QR and geofence attendance: the exit alert that never fired

What wasn't working in the app?

Anyone who left the area without checking out received no alert, and the alerts about expiring documents were wrong.

My client used the app to record entries to and exits from an area and to keep track of documents with an expiry date.

Why didn't I fix the app straight away?

Without knowing why the alert wasn't firing, every fix would have been guesswork. So I started from a different question: what does the server actually receive?

Why wasn't the exit alert firing?

The location was sent to the server only after the QR code was scanned, and only once. The server had no way of knowing that someone had left the area. I saw this by looking at the data that reached the server.

How I rebuilt the flow

• Check-in and check-out with QR. Every passage is recorded by scanning the QR code with the app, by users with a personal account.
• A geofence with an exit alert. The area is delimited and the app detects the location in the background too: anyone who leaves without recording their exit receives an alert.
• Documents with a visible expiry date. Every document has its own expiry date.
• An automatic email. A summary of what is about to expire.

This is how I fixed the expiry alerts:

• Documents without an expiry date showed as expired because of a display error: they are now shown correctly.
• The automatic process that sends expiry emails and notifications wasn't active on the server: I activated it.
• The user list has an indicator for anyone with expired documents, with a legend.
• Stricter checks on the dates entered.

What changed after the release

• After the release, the alerts were verified.
• The updated apps are published in the stores.
• Anyone with expired documents can be spotted from the user list, without opening each record.

What you can take away

• Before fixing anything, look at what the server actually receives: the problem is often further upstream than where you are looking.
• An alert that doesn't fire is worse than no alert at all, because everyone is counting on it to fire.
• Expiry dates should be visible on the screen people work on every day.

Details have been changed to protect the client's confidentiality.