I have a cool flutter app which is used to track staff attendance. A user can check-in and check out when they start/stop working and the app record that event, calculate the number of hours worked and send a weekly summary to the manager of the staff expected wages. The current problem is that some staff members forget to check out (everyone is ok with check-in) so we don’t have good numbers and we need to manually change the attendance. I would like to add something to remember them to check out, and I am looking for creative ideas to do so. My objective is to make something very affordable.
So far I thought about two options:
to use geolocation and track when staff get in/out of a certain location and log it as check-in and check out
to set a timer when they start the shift and send a local notification if after xx hours they have not done the checkout
Geolocation seems to be the best because I can even automate the checkin/check out and do it in the backend but it will consme lots of resources in the client because I would need to check their location every while even when their at at home or on holiday...
The timer has some limits and still, I would need to manage background tasks that are complex as well as imprecise checkout depengin on when the notification goes out.
Do you have any suggestions on anything simple to implement?
I would suggest the second option.
A simple scheduler which would look for all the employees who are checked in for more than x number of hours and then throw a clickable notification to checkout. It would be an easy and clean solution. However, it has several limitations as an employee might leave early but checkout later.
In my opinion, Your most clean solution would be to have an RFID/NFC check which automatically registers as a user checks out from the building.
Another thing that can be done if your employees are working mostly on their computers. There can be a browser extension or a web app which will clock in the time they are working on their laptops. Once they close it they will be automatically checked out.
Related
I have built a google actions project and published it. It has a web hook that is linked to a Google Functions with an actions sdk code behind it. Everything works fine.
However, I have noticed that there is a continuous user (with the same userId provided by the intent) that keeps access the function (guessing via the actions project). I am keeping a kind of sessions log and it keeps creating a session almost every 3-4 seconds.
Since the project is just some temporary demo of content and not really shared with the world at large, I am wondering what or who is causing this continuous access. It looks almost like some heart-beat type of check being done. Hence the question: is it something that Google does to know whether the action project is live or not? Thanks
Every 3-4 seconds seems high, but if you have published an Action that has gone through the review process Google does run a health check against it every few minutes.
Here is the situation:
I've got the application that requires different actions for different months. For example if I'll create a task that requires some actions for next 5 months I need some kind of method to keep jumping ti next months to confirm correct behaviour.
Usually I would just connect custom NTP for the server and than change date to whatever I want but this application works on Sharepoint online and as far as I know I can't do that (even if I'll it will affect all users not app under test only).
Another problem is that method should be easy and possible to explain or at least show to business during UAT.
Thanks in advance.
I am currently developing an app for a company that is in a very competitive field. I have finished all of the features of the app that they requested except for one, making it somehow protected from their competing companies to download and use. I thought that I could set up a UIViewController with a password field that would check against some kind of database, but I'm not sure how to do the checking against a database part nor the practicality of it, and was hoping I could get some ideas on how to do this so that other companies couldn't steal and use this app without a password or something that changes like every 30 days or something and is kind of like an activation code.
Review the WWDC 2012 video "Building and Distributing Custom B2B Apps for iOS". I'm unsure if your app is in this B2B classification, it seems that it might be from your description.
What I ended up doing (if everyone needs a reference) was setting up a server with an SQL table that has pass codes in it. Since apple does not allow for any sort of system that requires you to "buy the app from outside the app store" I made a dumby username field (shame on me) that takes any value you like and then requires to have a pass code that fits. Once the pass code gets authenticated with the web server in a json sql request (there are plenty of api's to do this with) it comes back and sends the user to the first screen and sets a value in a plist with how many days of use the user has left. Whenever the user opens up the app it checks to see if the date is different from the last date logged in (saved in the same plist file) and if it is different then it calculates the difference and deducts that many. When the count reaches 0 it sends the user to the pass code authentication screen again. A bit complicated but an effective method of getting around Apple's restriction on not having a sort of pass code system like this. Thanks for the answers, unfortunately enterprise did not work for this company since they needed to be able to distribute the app to as many 3rd party members as they wanted to without having to worry about them leaving the company for other suppliers and remote management of the app (I.e ability to remote uninstall) was also not an option. Hope this helps someone someday!
