Snehapadma Blog

Snehapadma CentralStation™ R9.07.01 B11.05.10 Maintenance Release

2011-05-09T11:11:00.004+05:30

Dear End Users / System Integrators,

Please download the latest version of Snehapadma CentralStation™.

This is for those affected by Time Office "Outlived Utility" issue. There is no change in features or any thing.

Update procedure

Download the current release from link
https://sites.google.com/a/snehapadma.com/snehapadma-centralstation-manua/Home/SnehapadmaCentralStation.msi?attredirects=0&d=1

Uninstall the Snehapadma CentralStation from Control Panel

Install from the downloaded msi file.

That is it.

-
Snehapadma Support Team

Snehapadma is HID NAS Partner of the Year 2010

2011-03-18T12:08:00.004+05:30

Snehapadma was HID NAS Partner of the Year 2009. This year too, Snehapadma is HID NAS Partner of the Year. The momento was given to Snehapadma team by Ranjit Nambiar of HID Global during HID Strategic Partner Meet in Bangalore on 17th February 2011.

Snehapadma CentralStation helps customers realize full potential of HID NAS (Networked Access Solution) platform products that includes Edge Series of PoE enabled controllers and VertX series of controllers and interfaces that provide legacy installation a logical path to upgrade to IP based access control.

Snehapadma CentralStation™ R9.07.01 B11.01.01 Maintenance Release

2011-02-01T10:32:00.003+05:30

Dear End Users / System Integrators,

Please download the latest version of Snehapadma CentralStation™.

The feature updates are as follows:

Removed Access Group and Schedule Configuration from the Quick Configuration. This makes Quick configuration even quicker
Ability to configure separate Readers for Time Office so that you do not get all the access control data into the Time Office events.

In order to use above feature, please contact us.

Should you update?

Please note that this is compulsory update. There will be another maintenance update around first week of April which we hope to be last maintenance update.

Update procedure

Download the current release from link

https://sites.google.com/a/snehapadma.com/snehapadma-centralstation-manual/Home/SnehapadmaCentralStation.msi?attredirects=0&d=1

Uninstall the Snehapadma CentralStation from Control Panel

Install from the downloaded msi file.

That is it.

Snehapadma Support Team

Snehapadma with HID Global in IFSEC 2010 at Mumbai

2010-11-27T09:03:00.005+05:30

Snehapadma presented its solution for TimeOffice and Access Control, the Snehapadma CentralStation along with Visitor Management System and CCTV Integration based on HID's Edge and VertX platform in IFSEC 2010. Here are some snaps from the event.

Harshal @ Snehapadma with Sumit @ HID

Satish and Harshal @ Snehapadma with Mahesh @ HID

The HID Stall

Display of Snehapadma solution

Atul @ HID with Satish @ Snehapadma

Britto @ HID with Harshal and Satish

Satish

Snehapadma team that attended the expo: Harshal, Satish and Amol.

Snehapadma CentralStation™ R9.07.01 B10.05.10 Maintenance Release

2010-05-11T16:24:00.004+05:30

After the gap of six months, we are having another release for Snehapadma CentralStation™

What's new?

Snehapadma Time Office

You could earlier user Employee Lists for ease of manpower planning. Now you can take Employee List wise reports. This release has better support for Autoshift and Holiday.

Snehapadma CentralStation™ Configurator

We added General Configurations menu to the Snehapadma CentralStation™ Configurator. This requires System Administrator privileges. You can set following configurations:

Time Event Types specific to door: Now a door can be configured to interprete its time event is Out or InOut apart from as automatically set by CentralStation. This helps in specific cases when you want to interprete time events from E400/ER40 as Out events for Attendance purpose, or in case when any reader to be used only for attendance where there are no night shifts (in which time events are interpreted as InOut events).
Emergency Input Point: You can set specific controller as an Emergency Input point. This is assumed to be Normally Open condition. Any NO fire alarm input can be given as input to CentralStation. In case of V2000, ER40 or E400, it has to be given to AC Failure Input. In case of V1000, you have to give it to Auxillary Input 1. When a closure of circuit is sensed on these points, the Door Open signal is sent to all the doors. In order to have effect of this, you will need to do Initial Provisioning of the Controller (you want to set for Emergency Input) once.
Time Synchronization: You can on request reset the time of controllers as that of Server with a click on Reset Time Button.

