Why use the attendance program?
- In compliance with the labor law to accurately track the work hours for hourly-paid employees.
Depending on where your MSP is located, the local labor laws might require you to keep a detailed clock in/out record for the hourly employees. There are multiple stories about MSPs' lost lawsuits due to the mis-category of the hourly employee into salaried employees or not having timekeeping software that keeps detailed in/out/lunch/break for hourly employees.
- https://www.reddit.com/r/msp/comments/403mv4/help_deskjunior_sysad_exempt_vs_nonexempt_question/
- https://sierraws.com/avoid-costly-employee-overtime-lawsuits-by-automating-your-time-and-attendance-systems/
- https://trackingtime.co/resources/employee-timekeeper-for-flsa-compliance.html
- California IT Overtime - IT Overtime Labor Law - LawyersAndSettlements.com
- Provides insight into your team’s current status
- Current attendance status: Who's working, on break/lunch, or out for the day.
- Current in-progress ticket status
- Color coding based on the ConnectWise / Autotask Ticket priority color setting
- Shows how long the ticket has been in progress.
- In-progress ticket status is attached to the user who changed the ticket to in-progress status.
- Accurate work hours for accurate utilization calculation
- We can use in/out/break/lunch records to calculate exact work hours in the utilization calculation, instead of using the standard 8 hours a day as the denominator. Below is an example of a message sent to the end-user every day 10 minutes before the log out time:
- We can use in/out/break/lunch records to calculate exact work hours in the utilization calculation, instead of using the standard 8 hours a day as the denominator. Below is an example of a message sent to the end-user every day 10 minutes before the log out time:
What's New?
- ONSITE button and status. Use for technicians that are doing on-site services at the client's location.
- New and Organized Attendance App Menu:
- Auto-detect ConnectWise or Autotask integration, will display the current ticket the member is working on and how long the ticket is in-progress:
- New Attendance Record with "TEAM" option: Additional feature under SETTING to group members to TEAM (Groupings):
- Settings | Team Members grouping:
- Modify the Bots from within the Attendance App:
How to use attendance program
- Use it inside Microsoft Teams
- Type "in, break, lunch, back, out" command in MPSbots app in Teams
in: Updates your status and records the time you started working in the database
in at [time] because [reason]: Tells the bot the actual time you started working and why you weren't able to clock in on time
break: Updates your status and records the time in the database
lunch: Updates your status and records the time in the database
back: Updates your status back to IN and records the time in the database
out: Switches your status to OUT and records the time you stopped working in the database
out at [time] because [reason]: Tells the bot the actual time you finished working and why you weren't able to report so on time
- Use it in the web interface
How's the ticket number panel calculated?
- The ticket number is displayed for when the employee changed one of the tickets in ConnectWise or Autotask to "in-progress" status. Click the ticket link will bring up the detailed ticket info.
- The time followed the ticket number is how long that ticket is "in-progress"
- Color coding is based on the priority color setup in Connectwise or Autotask.
- Move the mouse over, you will see more detailed information about the ticket.
How to hide users from the Attendance Dashboard
- Go to Attendance, click SETTING from the Main Menu, , and select the User's Work Schedule
- In the attendance column, turn off the user's attendance switch
- Select multiple users and then use the "Enable attendance" and "Disable attendance" buttons to batch enable or disable the attendance function for users.
- Use the "Refresh Data" button next to the MSPbots logo, the user should no longer show up in the attendance dashboard.
Bots related to the attendance program
Clock In Reminder | Remind users after their shift's start time to clock IN. |
Clock Out Reminder | Reminds users after their shift's end time to clock OUT. |
Task Prompter (Beginning of Day) | Reminds users before the start of their shift to clock IN. |
Task Prompter (End of Day) | Remind users before their shift ends to wrap up their remaining tasks and clock OUT when done. |
Time Exceeded Alert (Break) | Remind users to clock 'BACK' when they've gone over their 'break' schedule. |
Time Exceeded Alert (Lunch) | Remind users to clock 'BACK' when they've gone over their 'lunch' schedule. |
Setup the work schedule
- A work schedule is needed to remind users to check-in and check out.
- Some bots like "Tech stats review" will be using the information in the work schedule to alert the user based on their check-out time.
- Go to Attendance, click SETTING from the main menu, and select the User's Work Schedule
- "Template Setting" to add or change the current schedule template.
- Use the "Batch apply" to apply the schedule template to multiple users.