Geofencing Locations
A geofencing location is a place a person is allowed to mark attendance from, drawn as a point and a circle around it. Use it for people who have no reader to punch at.
What it is for
A reader works for a factory gate. It does nothing for a sales officer who spends his day at dealers, or for a site engineer at a client plant. Those people mark attendance on their phone, and what stops that being worthless is a check on where they were standing.
A location here is one circle: a point given as a latitude and a longitude, and how many metres out from it still counts. Build one record per place the client accepts, then say who may use which on Employee Geofencing Location.
Keep the radius honest. Fifty metres around a head office building is tight enough to mean something. Five hundred metres means the next street counts, which is the same as having no check at all.
Every field, in plain words
| Field | What it means | What to put in it | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Location ID | The short code for this place. | HO-KHI | Required. Two locations cannot share a code. |
| Name | What the place is called. | Head Office Karachi | Required. |
| Geofencing Latitude | The north to south coordinate of the centre point. | 24.861500 | Take it from a map. Use a decimal, not degrees and minutes. |
| Geofencing Longitude | The east to west coordinate of the centre point. | 67.009900 | |
| Radius Meters | How far out from the point still counts as being there. | 75 | A building needs 50 to 100. A whole factory compound needs more. Do not make it so wide that the check means nothing. |
| Address | The place in words, so a reader of the record knows where it is. | Plot 24, Korangi Industrial Area, Karachi |
How to configure it
- Agree with the client the list of places they accept attendance from, and be strict about it. Head office, the factory, the Lahore office, a named client plant.
- Get a latitude and longitude for each. Standing at the place with a phone map is the most reliable way.
- Open the screen, type a Location ID and Name, for example
HO-KHIand Head Office Karachi. - Type the latitude and longitude, then a Radius Meters that covers the building and no more, for example 75.
- Type the Address so anyone reading the record later knows the place.
- Save, and repeat per place. Then give people their locations on Employee Geofencing Location.
Scenarios
"Our sales team works out of dealers all over Karachi, we cannot list every dealer"
Then geofencing is the wrong tool for them and you should say so. Geofencing answers "was he at one of these places". It cannot answer "was he somewhere useful". For a field team, On Duty Request is the honest answer: the day is approved as on duty and is not marked absent.
"Head office and the factory, that is all"
Two records. Most clients need no more than three or four.
What it is connected to
- Employee Geofencing Location is where a place is given to a person, with the dates and times it applies.
- An Attendance Machine is the alternative for anyone who does have a reader to punch at.
If something looks wrong
- "The code is already taken" - another location is using it. Pick a different one.
- "He marked attendance from home and it was accepted" - the radius is too wide, or he has been given a location that covers his house. Tighten the radius.