Using Jabber to track time attendance

Hi all,

I would like to know if anyone has tossed with the idea of using Jive / Jabber to track employees time attendance at a company. Basically, I would like to dump to a database the time my employess logged in at the start of the day and also when they leave. What would be the difficulties of implementing something like that?

Thanks!

What happens when they forget to log out? Or turn off their client because they don’'t want to be contacted by anyone? Could be a little unreliable for attendance, especially if you are going to base something else on the info (like payroll).

Jason.

Jason raises some interesting points about implementing the system, but there are always similar issues when doing time tracking. In any case, implementing this would be very feasible. I would recommend writing a plugin that is a packet interceptor (notes on doing this in the plugin dev guide of the 2.2 beta). You would listen for presence packets and then log the info to the database. You could even listen for different away states. For example, employees could enter “on break” or “at lunch” as special presence messages (or built in to a custom client). You could then log that info as well. Having a unified notion of presence lets you do all kinds of cool things, including time tracking.

Regards,

-Matt

but there are always similar

issues when doing time tracking.

Quite true. We have a system that uses swipe cards, and you can’'t guarantee that people remember to swipe either

A system using Jive would be quite interesting though.

Jason.