself will sync to mobile phones with My Attendance app as soon as the application is connected online.
  4. At the same time, you can set the conditions under which the activity should not be inserted.

Activate Geofence feature on My Attendance app

In the My Attendance app, simply enable "Enable geofencing" switch in Settings.

Geofence attendance is then active even when the application is turned off or put in the background. The cell phone usually responds to the entry/exit area with a short delay (single minutes). If your phone is connected to the Internet (WiFi, mobile data), changes in attendance are sent to a server. If your phone is out of reach of the Internet, attendance events will be stored and sent later when the phone is online.

For Geofencing to be working well, it is important to leave your WiFi network enabled on the phone (even if the phone does not connect to any WiFi). WiFi is used to improve the detection of user movement.

EXAMPLE: When you enter the Geofence zone, the start of Work is inserted. When leaving the Geofence zone, the end of Work is inserted only if there is no Break in progress. For example, when employees are on Break and leave for lunch, we do not want to end the Work. As soon as they come back from lunch, the start of Work is recorded again.

Time settings

You may wish to have the Geofence zone logged at any time, or you may want the Geofence zone to be active only at specific times. In case of time restrictions, there are three options:

  • no restrictions (whenever an entry or exit from the zone is recorded, it appears in the attendance record)
  • according to scheduled shift times
  • according to specific, manually entered times (most often used if you don't plan shifts)

Shift plan

  1. On the Client's time tab, select Shift plan.

  2. This setting automatically checks the scheduled shifts of individual employees.

    If an employee has a Morning shift, the Geofence zone will be active for that person during that shift. Conversely, if an employee has an Afternoon shift, the Geofence zone will not insert anything for that employee in the morning, even if they are already within the zone.

  3. Shift start and end time allows you to record Geofence attendance before/after the shift.

EXAMPLE: The shift is set at 08:00-16:30. However, employees come in earlier and finish later and you want to reflect this time in their attendance.

Shift start time offset: -00:10

Shift end offset: 00:10

This setting means that the Geofence zone will be active for employees 10 minutes before and 10 minutes after their shift, i.e. 07:50-16:40.

Konkrétní čas

  1. On the Client's time tab, select Particular time.
  2. Each day can be entered in the format hh:mm-hh:mm. Alternatively, multiple time intervals can be separated by a comma and a space.

Valid only for

On this tab you can limit whether the selected Geofence zone applies to all employees or only to specific centres or brands. You can have multiple Geofence zones set up for different groups of people.

Activation on the My Attendance mobile app

In the My Attendance mobile app, just activate Enable geofencing in Settings.

After saving the changes, the new geofences of the area will sync themselves to the mobile phones with the My Attendance app the next time the app is turned on.

The function is then active even when the application is switched off or asleep in the background. The mobile phone usually responds to entering/leaving the area with a small delay of at most a few minutes. If the mobile phone is connected to the internet (WiFi, mobile data), changes in attendance will be reflected. If the phone is out of internet range, the area entry and exit records will be sent later when the phone is online.

It is desirable that WiFi networks are not disabled on the phone. This is because these are used to better detect that the user is moving.

How does the location recording work with geofencing?

The user’s location is not continuously monitored during geofence attendance. The mobile phone tracks a very approximate position in the background which is not processed anyhow, stored or sent anywhere. Only when approaching the border of a set geofence area, the more accurate evaluation of the position is activated which is still not stored or sent anywhere. The record of entering/exiting is saved and sent only when entering/exiting the set perimeter of the geofence zone.

iOS notice

In most cases, your phone will prompt you to enable physical activity tracking. Why?

So that the app doesn't have to constantly track your GPS location and drain your phone battery unnecessarily. If your phone were to continuously track your location, it would drain your battery in no time. Instead, for example, your phone is lying on a table and not moving - that's when location tracking is turned off. Likewise, when it is far from the nearest geofence zone and is "relatively" still, GPS tracking is again turned off. It is only when he gets close enough to the boundary of the geofence zone that it becomes possible to enter/leave it, that's when the Geofence Attendance feature also starts using the GPS of the mobile to determine if the boundary has been crossed. Thus, physical activity tracking reports when the phone is actually in motion and attendance can be recorded.

What if geofencing does not work: iOS

If you have an iPhone, check that Location is set to Always / Permanent in Settings - My Attendance and that Motion & Fitness is turned on. 

ATTENTION: After a few days of use, the phone will ask you again whether you want to confirm location tracking for the application only when the application is running / in the foreground or always / even in the background. It is necessary to select always / in the background again.

What if geofencing does not work: Android

ATTENTION: Nokia phones with Android, such as Nokia 3.1 and others, do not allow long-term applications to run in the background. Because of extended battery life, these phones close background apps and prevent users from adding an exception to the app (as is common with other Android phone manufacturers). Due to that, both features, Geofence Attendance and WiFi Attendance on these phones will work unreliably.

ATTENTION: Some Huawei phones released around 2020 does not have Google Services and Play Store. The Geofence feature in My Attendance app will not work on these phones. If you have the Play Store app on your Huawei phone, you are fine.

ATTENTION: For Geofence attendance to work properly, it is desirable that the phone has the following functions: GPS, Compass, Motion sensor, Gyroscope. Some (usually the very cheapest) Android phones may lack some of these features and Geofence Attendance may work less well or not at all. When buying a phone, please make sure that the phone has all the required features.

  1. Make sure you have WiFi enabled on your mobile all the time
    • Mobile phones use WiFi to assist with geolocation. WiFi must be enabled for geofencing, even if you do not connect to any particular WiFi network.
  1. Make sure you have GPS enabled on Android and you have activated "High Accuracy" mode
    • In your Android, Go to Settings - Access Position (or "Position") - On (switch at the top of the screen).
    • Here also check that "Positioning Mode" is set to "High Accuracy"
    • Here also check that "Scanning" is set to "Wi-Fi Search - Improves Positioning Accuracy ..." and also the "Bluetooth Search - Improves Positioning Accuracy ..."
  1. Make sure Android does not disable the My Attender autostart feature
    • For example on Xiaomi phones, application autostart is disabled by default and must be enabled for My Attendance.
  1. Check that there is no battery-saving app on Android that would kill the My Attendance app running in the background.
    • If there is such a battery-saving app, add an exception for the My Attendance app to ensure it will never be killed when running in the background. For example, on Samsung and Xiaomi, this feature is built-in and factory-enabled.
    • For example, on Samsung and Xiaomi phones, you need to add an exception for My Attendance. In Settings - Battery, there is a list of applications that can be turned off in order to conserve battery power while running in the background. Here you need to add an exception for My Attendance app so that it will be allowed to run in the background.
    • More information can be found here: https://dontkillmyapp.com/
  1. Ensure that all updates are installed on your phone.