Visual Web Time®

Your advantages at a glance

• All current communication options can be integrated, e.g. Internet, Intranet,
• ISDN or GSM
• Scalable system performance parameters for unlimited system expansion
• Data security through the use of professional SQL databases, e.g. IBM DB2,
• Oracle, MS-SQL, Borland InterBase
• Central application management – no Client installation
• Industry solutions with simple customisation through HTML
• Not tied into any single operating system or platform
• Global, secure Internet availability, 24/7
• High levels of data security with 128-bit SSL encryption
• No additional PC installation effort and minimum workstation hardware requirements
• Standard Internet communication with TCP/IP protocol. Every computer on the network can have functional access

The emergence of new working practices such as Home Offices, Telecommuting and mobile workplaces, occasioned by the growth in global integration, requires an increasing adaptability in the scope of Time management systems.

To answer this call, we have developed Visual time, integrating all the latest technological development to give you a system that is simple to set-up, easy to use, offers the highest security and which covers all the bases. Visual time brings you the future of time recording, today.

One of the many significant options available with visual web time is the Employee Self-Service (ESS) function. This allows employees to check on their own time records, make booking corrections and/or generate correction requests and book absences, through the browser software on their PC. With visual web time, you can handle all working time rules. The software can support almost 10,000 time models to cover all variations. In many cases, each employee can have their own personal working pattern ranging from simple two-shift operations, through the many different flexible working hour schemes up to annual or even lifetime worktime assignments.

The advantages of 3-tier software architecture:

• Clear delineation between User interface control and data presentation
• Separation of Clients and data storage
• Dynamic load distribution

With visual web time you can build a system to cover all your time management related needs. The software allows you to program the time recording terminals to maximise the employee information flow. Depending on your current infrastructure, you can operate visual web time  equally well on PCs as on minicomputers.

And with the multi-user and multitasking capabilities of the system, there are almost no limits to your expansion options. With its secure interfacing options to third-party softwares, such as payroll accounting for example, you can build a complete system solution around visual web time, tailored exactly to your company's needs, which can grow as your company grows. And as you grow, you can increase the capacity of your system starting from as little as 20 employee records and going right up to 200,000 or more and you can add additional options as circumstances dictate. Using the optional Import/Export Generator, freely definable interfaces can be built for the exchange of data with applications such as SAP, one of the most widely available business system softwares in the world.

At Primion we have paid a lot of detail to the security of the data in your visual web time system. At the first level, each database user logs in using an individual login name, protected by a password defined by the user when he/she first accesses the data. This password can then be changed, again by the user, on a regular basis. To offer further data security, selected areas of sensitive data within the database can be assigned a second password, giving so called dual control protection and thereby virtually eliminating data misuse or abuse. Each database user is assigned an Authorisation Profile, which defines which modules he/she may access and within these modules, which actions he/she can carry out on the data, such as generate, delete, modify, etc.

Time Recording with Visual Web Time

At the heart of the software, there is a standard SQL database , which supplies data to the user through an application server. Currently, visual web time has been optimised to work with DB2 UDB 7.2, Oracle 8.i, MS-SQL 7.0/2000 and InterBase databases.

In order to guarantee that the complete system works independently of any specific platform, it was developed using Java.

This ensures you of a future-safe software solution, which opens up unlimited further IT options to you. Communication tasks that were also developed using Java, create the data connections between the user interface and the external devices.

Security of operation is guaranteed by the use of this object oriented programming language, in conjunction with full 32 Bit support and pre-emptive multitasking. All communication standards based on TCP/IP are supported, allowing seamless and problem-free network integration.

Visual Web Time has the power to support wide-ranging hardware structures. It offers, for instance, full client data separation over several hierarchical levels. It can be expanded modularly to handle
many employees spread over many locations and currently with the time recording terminals, it supports some 45 different read technologies.

And to enhance Visual Web Time, we also offer Visual Web Access, a powerful Access Control software.

Technical pre-requirements:

• For the server: Windows and Unix platforms.
• Recommended working memory: >= 512 MB of RAM.
• Processor: The should be >= Pentium III with 1 GHz. The computer should have a fast-access fixed disc with 10 Gb of space available for the application. The size of the database is directly dependant on the number of employee records and the period of time that transactions should be stored for. The database can be several hundred Mb.
• For the Clients: You need one of the following browser softwares: Internet Explorer, version 5.5 or higher (recommended), including all service packs, Netscape, version 6.x or Mozilla, version 1.1.
• Java Virtual Machine: The is also needed for various options. JVM must be activated. Usage in conjunction with Java Runtime Environment guarantees you full usage of the hardware performance. Because of the new Web technology, there are no additional special requirements for the client PCs.

The advantages of integrated workflow organization

• Decentralized time management organization through the inclusion of the employees in the information and correction process
• Reduced training required through the use of customized macros
• Integrated Workflow organization
• Integrated Report generator to create your own reports, to your own design
• Extensive and efficient correction options
• High employee acceptance because of the transparency of the information supplied
• Fully Integratable into existing payroll systems
• Extensive options, such as

*Manpower planning, – Visitor administration,
**Telephone time recording, – Badge creation and much more (see back cover for full list)

Staff / Management workflows

Workflow scenarios allow employees to call off their own reports and to enter and forward correction requests themselves. This of course represents a significant reduction on the potential workload for the HR Department.

Transaction profiles are set up, which define the type of corrections that employees can carry out, e.g. Business trip, Vacation, forgotten booking, etc. You can establish individual working rules for individual employees and the corrections that are entered are processed fully automatically by the system, for up to 36 months in the past, and covering all types of transactions. Visual MPP for Manpower Planning allows you to create transparent shift planning, capacity-based staff manning levels and clear presentation of shift
plans.

