TCW Problems

[BlakeB]

I have been having some program delays as well as bad punch in/out times.
I had an employee, that has been using this for a month or more now, tell me that he punched in when he got to work in the morning (8:05:35 am) and closed/minimized TCW to the notification area of the taskbar.
When he wanted to punch out for lunch (around 12:43 pm), he opened TCW, clicked his name, put in password and hit enter.
When he got back from lunch (1:39:05 pm) he punched in and proceeded to double-check his time. It showed that he had clocked out at 8:06 am for lunch!!!??!?

This tells me that there is a possibility that the user(s) can punch in/out before TCW can actually get an updated time from the time server(s).
So because of this I had to go and edit his time, obviously.

I have also noticed that sometimes when opening TCW from it's "hibernation" state (which would be anytime after it was 1st opened and then put to the notification taskbar) it shows user(s) statuses before it went into "hibernation". If you sit at give it around +/-15 seconds it will finally update to the current statuses. Or of course you can force a "Refresh TimeClock entries" from the menu.

Is there any way to not allow a user(s) to do anything until it has actually updated??

Thanks,
Blake

[Paul Mayer]

There should not be any delay in punching if you've unchecked the option under the Other Tab that says "Wait 4 seconds Login for security camera". This is a relatively new option in TCW, see this page in the help file:

http://timeclockwindow.com/tcw-admin-online-help/GeneralOptions.htm

My guess is the employee did not wait for the time to refresh, the clock is displayed and depending on how quick your Internet is working at the time there can be a delay. The employee needs to look at the screen. If there is a problem, click TimeClock and then click Poll Internet Time. See this page in the help file:

http://timeclockwindow.com/tcw-online-help/GetingStarted.htm

The polling the database in our early versions was every few seconds which caused resource problems with the MS Data Access tools and ultimately really bogging down the program. We no poll only every 15 seconds. If a person wants to see immediately, again there is a menu selection under the TimeClock menu to "Refresh TimeClock Entries". See the page link above.

[BlakeB]

Yes, I have the camera delay option turned off.

We are using our own time server in our network, so there should be almost no delay for it to "Poll internet time".

From what I've seen, there's a short delay when the TCW window is opened from the taskbar. It usually shows the "reconnect now" button while the program is trying to "re-paint" the window. Then there is another delay before the statuses are actually updated but the time appears right. However as soon as the statuses appear the user thinks it's ok to punch in/out, and the time looks to be correct in the window.

We are running this mostly on Windows 7 machines with Core i7's and 4 GB of ram, so there should be no issues with computer speed here.

This is just my thought, but couldn't you make the program poll the database ASAP when coming out of hibernation and before it actually shows employee's statuses and then a 15 second interval from that time or until it's in hibernation?

Thanks,

Blake

[Paul Mayer]

I assume that you have the IP address pointing to your own time server setup in TCW?

And yes there is a slight delay when opening from the Hibernation state as it reconnects to the database at that point in time.

The developer is going to add code to actually refresh the employee grid when it returns from Hibernation in the next build. Presently there is a 15 second delay between polling for the employee list refresh.

[BlakeB]

Yes.

Hopefully this makes it easier on the users and it will make everything current when it opens up, even if there is a delay before it shows anything.

Thanks,

Blake