Identities

Every presence reading has two identities: usually a place, and the person arriving at or leaving that place. The second identity is the subject of the reading, and it's for the subject that timesheets are made.

When you add staff to Alpaka, they're automatically given a PIN and a QR code, alongside facial recognition, as the three ways they can identify themselves coming and going from work. Using an incorrect PIN or QR code still creates a reading, but Alpaka won't know who it belongs to - though the photograph usually makes it obvious, so it becomes a small manual task to edit the reading and assign it to the right person. It's preferable that people either remember their PIN correctly every time, or avoid using PINs altogether.

A correct PIN or QR code identifies someone immediately, because it matches what's stored on their HR record - where you'll find their PIN and QR code, and where you can change a PIN as long as it doesn't clash with anyone else's. You don't generally need to change a QR code, since nobody reads what it says.

Under Presence, then Identities, you can see the PINs and QR codes for everyone in your organisation, for both people and places. You can download these as an Excel file, or as a contact sheet of QR codes with names on, ready to print and hand out.

For facial recognition, an HR record holds the reference photo taken the first time someone was identified. While that photo is there, facial recognition keeps working; delete it, and facial recognition will no longer recognise that person. You can upload additional photos without removing the original, and it's worth keeping that first reference photo in place, since every future match is compared against it - the same position, angle and lighting gives the most reliable results.

That covers identifying staff for time and attendance. Everything else in Presence is about using and downloading the data those readings create.