New Worker Monitoring Rules, Part 1: General Steps

Our great development team has recently added new functionality that will enable companies to have more control over specific meal and break related rules, as well as the ability to fully customize everything related to Premium Pay Configuration.

This post will be the first part of a small series that will cover each topic in detail, so let's get to it: these are the initial General Steps. The Setup that is covered here will be mostly the same for all the rules that we will be covering, so this article will be linked for future reference since it will cover basic setup and the steps that rules will have in common.

Enabling Premium Pay

Most of these rules will go hand in hand with the new Premium Pay Configuration, so make sure to go to the Administration tab and select "Manage Premium Pay Configuration":

And then, check both "Enable Premium Pay" and "Monitor Driven?".

Naming the Rule

For this setup, there is no need to adjust times in the dropdown menus on this same screen, in fact, these will be disabled since we will setup the times and rules through the Worker Monitoring rules section.

Go the the Administration tab and then "Rules, Action and Fences":

Next, select "Worker Monitoring", once inside this screen, click on the "Add New Worker Monitor" button":

The first step will always be naming the rule and selecting the users it will apply to. Use All Users if it's a rule you want to apply company-wide, or else, click on Selected Users to pick the teams/users.  Then, click on "Create New":

The next step is where you will add the rule, these are the ones that are currently available:

The following list will be updated with links to other posts providing details of how to setup each:

• No Break Taken For
• No Clock Out In
• Break Duration Exceeds
• Worker Week Hours Exceed
• Premium Pay Injury Trigger
• Break Duration too Short

Creating a Notification (Action)

Once the chosen rule is setup, you have the option to create a set of email alerts or notifications.

This are all the available options on this screen, let's go over each of them:

• Action Name: the name of the alert. It's a good idea to use the same name as the rule to make it easier to maintain.
• Automatic Field Device Event: this will trigger an action depending on the event such as clocking in, changing tasks, taking breaks. For the nature of the alerts, it's not recommended to use this as it will affect the employees punches with automatic events.
• Phone Popup Message: this will send a notification to the device when the event occurs, you can set the exact message you'd like them to see, as well as the frequency.
• Phone Noise: it sets the noise the application will do when the event happens. Please keep in mind that if you leave this disabled and have a notification, then the default notification sound used on the device will be used instead.
• Send Email Alert: here you setup an email that can be sent to one or multiple contacts. You type the Subject and the Body just like on a normal email, and you have the option to copy this same email to the field worker that is triggering the event.

If you chose to use this last option and copy the email to the employee, an additional step is required. Go to the Administration tab and select Manage Users:

Then find the employee you need to update the email address for and click on the ID to the left:

Finally, when you are in the user's profile, there will be an Email section, here is where you can enter the employee's email address:

That will ensure that the field worker gets a copy of the email you setup in the previous step.

That is all for now, we will start covering the specific rules on the next post!

--Econz Team

New Feature: Editing Custom Fields

Hello everyone!

Today we are very excited to bring you the latest news: we have enabled the ability for an Administrator,  Web Team Leader and General Manager to edit Custom Field data captured by your employees!

Sometimes employees can make mistakes while they are typing, or you just need to adjust something on a note, an order ID, the price of a sold item, etc. To do this, you need to go to the Reports tab and click the "Custom Field Report". Generate it using the appropriate filters (teams, user or dates, depending on the result you are looking for) and you will get something like this:

Notice the new "Edit" buttons on the right side of the screen. If you click on any of them, you will be able to edit the custom fields for the results you currently have on the screen. This is what the original field values are:

Let's go ahead and change some of the values, we want to change the Name and Position, maybe also use a different Customer Order, and let's say the customer was a bit older than what the employee had reported. Also, this was a really good customer and we give him the chance to pay later, so he wasn't charged today, so we untick the "Was the customer charged?" checkbox:

Notice how you can even adjust numerical values with the arrows to the right, so you have the option to use this to get to your correct value, or type it, however you prefer!

Once you are happy with the changes, scroll to the bottom and click the "Save" button. When you generate the report again, it will have updated the information with the values you just changed:

Hopefully this will make your life easier, it definitely has made it easier for us here at Econz! Give us your thoughts in the comments section in case you have a question or anything you'd like to share.

-- Econz Team

Timecard GPS: Switching Between Time Zones

With this new year, new exciting things are coming to our system and one of these is a new feature geared towards employees that work on different time zones.

The way it used to be was that if you switched to a different time zone, the application showed a message notifying you about this and you had to correct the time zone to be able to continue, but we have made it smarter so that you only need to worry about changing time zones and Timecard will adapt to your changes.

Here is how it goes, this is the example profile we'll be using, notice he was set on US/Pacific time:

Here is a screenshot to show that this device has been setup in Pacific time as well and a sample of the History in the Timecard app:

The user had clocked in at 8:00 AM and changed to a different task at 11:20 AM Pacific Time, but if he had to take a flight to the East Coast and were to change the time zone either manually or have the device do it automatically, the next time Timecard GPS is launched, something new will happen:

The device will give you a message telling you that the timezones have been changed and a reboot is required. You can wait for the timer and have the app shutdown automatically or tap on "REBOOT" and the app will restart right then.