CentralStation Monitor

Now view the Events as they happen in Monitor as well. A separate Grid View is provided to know the status such as Door Open, Door Forced, Tamper, AC Failure, Battery Failure and reset the Alarm from central place.

CentralStation Server

Time of controller synchronized with Server once in a day to avoid drift.
Can view coded status of Controller in the CentralStation server
No need to do the Reader Interface (V100, V2000) supplementary configuration as CICO or CIFO. It is handled by Application now.

How to update?

The procedure remains simple and same:

Download the current release from link http://www.snehapadma.com/SnehapadmaCentralStation.msi

Alternately, you can also download this release from http://sites.google.com/a/snehapadma.com/central-station/installation-manual/SnehapadmaCentralStation.msi

Uninstall the Snehapadma CentralStation™ from Control Panel

Install from the downloaded msi file.

That is it.

What's Next?

What if I face any issues while using this software or hardware?

For End Customers, the first contacts are their System Integrator.

For System Integrators, you should contact ADI Branch from whom you have purchased this.

If nothing works, please feel free to send us an email at support AT snehapadma.com

You can also call us on 9890044196 (Satish) or 9975570715 (Harshal) if you require any emergency support.

Snehapadma CentralStation Team

Snehapadma CentralStation™ R9.07.01 B9.12.10 Maintenance Release

2009-12-10T16:06:00.003+05:30

Snehapadma CentralStation™ user base is increasing as we move forward. One of the offshoot of this has been the requirements that are coming from this user base. Some of them are customer specific. Some of the popular ones find their way in the main release. This release contains some of such use cases.

1. Integration of Emergency with Third Party trusted Application.

2. Setting up ER40 or E400 as Out Reader for Attendance.

3. Any Reader now can be set up as "In/Out" reader for attendance purpose.

4. The Controller Listing in CentraStation™ Server now also shows one door that is on this controller.

5. Support for 64 bit Windows 7.

Should you update?

If you want to take benefit of any of the above use cases. Do write back to us on support AT snehapadma DOT com or comment here if you want to know more.

Update procedure:

Download the current release from link http://www.snehapadma.com/SnehapadmaCentralStation.msi

Uninstall the Snehapadma CentralStation from Control Panel

Install from the downloaded msi file.

That is it.

Changelog:

Enhancements

349: Show controller location on CentralStation Server.

356: Third Party Integration for invoking and revoking Emergency.

411: In/Out and Out reader setting for attendance logs

Fixes

427: CentralStation Server crashed on 64 Bit Windows 7 machine.

What is yet to be fixed: The license enforcement is yet to be fixed in this maintenance release.

Snehapadma CentralStation™ Team

Pune Expo 2009

2009-11-04T16:51:00.002+05:30

We are participating in Pune Expo 2009. The theme this year is Business @ Innovation. You can know more details on http://www.punexpo.com. We are showcasing CentralStation, Time Office, Visitor Management system there with Live Demonstration. You are cordially invited.

Dates: 4th to 8th November 2009
Venue: COEP College Ground, Shivajinagar, Pune
Timings:
Business Hours: 10AM to 4PM
Others: 4PM to 8PM

Our booth is in Hall C, #41.

See you there!

Snehapadma CentralStation™ R9.07.01 B9.10.30 Maintenance Release

2009-11-02T10:39:00.003+05:30

We are pleased to release a maintenance release of Snehapadma CentralStation™ R9.07.01 B9.10.30. We have incorporated your feedback and fixed some issues along with some enhancements. Please find more about that in the Changelog.

Should you update?

If you are affected by any of following changes, you should update. Specifically, if you are using Mifare or Corporate 1000 format cards, or have number of controllers more than 20, you should update. Another reason to update could be if you get the error "Software has outlived its utility". Should you have any queries, please call us on 9975570715 for advice.

Update procedure:

Download the current release from link http://www.snehapadma.com/SnehapadmaCentralStation.msi

Uninstall the Snehapadma CentralStation from Control Panel

Install from the downloaded msi file.

That is it.

Changelog:

384: Support for 35 bit card format
349: Server should display pertinent Controller information
348: In case controller is not updated, transaction is logged for old employee. Transaction log now corresponds to _current_ employee in DB as against _in memory_ employee of server
347: Cleared cards cannot be reassigned in some cases. Cases: 1. When the credentials are not updated on the Controller, 2. If card is disabled for employee and then unassigned
346: Employee Deletion in Time Office causes inconsistency
345: Cards of employee deleted from Time Office can not be reassigned
344: Footer to Configurator with User Name and Role of Login
343: RBAC for HRM in Configurator
320: CentralStation server shows array out of bounds error, This error is shown in case the number of accessgroups is more than 8.
319: CentralStation reports does not show for some employees. Reports in central statio are not visible for employees with Credential id > 2G.
296: Maitenance Release for release 9.07.1 to fix emergency and revoke emergency batch files.

