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)

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

The plugin is compatible with the following Kimai releases:

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