There's a lot of events happening all the time on my university campus, and, together with a few other students, we thought it would be nice to provide the event schedule as a calendar. So organisers register their event on the intranet, and it gets added to an icalendar file which people on the campus can subscribe to.
This works great when people load the calendar url on their iPhones, but it doesn't when loading in Google Calendar. We have noticed two problems:
When you subscribe to the calendar and then log out and back in, events are no longer visible. Sometimes, clicking refresh fixes it. The vents do not disappear from android devices associated with your account.
When an event is removed from the icalendar file (eg. if it's cancelled), it still remains on the android devices that sync with any google account that subscribed to the calendar. New events sync fine, though, so it's not that the sync didn't happen.
Do you know how I can solve these two problems? I've noticed the STATUS:CANCELLED property in VEVENTs, but it doesn't seem to work when the calendar method is PUBLISH.
Thanks!
PS: If you can suggest a way to test changes faster that waiting for Google to pull the changes from the server, it would be great; right now, I have to wait about 6 hours between each test...
my understanding is that removing it from the file is not the way to cancel an event. One must ensure that there is a UNIQUE identifier to match any changes.
Also must follow the spec for cancelling/changing an event.
See How to cancel an calendar event using ics files?
If all of that is correct, then the various applications that 'subscribe' to a calendar should in theory update the event status when they read the updated file. Unfortunately the speed and frequency of that is up to that application. (NB: note also difference between subscribe and "import")
Yes I have noticed that google is slow to update sometimes. Only thing I can think of is use another application where you have control perhaps over the subscription update frequency to test if the way that you are cancelling an event is working. Once you see the cancellations happening there, then resume testing on google (I have noticed Google is more pedantic than some apps, so you may still have to work to get it 100% working on google.)
Hope that helps!
I've tried the suggestions but Google Calendar only ever adds another event. The iCalendar validators say that the files I generate are valid, and iCal on the Mac removes an event if it has cancel information. But neither Google Calendar or Outlook do. Rather frustrating.
How do I send a push notification to a device at regular intervals, e.g. every x minutes?
[Tapping this out on my phone - hopefully the formatting is all right - I'll fix it later if necessary. Apologies in advance if it's messy...]
As others have pointed out, you'll want to look at Apple's docs for how to do this (it's not the most straightforward process in the world)..
What I wanted to contribute is the suggestion that you check this out: http://urbanairship.com/push/
Urban Airship takes care of a ton of the hassle you'd otherwise have to deal with yourself. You still need to be registered with Apple for sending push-notifications, but if you use Urban Airship's bits, they'll provide you hosting for your notification service, reporting, a management console, and a REST API for interacting with the system. They even have a scheduling component, and I'd bet that it would solve your problem here with just a few simple calls.
These guys are local to me (I live in Portland, Oregon), and I've seen a few of their demos - it's slick.
There are other features, but I think the ones listed are compelling enough to at least give it a look :)
It's obviously not required - you could do all this on your own, but the service they're offering is insanely good and affordable.
At the time of this writing, they have an "indie" account that will let you send 100,000 notifications through them a month for free. After that it's $.001 per notification (again, this appears to be per month - so, if I understand the terms right, you get 100,000 notifications for free each month, which is just awesome).
You can see the different pricing options here: http://urbanairship.com/plans-and-pricing/
I'm not affiliated with these guys in any way beyond having chatted with them at local geek events and having been offered, along with other attendees, free alcoholic beverages. But, as I don't drink, I'd like to think my judgment hasn't been affected by the psychology of gifting (fascinating subject).
So... it's worth it to at least take a look at what they're offering. And if anybody else has links to similar services, post 'em in the comments. Apple has given devs an amazing platform to play with, but they haven't made it very easy in places - it's cool to see shops like this making it more accessible.
In my opinion, of course :)
There is no "built in" way to do this just using APNS. You would have to have your push provider code do this for you.
In my case my push provider pulls rows from a DB table and sends them at the time specified. I would just insert another row back into the DB after I sent a message.
As for limit, everyone I have talked to says that there is in effect no limit.
chris.