What is yet to be fixed: The license enforcement is yet to be fixed in this maintenance release.

Snehapadma CentralStation™ Released

2009-04-09T18:02:00.004+05:30

Today, we released Snehapadma CentralStation™. It has multiple applications:

CentralStation™ Configurator: to let the software know positioning of controllers, readers, input monitors, output controllers, their interrelation, various areas, relations between doors, locks, readers and areas etc.

CentralStation™ Server: to manage credentials, schedules, area controls, and monitoring access, inputs and outputs by directly interacting with the controllers and storing them in database.

Time Office software: to manage role based access control, employees, departments, shifts, schedules, holidays, business logic and view reports etc.

The more is yet to come:

CentralStation™ Client: to monitor access, inputs and outputs by reading through database logs.

Visitor Management System: Upcoming software that is also integrated with the above is complete visitor management software. It has on-the-go card creation for the visitor on Visitor Terminal that is equipped with fingerprint reader, a camera and card reader. Employee can put information about the expected visitor through this system. Company can also put up a list of prohibited people. When a visitor arrives, his/her schedule is checked against expected schedule. His/her fingerprint is taken and compared against previously stored set of fingerprints to check if he/she is not blacklisted. Then, a card is configured so that he/she can access only those areas as approved by employee that has put up the request. His time between main gate and building he is supposed to visit is checked against pre-determined value at the time of in as well as out to raise alarm for security.

Please follow the link below for installation instructions.
http://sites.google.com/a/snehapadma.com/central-station/installation-manual/

We are continuously documenting the help manual. Please visit the following link for the latest version.
http://sites.google.com/a/snehapadma.com/snehapadma-centralstation-manual/

Happy Monitoring!!

Snehapadma CentralStation™ Team

Snehapadma CentralStation

2008-12-03T09:38:00.004+05:30

Recent events like Mumbai Siege by terrorists have heightened the need for security. It happened to some iconic buildings, but the same can happen anywhere, anytime. No body can claim to be immune from such type of attacks. We must try to protect and secure our establishments from possible internal and external threats with best of the technologies that are available at our disposal.

And this means not just buying post-event security gadgets like CCTVs, but preventive security measures that help you

Detect patterns, anomalies
Prevent access to installations on need to know basis
Ensure that all the visitors are accompanied by a person from establishment
Ensure that minimum occupancy rules are followed for certain parts of the establishment
Prevent misuse of credentials by the perpetrators
Remain top of all these things at all times and at location of your convenience.

We can help you in precisely this. Snehapadma partnered with HID Global for Networked Access Solutions (NAS) like Edge and VertX Series and is one point contact for all HID products such as all types of cards, readers and controllers.

These HID products communicate with credential readers (like card readers or biometric readers) through weigand protocol and various input output devices with potential free contacts. These products can be used for complete centralized access control and building security management like fire alarm, smoke detectors, motion detectors, lights, temperature etc.. We recommend you visit website of HID and these products for more details.

Snehapadma CentralStation brings to you a unified, realtime, multi-location, central monitoring system for access control and building management.

Auto-Shift Scheduling and Detection

2008-11-21T00:09:00.005+05:30

In the last post of Shift Scheduling, Shift Scheduling Is Even More Easy, we saw how we can attach Shift Pattern to the Employee, and thereby reduce the work load and automate shift scheduling. This can very well be used when the Shift Pattern is determinable.

What about the scenarios when it is not possible to predict which employee is expected in which shift?

User of the System is not expected to enter shift on daily basis, rather he/she looks up to the system to assist him / her in this. To do that we need to detect shift automatically. And how?

In the Time Office Software, we examine the time stamps from beginning of the day to next 36 hours. We find First In and Last Out. Now we find which is closest shift to this First In and Last Out. We say that the Shift which has highest proximity to this is Shift automatically detected.

e.g. In a company, where sift timings are 7am - 3pm - 11pm - 7am, and employee is found to have In time of 7:25pm and Out time of 6am, it is determined that 11pm - 7am shift is closest to the time recorded for employee, and other details are evaluated as if employee was assigned this shift.

