How to force Timeclock login in VICIdial

By default, clocking in is optional in VICIdial, and an agent can walk straight into the dialer without ever punching the Timeclock. If your pay or attendance process depends on those records existing, that is a problem. VICIdial fixes it with a single setting that forces the agents in a group to clock in first, before they are allowed into the agent interface at all. This is how to turn it on and what to expect afterward.

The control lives on the User group, not on each individual Agent. That is intentional: you usually want a whole shift or team held to the same rule, and managing it per person would be tedious. For what the Timeclock is in the first place, see the Timeclock explained.

Why force it at all

Without the force setting, attendance data is only as good as agents' memory. Some clock in, some forget, and your hours-worked report has gaps you cannot trust for payroll. Forcing the punch-in guarantees a clean Timeclock record exists for everyone in the group, every shift. It also gives you a single, consistent start time per person instead of trying to infer it from when they first logged into a campaign.

Turn it on

The setting is on the User Group modification screen in the admin interface.

1. In the admin interface, open the Users area and go to User Groups.
2. Pick the group whose members you want to require to clock in.
3. Find the Timeclock login option on the group's modification screen and enable it.
4. Submit the change. It applies to every user assigned to that group.

Because the rule is tied to the group, the way to apply it to a person is to put that person in a group that has it enabled. If you have a mix of staff and contractors with different rules, that usually means one group with the setting on and one without.

What the agent sees

With the setting on, an agent in that group who tries to log into the agent interface without first punching in is stopped and sent to clock in. Once they punch the Timeclock, they can proceed into the dialer as normal. From the agent's side it is one extra step at the very start of the day, and it never repeats; switching campaigns or logging out and back into the agent screen does not make them punch in again, because the clock keeps running until they punch out.

flowchart TD
  A[Agent opens agent login] --> B{User group forces Timeclock}
  B -- No --> C[Straight into agent interface]
  B -- Yes --> D{Already punched in}
  D -- Yes --> E[Allowed into agent interface]
  D -- No --> F[Redirected to Timeclock]
  F --> G[Agent punches in]
  G --> E

The diagram shows the gate. When the group forces the Timeclock, VICIdial checks whether the agent is already punched in. If they are, they pass through. If not, they are sent to clock in first, and only then allowed into the agent interface. For groups without the setting, there is no gate and they go straight in.

What it does not change

Forcing the login does not change how the clock itself behaves. The agent still has to punch out at the end of the shift, and if they forget, the system setting Timeclock End of Day will force-log-out the open record and mark it AUTOLOGOUT, exactly as it would without the force setting. The walkthrough of punching in and out is in how to clock in and out. The force setting only guarantees the record starts; closing it cleanly is still on the agent or the end-of-day rule.

Once attendance is reliable, you can line it up against productive time, dials, talk time, and Disposition counts, to build a real picture of agent utilization rather than guessing at it. The Timeclock lives in the same operations cluster as scheduled callbacks; the full map is the scheduled callbacks overview, and a related agent setting is the agent callback user option.

If you would rather not manage user groups and timeclock rules on your own hardware, VICIfast provisions a hardened VICIdial server with all of it ready in under 40 seconds. See our pricing for plan details.