VICIdial Timeclock explained

The Timeclock is a separate built-in application inside VICIdial for tracking when your people are on the clock. It has existed since VICIdial 2.0.5, and it answers a question the agent screen does not: how many hours did this person actually work today, regardless of which campaign they were on or how many times they logged in and out. If you have ever tried to reconcile payroll from agent session logs and given up, the Timeclock is the tool you were missing.

The Timeclock is deliberately separate from the dialer itself. An Agent can punch in for the day, then log into one campaign, switch to another, take a break, and log back in, all without touching their clock status. The clock measures attendance; the dialer measures dialing.

What it tracks

A Timeclock record is simple: a login (a punch in), a logout (a punch out), and the hours between them. It is one continuous span of paid time. That is different from a VICIdial agent session, which records each time someone enters or leaves the agent screen along with the campaign, the user group, the session id, the server, and the phone they used. A person can rack up several agent sessions inside one Timeclock span. If the difference between the two matters for your operation, the comparison is laid out in Timeclock vs login session.

Where you log in

There is a link to log into the Timeclock at the top of the VICIdial agent login screen, and another at the top of the Administration interface. Both go to the same small application. An agent typically punches in there at the start of their shift, then goes on to log into the agent screen as normal. A manager who never touches the dialer can still punch in from the admin link if your process calls for it. The step-by-step punch flow is in how to clock in and out.

You can also make clocking in mandatory. A User group setting forces the agents in that group to log into the Timeclock before VICIdial will let them into the agent interface at all. That guarantees attendance data exists for everyone whose pay depends on it. How to switch it on is in how to force Timeclock login.

Two logs: active and audit

Every punch is stored in two places. The active log holds the current records, including any changes a manager has made, and notes whether a record was changed. The audit log holds what was originally recorded and cannot be altered by anyone; only a system administrator can even view it. That split is the point of trusting the data. A manager can correct a forgotten punch-out in the active log, and the audit log keeps the untouched original, so there is always a tamper-evident trail behind any edit.

One firm rule on edits: a record can only be changed if it has both a login and a logout. If the agent is still punched in, that active record is locked until they punch out. You cannot edit half a span.

Timeclock End of Day

No Timeclock record can be longer than 24 hours. To enforce that, a system setting called Timeclock End of Day sets a force-logout time for everyone still punched in. When the system force-logs-out a record at that time, it marks it AUTOLOGOUT, so you can spot the people who forgot to punch out at a glance. The diagram below shows the life of one record.

stateDiagram-v2
  [*] --> PunchedIn: agent clocks in
  PunchedIn --> PunchedOut: agent clocks out
  PunchedIn --> AutoLogout: Timeclock End of Day reached
  PunchedOut --> Editable: has login and logout
  AutoLogout --> Editable: has login and logout
  Editable --> Corrected: manager edits active log
  Corrected --> [*]
  PunchedOut --> [*]

Read it as one span. A record starts open at punch-in and closes one of two ways: the agent punches out, or the system force-logs them out at Timeclock End of Day and stamps it AUTOLOGOUT. Only a closed record with both a login and a logout becomes editable, and any edit lands in the active log while the audit log keeps the original. An open, still-punched-in record sits in PunchedIn and cannot be touched.

What it feeds

Timeclock data is not just a clock. It feeds two built-in reports and an admin utility to alter records, so attendance hours flow straight into the same reporting where you already watch dial volume and Disposition breakdowns. That lets you put paid hours next to productive hours, which is the basis for any real KPI on agent utilization. The Timeclock sits in the same operations cluster as scheduled callbacks; the map for all of it is the scheduled callbacks overview, and a related agent-facing setting is the agent callback user option.

If standing up and maintaining all of this yourself is not how you want to spend your week, VICIfast provisions a hardened VICIdial server with the Timeclock and reporting ready in under 40 seconds. See our pricing for what is included on each plan.