Please note that the time events recorded must of type In or Out. If time event is of type InOut, system shall not be able to detect shift accurately. E.g., in the above example, had the time events been ambiguous InOut, it is not possible to determine systematically where person is coming in at 6am or going out at 6am. Thus you must configure the devices specifically for In mode or Out Mode.

Ok, how do we tackle the problem of automatic shift detection when employee is supposed to come in a subset of all defined shifts?

A slightly bigger organization might have several shift patterns. E.g. the problem is this: As employee1 works in Unit 4, and Unit 4 shifts are 7am to 3pm to 11pm to 7am, employee can come in these shifts only. However, another employee2, works in Unit 5, whose timings are 8am to 4pm to 12am to 8am. Then there are employees of maintenance department whose shifts are 11am to 7pm to 3am to 11am.

Here comes in Autoshift. You can define multiple autoshifts which is essentially a group of shifts that can be interchanged by the employee. In the above example, we shall have 3 autoshifts: for Unit4, Unit5 and Maintenance.

You can then assign these autoshifts to employees through employee master. Thus while automatically detecting shift of employee working in unit4, only shifts 7am to 3pm to 11pm to 7am are considered. Even if person comes at 8am (actually an hour late), 8am to 4pm shift is not detected though it might be closer to the actual timings.

Flexibility

But not everybody wants this. In such a case, AushiftId of 0 is assigned to employee. If set so, it does not detect the shift, and does time evaluation as per the shift set during shift scheduling.

Others want this to know if two employees have switched the shifts between them, it should not have immidiate approval. It should still process the data according shift given in shift scheduling, where detected shift provides assistance. How do we have all these? Ofcourse through configuration variables which is: SetShiftToDetectedShift.

Only if this variable is set to 1, the detected shift is automatically assigned to the employee. Otherwise, it shows as detected shift, and you can view a report where detected shift is not same as assigned shift to take futher action.

In conclusion:

Employee has additional property: Autoshiftid: 0 means no detection, otherwise detects shift automattically amongst the shifts set in autoshift master. The SetShiftToDetectedShift gives flexibility to determine whether this automatically detected shift be considered in time evaluation calculations directly.

Snehapadma Time Office Team

It has been pretty quite

2008-11-16T22:50:00.002+05:30

Dear Readers,

Yes it has been pretty quite for last few months. Which means we were too busy to blog about what we were doing all the time. Not a great scenario. However, this means that we now have a lot of things to tell you about!

In all this time, we were continuously improving upon the time office software, whose current version now 8.11 has most of the things that were on the wish-list.

We were also busy on couple of other projects. Expect announcements on those soon.

I guess we are going to have a lot of activity on the blog in next two months.

Stay tuned

The Snehapadma Team

Self Manual Entry: Should it be Allowed or Not

2008-08-05T12:41:00.005+05:30

One of our client asked us this thing. Should a Department Head, or an Acting Department Head be able to do manual entry for himself or not...

Our natural response was: How do you want it? Client said no. They should not. Now there are other clients who do not care about this. So what do we do?

Now we have configuration parameter DenySelfManualEntry which shall be 0 (i.e. Selft Manual entry not denied but Allowed) by default. Client can set it to 1 (or deny) and is now assured that user shall not be able to make manual entries for himself or herself.

This feature shall be included in 8.09 version of the software.

Yet another configuration parameter so that the Time Office Software behaves the way you want.

Shift Scheduling Is Even More Easy Now

2008-06-03T17:15:00.006+05:30

There is a pattern in Shift Scheduling. An employee normally has one shift sequence to adhere to. It often gets repeated from time to time.

In version 8.05, you can assign any shift sequence between any specific dates to any employee providing ultimate flexibility. Further, periodicity of such a shift sequence can be a week, or 3 weeks or 40 days or anything for that matter. Thus you can assign sequence for a week, a month, a quarter, or even an year or more.

The hitch is that you have to re-assign the shift sequence once this period is over.

Now we have a way to overcome this. All you need to do is: Assign shift sequence and starting date of the shift sequence to the employee while defining the employee. By default, the Shift Sequence Star Date is DefaultShiftSequenceStartDate as set in System Configuration.

System shall have a property called BeginningOfMonth. This is the Date when all the applicable shifts are calculated for the employee for the current month as assigned to him/her automatically. This is Beginning of the Month Activity.

