Using Fing as a time clock
I have a small company and my workers come to my office to clock in. (I dont have an actual time card machine... I'm generally there, but sometimes I'm away from the office.... so I have to trust them as to check in time). Sometimes there is a discrepancy between when they say they have arrived to work versus when they really have. Since they Define their phones to my Wi-Fi Fing automatically picks up the moment that they arrived and the moment they depart.
Comments
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I'd be very careful about using this - if an employee has their phone set to airline mode, or with WiFi off, then it'll not show as being connected. In addition if they should do likewise before leaving (or even if their battery fails) then this again will prove to be problematic.
Unsure where you live, but depending on your country, this may actually be unlawful.People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.
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This is definitely feasible with Fingbox and its DigitalPresence, assuming that beyond technical parts, you setup this as a company process, agreed by all employees.
The case of Wi-Fi off could be also covered by Fingbox DigitalPresence, because most of smartphones are checking wifi once a while even when wifi is turned off, and Fingbox DigitalFence is able to detect them, even if with lower precision. So in case you use smartphones or company laptops as badges, it's something to be agreed with employees so they know how it works. Also viable option of hiding a break will be to leave the phone in the office.
Back to technical points: combining Fingbox DigitalPresence with IFTTT and/or Zapier you can achieve any time clock use case you need.
First step is to map in DigitalPresence the people.
Then, with IFTTT: Fingbox presence to google sheet, applet already available and free for the user.
https://ifttt.com/applets/RuHiZhYA-have-fingbox-record-a-presence-log-in-a-google-spreadsheet
With Zapier you could create more complex triggers and not only to google sheets, but free tier on zapier has limits. E.g. Zapier allows even standard DB integrations, so you can store in relational database.
https://zapier.com/apps/fing/integrations
Security alerts: you could even create custom triggers on IFTTT or Zapier, similar to time clock ones, that apply at non work time, so that you can get SMS, call, mail alert in case of office access out of business hours.Carlo from Fing
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Interesting discussion. Thanks @Carlo_from_Fing for explaining how this can be done on the technical side!
On the side of consent that would be the next thing to investigate @Jd45390
I know that quite a few people are using the Fingbox to monitor family presence. I.e. did kids get off the bus and home from school OK and did everything happen as expected at home. Also, the comings and goings in the house are happening as normal.Community Manager at Fing
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Presumably as a business you have an Active Directory domain and if so you could setup a simple signon script that writes to log file that says when they log into on off of their machines their machines. One of my previous employers did this as a security measure. We could lookup the login history of any machine in the company. It came in very handy for troubleshooting and security too.
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This is definitely feasible with Fingbox and its DigitalPresence, assuming that beyond technical parts, you setup this as a company process, agreed by all employees.
The case of Wi-Fi off could be also covered by Fingbox DigitalPresence, because most of smartphones are checking wifi once a while even when wifi is turned off, and Fingbox DigitalFence is able to detect them, even if with lower precision. So in case you use smartphones or company laptops as badges, it's something to be agreed with employees so they know how it works. Also viable option of hiding a break will be to leave the phone in the office.
Back to technical points: combining Fingbox DigitalPresence with IFTTT and/or Zapier you can achieve any time clock use case you need.
First step is to map in DigitalPresence the people.
Then, with IFTTT: Fingbox presence to google sheet, applet already available and free for the user.
https://ifttt.com/applets/RuHiZhYA-have-fingbox-record-a-presence-log-in-a-google-spreadsheet
With Zapier you could create more complex triggers and not only to google sheets, but free tier on zapier has limits. E.g. Zapier allows even standard DB integrations, so you can store in relational database.
https://zapier.com/apps/fing/integrations
Security alerts: you could even create custom triggers on IFTTT or Zapier, similar to time clock ones, that apply only when office is closed. And in that case you could setup a SMS or Mail or call alert to your phone, so that any access to office out of work hours can be easily detected and reported.Carlo from Fing
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@Carlo_from_Fing @Pooh , can you site the reference that if I turn off WiFi that it still communicates from time to time? That’s a new one for me and I tried googling it but came up short. Tnx!
Thats Daphnee, she's a good dog...1 -
Wow, I didn't realize there were three choices - On, Off, and advanced scanningMarc said:@Carlo_from_Fing @Pooh , can you site the reference that if I turn off WiFi that it still communicates from time to time? That’s a new one for me and I tried googling it but came up short. Tnx!
https://www.whistleout.com/CellPhones/Guides/Disable-WiFi-scanning-to-extend-battery-life-for-Android
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Yes, Wi-Fi scanning but not only: also location services use it a lot.
In our experience (with Digital Fence testing) Android devices are doing this quite a lot, while iPhones are not doing or using randomised MAC's so stealth.Carlo from Fing
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My two cents.
I tried to use this feature to check when kids go in/out from home [yes: they know it ].
My trouble has been mainly the timelapse before considering the change of status as a real one.
There is a delay, which is automatically set but can be customized in Fing App's settings, to declare a device in/out of the network.
I understood that this auto-delay is someway variable but clever, I supposed based on the average of wifi pollings played by the device.
For example: now for the Android phone of my son is 23 minutes, while for my iphone is 20 minutes.
For Xbox is 17 minutes while for my smart TV is 5 minutes (all "auto")
When you write the time on the spreadsheet, it includes the delay, e.g:
Out of my house @ 17:00 -> registered @ 17:23 for my son and 17:20 for me
If for my purposes this could be accettable, I wonder if it could be the same for a business related usage.
Maybe @Carlo_from_Fing can suggest a better setup ?
I tried to play customizing this value but if you shorten it too much you get false "out-of-the-net" spreadsheet rows; a solution could be to differentiate the delay between in and out, but I think it would make things too complicate for common purposes.
Cheers,
Davide3 -
Ciao @MDavide
First of all about timeouts: yes, Fingbox has a self-learning threshold for timeout that is very helpful for personal devices that perform power optimization to reduce battery usage, thus often disabling Wi-Fi when not in active use. We strongly suggest not to change those, unless you see that with your tuning the device state is not flapping. When timeout is auto, Fingbox is automatically detecting when it flaps often and increases it.
Back to original question: just tried the IFTTT applet I linked above: https://ifttt.com/applets/RuHiZhYA-have-fingbox-record-a-presence-log-in-a-google-spreadsheet
The log happens after automatic timeout expires, but the date is w/o counting the timeout, so very sharp.
Configured the applet as follows: Any user on my Fingbox.
Then I got email at 20:16 telling me I went out at 20:06 (10 min timeout for my Huawei).
In my presence log I could find the correct time, w/o timeout.
The 4th column btw is the number of minutes the device was present on the network.
Carlo from Fing
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Wow, I didn't realize there were three choices - On, Off, and Advanced Scanning...Marc said:@Carlo_from_Fing @Pooh , can you site the reference that if I turn off WiFi that it still communicates from time to time? That’s a new one for me and I tried googling it but came up short. Tnx!
https://www.whistleout.com/CellPhones/Guides/Disable-WiFi-scanning-to-extend-battery-life-for-Android
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Thank you @Carlo_from_Fing for the feedback. I am pretty sure that when I made some tests in January the delay was included, but I might be mistaken.
I still have my trigger on, so I can quickly double check it:
and I can confirm that you are fully right now.
Ah, yes: this was quite a lazy morning , I left my house @ 8:20 today :-)Davide
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Perfect, thanks for crosscheck Davide
Carlo from Fing
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