Time tracking with geolocation?
reddit / selfhosted

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noob09 · 2023-11-28 20:49

I am looking for a self hosted solution that allows employees to clock
in and out based off of their current location (eg gps location is
recorded once the person clocks in and out). Are there any self hosted
solutions for this? Thanks

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alexanderadam__ · 2023-11-28 23:31

I could implement something like that in
[OpenProject](https://www.openproject.org/docs/user-guide/time-and-
costs/time-tracking/).

Would you just want to show the location in an overview or what
purpose would that fulfil?

Also keep in mind that geolocations are trivially spoofable in case
that's relevant.

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GrumpyScientist · 2023-11-29 03:26

You might be able to do this with HomeAssistant, although its
certainly not intended for this application.  You can track individual
users based on location and see when they enter and exit a zone.  It
doesn't even have to use GPS.  I can be a specific wifi point, NFC or
some other options I'm not aware of.

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sirbzb · 2023-11-29 10:17

It depends what you want to achieve, where you are and how much you
want to spend. There is at least one self hosted T&A system in the UK
that will soon be able to do this within some limitations. That's
currently based on getting location data from a browser when someone
clocks through a web page (since that is what there is work with for
the moment), so it could be better since obviously 'long list of
issues with that idea'. Tracking whilst clocked in/working, if that is
what you mean, is not really T&A territory.

Fundamentally though, the user is always in control of the device that
is collecting the geolocation data. So you can not trust its quality
or availability (or that the device is actually in their possession at
the time). A lot of people do not think through the physical system;
the location of a physical time clock is trusted, its location is also
usually conducive to it actually being used (at the correct time)....
and so on. Those features are hard to replicate in mobile
devices/employees.

A secondary issue there is that if the device is actually using IP
based location information then it is basically garbage.

So a potential better solution may be see if you also have a second
dataset to verify the first - like you could get from vehicle tracking
for example. You might find you can then do away with the need to
track the clocking location entirely.