E.g. If Beginning of Month is 7, all the shifts are calculated on 7th of the Month and are calculated up to 6th of the next Month.

While doing so, it takes care that automatically calculated shifts shall be applicable only if no shift is assigned previously on the same date. Similarly, you can over-ride these automatically assigned shift at any point in time in future.

In short:
1. Employee shall have properties:
* Shift Sequence and
* Shift Sequence Start Date
2. Configuration shall have two parameters
* BeginningOfMonth (1 by default)
* ShiftSequenceStartDate (2nd June 2008)

Snehapadma Time Office Team

Special Treatment for Some: Accepting Single Time Event for Attendance

2008-05-21T12:13:00.006+05:30

One of our client had difficulty of putting the current system as presence was being calculated on basis of time spend by employee in the company ("Minimum Time for Full Day" and "Minimum Time for Half Day"). It became difficult for client to enforce rule of marking time event at both In Time and Out Time. This resulted in apparent absenteeism by the employees.

Well, this can be the case in the organizations where there is no Over Time, especially in services sector.

What do we do now?

We have created a property for each employee: "Is Single Time Event Sufficient For Attendance" which by default is set to organization wide property "Is Single Time Event Sufficient For Attendance" in Configurations, which by default is set to False.

For all the employees with this property set to true, now the system as to work less harder.
1. It just finds the applicable time events for the shift that has been assigned to the employee;
2. marks as present if the entry is found;
3. marks In Time in the system;
4. marks late mark if necessary;

The Out Time for such an employee is set if another applicable time event is found.

Shift's other properties like Out Time, Half Day Business Rule, Low Time Business Rule, Early Out Business Rule are not applicable in such cases.

Its worth noting that for all the employees who have the property "Is Single Time Event Sufficient For Attendance" set to true, there are no Over Time calculations.

Snehapadma Time Office Team

Authentication Devices Integrated by Snehapadma

2008-02-14T23:39:00.003+05:30

Initially all of Snehapadma's products and solutions were based on Digital Persona's U.are.U 4000 Fingerprint Reader (USB). (http://www.digitalpersona.com)

Over last few months though, we have come across customer requirements that can not be fulfilled by PC based fingerprint reader such as one by Digital Persona. To meet those diverse requirements, we have integrated following devices:

1. ZKSoftware Inc's various Standalone Time and Attendance as well as Access Control Devices (TCP/IP) such as T4, F7 etc http://www.zksoftware.com
2. ACG's Mifare and HF ISO Multi-tag readers (USB/RS232). http://acg-id.aaitg.com/
3. GigaTMS' PCR120, MFR120 a handy proxymity card reader(USB/RS232). http://www.gigatms.com.tw/

I would recommend you to go through our supplier's websites and find more about there products. We come into picture when you have to apply their products for your requirements.

The Snehapadma Integration Team

Treatment of Overtime in Snehapadma Time Office Software: Part 2

2008-01-24T18:58:00.000+05:30

This is sequel to earlier blog Snehapadma's Treatment of Overtime in Snehapadma Time Office Software .

Please refer to the above blog for more detailed discussion about parameters that you can use to set up the Overtime Policy.

It now has been further extended to include following points

Earlier there was only one Overtime Policy per organization, however it has now been extended to multiple overtime policies.
Further, these policies can be applied to employees as required (i.e. between any dates). Thus, an employee can have one Overtime Policy on Workday, while different on Weekly Off. An Employee can have only one policy on any given date.
With respect to application of overtime policy, employees can be categorized into

Labour: These are granted Payment in lieu of Overtime
Staff: These are granted Compensatory Off in lieu of Overtime
Management: These are not granted in Overtime

Snehapadma becomes MySQL Enterprise Ready Partner

2008-01-17T12:02:00.000+05:30

Snehapadma Software Technologies Pvt Ltd (Snehapadma) has become MySQL Enterprise Ready Partner. With this partnership with MySQL AB, Snehapadma can now list their products/services in the MySQL Enterprise Solutions Directory and use of MySQL Enterprise Ready Partner logo amongst other things.

According to Mr Harshal Baviskar, Director Snehapadma, "Currently, Snehapadma provides Attendace, Time Office, Payroll and HRMS/HRIS Softwares as a Service (SaaS) that use MySQL community Server. This association would help Snehapadma develop applications based on MySQL Enterprise Database."

About Snehapadma
http://www.snehapadma.com
Technology for Harmony is motto of Snehapadma. Started by people who share this vision, Snehapadma derives its strength from employees engaged in research and development who come from best of the companies and best of technology institutions like IIT.