Employee correction options Booking journal with integrated correction function

Depending on the Transaction profile assigned to the employee, he/she can either enter corrections directly into the database or they must be approved by a designated manager before they can be processed.

Booking journal with integrated correction function

The Confortable Booking journal function includes integrated correction options. The journal can also include employee-related corrections, e.g. absences, etc. Using macros, the whole correction input procedure can be simplified and standardised.

Working time models

Visual WebTime® does not restrict you, managing fixed working patterns simply based around, weekly or monthly cycles. You can define your own frameworks giving you the option to define variable working patterns to cover shift patterns, movable rest days and shift assignment defined by arrival times. A "week" no longer has to have 7 days; 8 day or 15-day patterns, for instance, can easily be handled.

Online bookings without special hardware

With Visual WebTime Online Bookings can be made directly on your PC screen. Such a booking is processed in exactly the same way as a terminal booking, i.e. with the current time and with the selection from normal arrival and departure bookings and if authorised, BA bookings.

User administration

In order to allow employees to be able to work directly with visual webtime they must be generated as System users, with an Authorisation profile and optionally, a Transaction profile. Depending on your requirements, they can be granted various rights and options.

For example, a Manager who is allowed to approve or reject correction requests, must be given more rights than an employee who can only generate correction requests.

There are four different hierarchical levels included in the standard system:

• System user with all rights, e.g. HR
• Director or a T&A System supervisor Manager
• Employee with correction input rights
• Employee with correction request rights

This allows you to create a Workflow scenario, which covers the generation of correction requests by employees with correction request rights and the approval of such correction requests by approved managers.

Certain employees can be given the right to enter their own corrections directly, without the need for managerial approval. A System user with all rights can administer Employee data, enter and modify Company data, process special corrections and call up various reports.

This allows you to create a Workflow scenario, which covers the generation of correction requests by employees with correction request rights and the approval of such correction requests by approved managers.

Certain employees can be given the right to enter their own corrections directly, without the need for managerial approval. A System user with all rights can administer Employee data, enter and modify Company data, process special corrections and call up various reports.

Booking transaction processing

Once employees have been assigned to their corresponding working models, the bookings that they then make are used as the basis for time calculations. Basically, the system differentiates between various different types of booking transactions:

• Business absence bookings
• General absence bookings
• Cost-centre assignment bookings
• Correction bookings
• Arrival and departure bookings
• Neutral time bookings

Each time a booking transaction is made, the system checks to see when the last Daily reconciliation was made (normally once a day) and if any are outstanding, they are automatically carried out. This means that online data shown at the terminal at the time of a booking is always up to date. The system also checks to make sure that the employee follows a logical pattern of arrival and departure bookings. If a booking has been forgotten, e.g. when returning from a break, the employee forgot to book back in, a corresponding error message is displayed.

In the case of neutral time bookings, the system automatically selects the arrival or departure mode, based on the employee's presence/absence status at the time of the booking.

Any necessary modifications to the bookings and/or the calculated presence time caused by Rounding rules or Break definitions, for example, are also carried out automatically when a correct booking is processed.

• Performance characteristics at a glance
  General
  
  Browser-based user interface, not dependant on the operating system
• Full functionality using Internet Explorer, >= vers. 5.5, Netscape, vers. 6x, Mozilla, vers. 1.1
• Fully platform-independent
• No Client installation – browser software is enough
• Location-independent User settings
• Language control based on login
• Consistent Java solution
• 3-layer model/3-tier architecture giving optimisation for the User through the separation of User.
• Business and Data storage into individual layers or tiers
• Full data traceability
• Integrated employee information system
• All significant reports available on screen, PDF, HTML or as E-Mail
• Unlimited multi-user capability
• Full client data separation for up to 999 Clients
• Unlimited TCP/IP communication module

Time recording

• Multiple correction options for maximum ease of use
• Multiple data evaluation reports
• Transaction macros
• Booking over WAP cell phones
• Employee Self Service correction options through client PC browser software
• Extended personnel record
• Data tracing and correction for up to 36 months
• Easy to use, automatic retrospective correction of transactions and parameter assignments, including direct correction through the on-screen Booking journal
• Display of calculation basis for individual records
• Management of shift schemes with working periods greater than 24 hours
• Fast transaction reaction time through multi-tasking
• Simple on-screen access to historical employee data, to show a “snapshot” of data from the past
• Text messaging at time recording terminals
• Extensive on-board report generator
• 9,999 Departments and 9,999 Cost-centres
• Absence data evaluation with historic and future capacity overviews
• Unlimited* number of passwords in unlimited* User groups with different Authorisation and Transaction profile assignments; dual-control**data access
• 9,999 Device groups and connection of up to 9,999 time recording terminals
• Generation and automatic annual extension of up to 9,999 working patterns
• Management of up to 99 Absence and 99 Payrate records for each employee
• Vacation management with variable carry-over and cut-off parameters
• Automatic rounding of booking times and/or presence time records
• Simple on-screen absence inputs through employee
• Annual overviews
• Supports annual working time models
• 9,999 Year plans
• Central password management on an LDAP basis

* “unlimited” = 2
** Dual-control data access means that a second password must be entered in order to access specific modules

Software options

Manpower planning (MPP), Visitor Administration, ID Badge creation, Telephone-based time recordind, Cost-centre calculations, Project timing, Display panel software, Report generator (for the generation of lists and reports in Excel, HTML and PDF), Import/Export generator for interfacing to third-party softwares, Interface to Exchange Server, Visual Web SAP and PAISY Enterprise Solution, Centralised password management on LDAP basis

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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Primion Technology AG,