Academics
Clocking Staff In by Roll Call
Tick names off a list and the platform clocks those staff in or out. For the staff who have no smartphone to clock themselves in with, taken by whoever stands at the gate.
Staff clock themselves in from their own phone. Some of your staff have no smartphone, so there is nothing for them to clock in with. A roll call is how those people get onto the same timesheet as everybody else. Somebody authorised ticks their names off a list, and the platform records what that person attests.
Taking a roll call
Attendance → Staff roll call, or More → Staff Attendance → Roll call in the mobile app, which is where this is usually done: it is a screen for somebody standing at a gate, not sitting at a desk.
- Choose the direction. Clock in or clock out. The whole screen changes meaning with it, so the button you have armed is the one that is filled in.
- Tick the names. Search for one, or use Select all, which ticks only the names this press would actually move.
- Press the button. It names the count: Clock in 15. Everybody ticked is recorded at the moment you press.
There is no time to set. The time on the record is the school's own clock at the moment the press lands, whatever the computer or phone in your hand is set to. A roll call is taken as people walk through the gate, so now is the answer; a time somebody types is either that same answer retyped or a figure on a colleague's employment record that nothing checked. Where a time genuinely is wrong, an administrator corrects it afterwards. See below.
A note is optional and applies to the whole batch, not to each person. "Morning gate roll call" is the useful sort. It is optional on purpose: somebody clocking forty staff in every morning would otherwise type the same three words forty times a day, and a required field everybody defeats is not a required field.
What the screen tells you before you press
Every name carries what it is now and what this press would do to it. Somebody already clocked in reads On site and Already clocked in, and ticking them changes nothing. The phone goes further and rules the roll into two headed blocks, the names this press would move first, so a long list does not have to be read a row at a time.
This is why the count on the button is not the number of names on the list. If four of your staff clocked themselves in from their own phones before you got to the gate, the button says 15 rather than 19, and those four stay unticked. A screen that let you tick all nineteen and then reported four failures would be reporting a failure that never happened.
Pressing twice is safe. Each person is decided against their own record, so a second press on a bad connection clocks in whoever the first press missed and leaves everybody else exactly as they were. Nothing is doubled.
One name failing never costs you the rest. If somebody's account was deactivated between the list loading and your press, that one name comes back unrecorded with the reason, the other fourteen are recorded, and the ones that did not take stay ticked so you can press again without rebuilding the list.
Switching between Clock in and Clock out clears your ticks, because the same list of names means the opposite thing in the other direction.
The roll call on the phone, opened by somebody who holds that permission and no other, which is why the screen has no tabs. The names this press would move are ruled off from the ones already in, each block headed with its own count, so who is still to come is read at a glance rather than one row at a time.
A roll call is today's, and always attested
Two rules define what this is, and both are worth knowing before you hand it to somebody.
It records now, and nobody types the time. Not yesterday, not last week, not half past seven when it is ten to nine: the platform stamps the moment of the press, on your school's own clock rather than wherever our server happens to be. A roll call is somebody saying I can see these people, which is only true right now. Recording last Tuesday, or fixing a time that is wrong, is a correction: a different record, with a different permission and a required reason, which an administrator makes from the Staff tab. Whoever takes your roll call has the one permission and not the other, so they can neither choose a time nor change one; without that, the narrow permission below would quietly be the power to write two years of attendance for your whole school.
It is attested, not measured, and every screen says so. When a member of staff clocks in from their own phone, the platform has checked their device and, if you have set one, your school's location. A roll call has none of that: nothing about the person is checked, and the fact being recorded is that somebody says they saw them. So it is marked as such everywhere it appears. The timesheet prints Recorded on a roll call in its Notes column and totals Of which attested underneath, and the payroll export carries a column for it.
That marking is the honest part of this feature, and it is deliberately not flagged as something needing review. A school whose cleaners are clocked in by the bursar every morning would otherwise have every one of their days flagged forever, which trains everybody to ignore the column that catches the real problems.
Who may take one
There is a permission of its own for this, Take staff roll call, so that taking the register at the gate does not mean being handed everybody's timesheets.
Your Owner and School Administrator hold it, and so does an HR Officer, who could already record attendance for other people. There is also a role that holds this permission and nothing else at all: Attendance Officer. It is meant for whoever actually stands at the gate, and it is what you give a head of security or a receptionist. Somebody holding that role and nothing more gets exactly this screen and no more of the staff attendance area: on the phone it opens with no tabs beside it, because none of the others are theirs.
What they can see is deliberately less than the board shows. The roll call list carries names, whether each person is currently on site, and whether they are excused today. It does not carry hours worked, arrival times, lateness, or the reason somebody is on leave. That somebody is away is what stops you ticking them by mistake; that they are away for a medical appointment is what the board's own permission exists to protect. Handing out the roll call is not a way round that.
The people this is for, and their accounts
Somebody with no smartphone usually has no work email address either, and the platform does not require one. A member of staff can be given an account with just a phone number, or with neither, in which case they cannot sign in but can still be rostered, clocked in on a roll call and paid. See Staff without an email address.
What a roll call does not do
- It tells nobody. Staff are not notified that they were clocked in by somebody else. By definition these are the staff with no smartphone and often no inbox, so a message would reach nobody it is about, and a school clocking forty people in each morning would generate forty notices a day. The record is the notice here, which is what the attested marking is for.
- It is not a kiosk. A screen at reception showing a rotating code, so staff can clock themselves in without a phone of their own, is a separate thing and is not built yet.
- It does not close a forgotten day. If somebody is clocked in on a roll call and nobody clocks them out, the ordinary forgotten clock-out rule closes the day off at your school's cut-off time, marked as an estimate as usual.
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