With main focus on application of information technology to solve issues involving identity theft at workplace; Snehapadma has products like biometric (fingerprint) attendance and access control systems and single sign-on.

Situated in knowledge hub of India, Pune, Snehapadma has access to expert human capital and excellent infrastructure.

About MySQL
http://www.mysql.com
MySQL AB develops and supports a family of high-performance, affordable database products. The company's flagship offering is 'MySQL Enterprise', a comprehensive set of production-tested software, proactive monitoring tools, and premium support services.

MySQL is the world's most popular open source database software, with over 100 million copies of its software downloaded or distributed throughout its history. With superior speed, reliability, and ease of use, MySQL has become the preferred choice of corporate IT Managers because it eliminates the major problems associated with downtime, maintenance, administration and support.

MySQL is a key part of LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP / Perl / Python), the fast growing open source enterprise software stack. More and more companies are using LAMP as an alternative to expensive proprietary software stacks because of its lower cost and freedom from lock-in.

With headquarters in the United States and Sweden -- and operations around the world -- MySQL AB supports both open source values and corporate customers' needs.

Snehapadma PR Contact:
Public Relations
Snehapadma Software Technologies Pvt Ltd
4 Sanket, Plot 1, Sankalp Society, Paud Road
Pune MH 411038 India
Tele/Fax +91-20-25454017
Cell: +91-9890-646409
Email: pr@snehapadma.com
Web: http://www.snehapadma.com

Tata Nano, an Indian Car

2008-01-11T01:17:00.000+05:30

Congratulations to Tata Motors on the unveiling of most affordable car Tata Nano for providing safe and all weather (I wish this was on road before this monsoon) vehicle to tap market at the bottom of the pyramid where one has luxury of mass production that often translates into low cost.

However, one needs to think about this: This is definitely going to drop the barrier to buy a car, increasing number of cars on the road, and per capita area utilization of the road. This is now a real big challenge especially for bigger cities. May be the answer lies in better public transport and unsubsidized fuel rates.

There are certain technologies, products, innovations that change the way we look at the problems and their solutions. They leave deep impact on our lives. With Tata Nano, I thought, I would start another blog to cover such things rather than meddling it with Snehapadma's Blog. Please find it here: http://www.technology-for-harmony.blogspot.com

Why SaaS

2007-12-20T01:53:00.000+05:30

Why SaaS?

One of the prospective client wanted justification for using Snehapadma SaaS against the software in his premises. Why should they be using SaaS as against the on site software. The reasons are umpteen. Here are few:

Feasibility: Now SaaS is feasible. With broadband in every office, and technically superior solutions like Web 2.0, SaaS is able to provide equally good user interface.
Support and Service: In SaaS model, service provider is bound to give you better service simply because he does not want to loose you to other service provider.
Updates: You get instant updates for your software, without hassles for service provider or you.
SLA: SaaS is nothing without Service Level Agreement. With SLA you can ensure that proper service is delivered to you.

These benefits ofcourse does not mention the economics. While explaining SaaS, Public Transport and Private vehicles might be a good analogy. Private Vehicles are like conventional software delivery.

You have to pay upfront for them.
You have to fill in petrol each time you run it.
You have to maintain it on continuous basis.
You have to give it attention / provide security even when you are not using it.

As against this, a public transport system provides far better economy when effective:

You share the infrastructure.
You pay when you use it. Affordable. No upfront fees.
Service, Maintenance, Security is handled by the Service Provider.
Consumes less fuel per person.
Tremendous flexibility.

So what would you use: If traveling is the only thing your do, you might choose a private vehicle. Public transport obviously is more economic solution. Of course, we are talking of effective public transport system here. In Pune, we are seeing pathetic state of public transport like PMT and BRTS. And I am optimistic that public transport system would improve in Pune given initiatives taken by people in general.

Ok, this is fine. But as a customer do I save anything in real? Just consider what we do for you:

Host the server: We host the electricity bill for it.
Maintenance: You need not hire expert IT staff for maintaining the system.

And why do we do this?

We get continuous revenue stream that is much valuable from cash flow point of view. We are sure that after experiencing the service provided by us, customer will not go for another service provider.
SaaS becomes an easy option for us to update and maintain the system.
This gives our customers a confidence that we are in this business for long term.

When it is win-win situation like this, we invite you to be part of Snehapadma SaaS.