Now, if you check your History, you will notice it will be showing the same original punches but on Eastern time:

One important thing to keep in mind is that the web portal will show the punches using the original time the user was setup with, so, as we saw in the beginning, he was set to Pacific Time, so when we generate one of the reports, it will show the punches in US/Pacific to make things consistent:

That's all for now, leave us a comment in case you have any questions!

--Econz Team

New Feature: Manage Edit Event Reasons

We have recently implemented a new feature focused towards your quality of life: the ability to add your own reasons for making edits to punches.

To set this up, go to the Administration tab and select Manage Edit Event Reasons from the Staff section:

Click on "Add New" on the next screen:

Type your customized reason and click on "Add New":

Your newly added reason will be shown in the previous screen:

So next time you are making edits on the "Edit User Events" section, you will see all of your customized reasons in the dropdown menu:

We hope you like this new feature and that it gives you even more control in managing your organization with our system.

--Econz Team

New Feature: Timecard Checker

There may come the time when you need to collect timesheets and punches from a group of people but only have one device for them to share. Our new Timecard Checker feature will help you with that!

First make sure to setup one Checker user per device, this is the person that will do the initial setup and aid the crew members in setting up their profiles on the device. To do this go to the Field Workers tab and click on Add New:

Then make sure that the Device Type is set to "Timecard Checker" to enable these features:

The rest should be setup as normal:

• Device ID: the user's phone number.
• Name: Employee's name.
• User Type: set it to Field Worker.
• TimeZone: use the correct time zone for the employee.
• Security Question and Answer can be left blank.
• New/Confirm Password: set the password to something secure of your choosing.

Finally, click on Add New at the bottom. This is only required for the Checker user, any other users that will be added to punch in with the same device have to be added as a "Timecard" user instead of "Timecard Checker" on the Device Type field.

Next, we will cover how set this up in the application. Download the Full Version of the app and enter the Device ID and Password when you first launch it. The phone will start authenticating with the server and once it does, it will download all the information for the user's profile. You will know it's ready when you see the green thumbs up.

When you tap on your name, you will be asked to enter the password and to setup your own PIN number to be used from then on once you wish to interact with the app through your profile:

To add a new user (and all subsequent users, tap on the plus icon on the top right of the screen. Then, enter that person's Device ID and Password (make sure to check with Management or our Customer Support team if you don't have this information):

A Search textbox will appear on the top of the screen the moment you have added at least 15 users. This will help everyone find themselves without the need to scroll through the whole list. Once the profile finishes authenticating with the server, the app will request the user to enter a PIN number, too.

This process will always happen when setting up new users and this PIN number will be used every time an employee taps on their name to add punches. Once the PIN is verified, they will see the Clock In screen. Please keep in mind the following images will show how it works for users other than the Checker. The Checker user will have full access to the standard four icons (Clock-in/out, Start/End Break, Change Task, View History), all tasks and settings.

Once the employee taps on "Clock In", the Photo app will be launched for them to take a picture. This will happen for any of the punches entered through the app (Clock in and out, starting and ending breaks).

When you are ready, tap on "EXIT" to leave back to the main employee list so someone else can interact with Timecard. Use the icon #2 to start a break, and at the end of the day, tap on the icon #1 to clock out!

That's it for now! Let us know in the comments section if you have any questions or thoughts.

-Econz Team

Updated Feature: Enhancements to Clock-in Lock

Hello everyone!

We had covered the Clock-in Lock feature in full detail on a previous post. For those of you who might not remember or are not familiar with this, Clock-in Lock enables companies to set a fence around a specific area and if employees attempt to punch in to a task outside of if, the application will notify them of this and will not allow them to enter that task.

We have recently added a new enhancement that allows this lock to be optionally bypassed (i.e. it becomes a warning to the field worker, rather than a hard lock out), which can be useful in case you needed to setup an email alert for when it happens, but still allow employees to select the task even outside of the specified area.

For more information, make sure to follow the link on top (here it is again, just in case), which includes the new step with the "Lock Phone" checkbox.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to leave us a comment!

--Econz Team

Desk Time Report

Hi everyone,

We are back with some exciting new features!

We have created a new report that will show you how much "Desk Time" a user has had. By this, we mean the time with the phone showing zero acceleration from the accelerometer, or pretty much no movement detected, just like when the phone is left on top of a desk.

You are able to setup how much time should be considered as Desk Time, for this, go to the Administration tab and select the option "Tolerance for Desk Time report":

Once inside this screen, you can set the amount of seconds, just like on this example where we set 900 seconds, which equals to 15 minutes:

What this will do is that as soon as the device hasn't detected any movement after the 900 seconds, desk time will start being accumulated until the app detects movement.

To view the data generated by this feature, go to the Reports tab and select the "Desk Time Report":

Here is a sample of the report:

It will show you the start and stop times and a total for each "Desk Time" period, according to the limit of seconds you setup in the previous step.

Let us know in the comments if you have any questions!


--Econz Team