Kiosk plugin

A Kimai plugin, which allows using barcodes for punch-in and punch-out time tracking with Kimai. You can use it with an attached barcode scanner, or you run Kimai on a device (eg. tablet) with a built-in camera.

It also supports a “freestyle” mode, which allows to enter any free configurable code (up to 120 characters), so you can also use other devices for starting/stopping:

• an electronic USB numpad (like door-locks)
• an RFID scanner that acts as keyboard

If you want to use Kimai in a kiosk mode, where your users should only register their attendance time through
punch-in and punch-out mode when entering/leaving the building, then this bundle is the solution for you.

It could be as simple as:

• Print the barcodes on your employee cards
• Mount a tablet to the wall in your entrance room
• Let your users check-in & check-out when entering the building by scanning the barcode of their employee card

You can test it in the “Plugins” demo.

Features

• Start/Stop work with barcode scanner (eg. via USB), RFIS scanner (via USB) or a device camera (to scan barcode)
• Upon starting/stopping a record via this plugin, the user will see a short overview screen with the entries of the current week (including some statistics)
• New user profile screen for the “codes”
  • Display all codes for user
  • Generate a random code (automatically done if none is existing yet for the active code-type)
  • Re-use existing code for user by entering (or scanning) it manually
• User specific settings to configured allowed start and end working time (user can only clock in between these times)
• Supports the following 1D barcodes:
  • Code 128
  • Code 39
  • UPC-A (scanner needs to transmit check digit)
  • Code 2 of 5
  • Code 2 of 5 interleaved
  • Codabar (scanner needs to transmit start & stop digits)
• Optional: show active / inactive users in login screen
• Many CSS classes to customize the look with Custom CSS Bundle

You need to configure a non-global activity for starting the record via this plugin. This will be used for every recorded timesheet that is created using the kiosk mode.

Hardware

This is NOT a hardware recommendation, but more an idea for possible use-cases.

I tried the linked products and even though all scanner are rather cheap, they work without problems.

• Raspberry PI setup with touch screen (eg. for wall mount)
• RFID scanner by Neuftech (desktop version)
• RFID scanner by KKMoon (desktop version)
• Barcode scanner which can also scan codes from mobile phones (desktop version)
• Barcode scanner classic hand-held version

The above are affiliate links for Amazon (germany) where I bought them myself.

Configuration

You have to configure the bundle before you can use it - you reach the configuration via

• the Plugin screen (Preferences in action dropdown behind the plugin)
• the Kiosk administration (cogs icon in the upper right)
• the System configuration (Kiosk & Barcode section)

The following configurations are available:

Permissions

This bundle introduces new permissions, which limit access to certain functions:

By default, these are granted to each user with the role ROLE_SUPER_ADMIN.

Compatibility

Plugins should always be compatible with higher Kimai versions, the following list contains the plugin version and the required minimum Kimai version.

Copy files

Extract the ZIP file and upload the included directory and all files to your Kimai installation to the new directory:

var/plugins/KioskBundle/

The file structure needs to like like this afterwards:

var/plugins/
├── KioskBundle
│   ├── KioskBundle.php
|   └ ... more files and directories follow here ...

Clear cache

After uploading the files, Kimai needs to know about the new plugin. It will be found once the cache was re-built. Call these commands from the Kimai directory:

bin/console kimai:reload --env=prod

bin/console cache:clear --env=prod
bin/console cache:warmup --env=prod

You might have to set file permissions afterwards:

chown -R :www-data .
chmod -R g+r .
chmod -R g+rw var/
chmod -R g+rw public/avatars/

Create database

Run the following command:

bin/console kimai:bundle:kiosk:install

This will create the required database tables and update them to the latest version.

Install plugin assets

The following command will install the required assets (images, javascripts, styles):

bin/console assets:install

Updating the plugin works exactly like the installation:

• Delete the directory var/plugins/KioskBundle/
• Execute all installation steps again:
  • Copy files
  • Clear cache
  • Update database with bin/console kimai:bundle:kiosk:install
  • Update assets with bin/console assets:install