Leave Management Workflow

2007-10-02T11:36:00.000+05:30

Yes, it has been quite some time since last functional blog.

This time it is about Leave Mangement workflow. How does it happen.

System is ofcourse parametric letting you decide wether you want leave management work flow or not? If you do so, at what level? Do you want employees to access the sytem to punch in the leave application through a webpage? Do you want Department Head approve the leave? Do you want the HR person to have the final say? Or is it that all or some of this will happen offline and HR (or HoD and HR) will use the system to keep the track. We let you define this using following variables:

EmployeeLeaveWF
0: No self help for Leave Application
1: Yes, employee can apply for Leave online

HoDLeaveWF
0: No role of HoD in Leave Management work flow in the online system
1: HoD Applies for (or Approves in case Employee can apply) the Leave for employee in his Department

HRLeaveWF
0: Leave once approved or applied for by HoD is assigned to the employee automatically without intervention by HR
1. HR must assign (i.e. bring in effect) the Leave Applications / Approvals by HoD that are available via online or offline system.

Following Diagram explains this

By default, system is cofugured to EmployeeLeaveWF as 0, HoDLeaveWF as 0 and HRLeaveWF as 1, which is the simplest work flow.

Possible combinations of these variables are as
EmployeeLeaveWF HoDLeaveWF HRLeaveEF
0 0 0 (Leave Management module not activated)
0 0 1 (default)
0 1 0 (HoD approves and automatically assigned)
0 1 1 (HoD approves, subject HR's further approval and assignment)
1 0 0 (Employee applies and it is auto approved. Not practical)
1 0 1 (Employee applies, No role for HoD, subject HR's further approval and assignment)
1 1 0 (Employee applies, HoD approves and automatically assigned)
1 1 1 (Employee applies, HoD approves, subject HR's further approval and assignment)

The combination you choose depends on the automation you want to bring in.

Other configurable parameters of workflow are:

Leave Cut Off for Employee
This is number of days till which the employee can apply for the leaves after taking them. After this, the application can be done by HoD

Leave Cut Off for HoD
This is number of days till which the employee can apply for the leaves after taking them. After this, the assignement can be done by HR

These are the work flow paramteres for Leave Management System.

Take care,

Snehapadma Team

Time Office SaaS Activity Notifications by EMail

2007-05-19T11:04:00.000+05:30

This blog is about Activity Notifications by Email in Biometric Attendance and Time Office Software as a Service

First of all, congratulations that you have deployed fingerprint based attendance system at your 30 offices all over India. OK, you have done away with keeping trained IT professionals for management of your server, and the server itself. You are using ubiquitous internet to keep everything connected. And the attendance system runs smoothly even when internet is not available continuously. Even then you do not loose any time stamps from the employees.

Now, how do you keep tabs on the activities of your employees? Of course you can log in to SaaS site, and look for the changes that your colleagues, assistants or managers have done.

You, and they, can add, edit or delete employees, change scheduled manpower plan to an ad-hoc one, your employees can apply for the leaves, fellow users can approve or reject them, employees may mark their attendance data that raise exceptions like late mark, insufficient duty hours, early out, single mark etc.

With so much of the activity happening around, you crave for single unified way of knowing all these, and in your comfort zone. That is where these Activity Notifications by Email chip in.

For better communication and understanding, activities are classified by severity:

Information: This is FYI (for your information). Nothing to be done.
To be Done: This tells you that you need to do something about this activity. (e.g. You are Head of the Department (HoD) of certain department, and Human Resource Manager (HRM) as added or transfered an employee to you department. To be Done as making scheduled plan for the new employee.)
Warning: This is a kind of exception report that is of the type "must be brought to your attention". These are exceptions like late mark, early out, insufficient work hours, off-line attendance, manual change in attendance data, leaves that might result in abnormal attendance.
Critical: This categorically requires your attention. This is activity that makes calculation of attendance impossible. An example is when employee gives single time stamp in a day, making it impossible to calculate time spent in a company, and thus the attendance.

Activity notification also carries the Agent who performed this activity. It is either the employee who did it after logging onto the system or the System itself which processes data to calculate attendances.

Third part of activity notification is Time Stamp that tells when the activity happened.

This is followed by the Description of the activity.

The last component of Activity notification is the Activity type. It can be any of the following

Employee Management Change
Man Power Planning To Be Done
Man Power Planning Done
Ad-hoc Manpower Plan Change
Leave Management Change
Manual Change of Data
Exceptions (Late, Early, Insufficient time)
Off-line Data
Single Time Stamp
Leaves

All these activity Logs can be seen from the website. At the same time, a nightly mail is sent to all stake holders about the activities on that day.

Again, your feedback is most welcome. It can definitely help us enhance this.

Harshal

स्नेहपद्म क्यों?

2007-04-23T09:12:00.000+05:30

स्नेहपद्म का अर्थ: इस कंपनी का नाम स्नेहपद्म क्यों है?
पद्म सरस्वती का आसन है। और सरस्वती तंत्रज्ञान कि देवता है। हम इस कंपनी के माध्यम से तंत्रज्ञान का उपयोग कर अपने समाज में स्नेह निर्माण करना चाहते हैं। यही कारण है कि इस कंपनी का मोटो technology for harmony है।

मैं विशेष रूप से गूगल का आभार प्रकट करना चाहूँगा कि उन्होने transliteration इतना आसान किया।

technorati profile

2007-03-16T00:33:00.000+05:30

Technorati Profile

Treatment of Overtime in Snehapadma Time Office Software

2007-02-27T23:32:00.000+05:30

Hi friends,

This is first post of the series about functional aspects of Snehapadma Time Office. We chose overtime as it exemplifies flexibility of system.

Regarding overtime, we have different set of requirements from different people. Just sample these:

Employee should have worked at least one hour before s/he starts earning overtime.
Overtime should be counted in multiple of half an hour.
If person comes late to office/works, that time should be noted as negative overtime.
Not every person be allowed to do overtime
If person comes early to office/works, it should not be considered overtime.

Of course, the other company has got different take on overtime. So how do we accommodate different scenarios into the single system? The answer is through configurable parameters. We allow following configurations related to overtime:

Company wide configuration:

Should overtime be calculated?
What should be minimum overtime so that it is considered in reports? i.e. of overtime is less than this stipulated time, it will not be considered.
In case of -tive overtime, ie late in or early out, what should be the minimum -tive overtime? In case -tive overtime is less than this time, it will not be added to -tive overtime.
What is least count for noting overtime?
Which logic should be applied for overtime:

for overtime: nearest / ceiling / floor
for -tive overtime: (late in or early out) nearest / ceiling / floor

What is maximum allowed -tive overtime, beyond which person is assigned half day?
Does overtime need approval from head of the department?

Overtime configuration for Shift

Is employee of this shift allowed overtime before shift begins?
Is employee of this shift allowed overtime after shift ends?

Overtime configuration for Employee

Is this employee allowed to do overtime?
Is overtime after some accrual be converted into compensatory off?

If so, what is overtime required to be done?

During the time evaluation process, all the answers to these questions are considered before calculating the overtime. In most cases, the above configuration should be sufficient for managing your rules about overtime. In case it does not, the configuration question set can be improved. Your comments are welcome for that.

Another aspect of overtime is approval of overtime by administration. This is particularly the case with large companies where each overtime must be authorized by head of the department before that can be sent to the HR for further processing. This is done by managing work flow.

In work flow based overtime management of time office, following are the actors (participants) in system

Employee

Does regular time events
Sees approved and unapproved overtime in system
Seeks approval of unapproved overtime from HoD

Head of the Department

Sees the list of overtime done by employees in his department
Approves the overtime of employees in his department

For this, employee is provided with self help terminal authentication for which is based on fingerprint or password. HoD logs onto time office management software through password or fingerprint.

We welcome your comments about the article and overtime management in general.

Team of Time Office
Snehapadma :: Technology for Harmony
Fingerprint based Attendance, Access Control
Time Office, HRMS, Payroll

Why are we blogging?

2007-02-23T23:12:00.000+05:30

We do have a website which we use as a medium to let people know about Snehapadma, so why blog?

One: Blog is a great medium tell people whats on your mind.
Two: Blog is a great medium to receive feedback from them about it.
Three: Its easy, to blog, as well as to read.

These were sufficient reasons for us to start blogging. Through this blog, we will be posting about recent developments in our company. We would also be having a blog a week that talks about an interesting feature of our products.

To start with, I'll enumerate few of Snehapadma products.

Fingerprint / Biometric Attendance and Access Control Terminal
Time Office / Shift / Leave Management System
Human Resource Management System
Payroll Management System
Single Sign On

Of couse, you would find more information about this on our website: http://www.snehapadma.com

Signing off for now...