Access Controllers or Spot Checkers may work in areas of poor connectivity where using the RIW App (connected to the internet) may not be possible. In this case, there are a range of approaches to read cards as follows:

PC Card Reader

These plug into a desktop PC and tend to be used in offices, site huts or depots. These do require internet connectivity, however, they can also read cards using near field communication (NFC), and synch the smartcard with the latest copy of the cardholders record. This approach works well when card checks are done in a depot location before work groups heading out for the shift.

Muster somewhere with comms using the RIW App – Android or iOS

Many users, if expecting to work at least part of the shift in connectivity “black spots” can muster somewhere with internet connectivity. The card checker swipes in each worker’s card using the RIW App on their mobile phone – physical or virtual cards (both are equally fine).

If the team then move to an area where there is no internet connectivity, any of the swiped in workers’ cards can be re-accessed simply by scanning the QR code on the card again (this works for both physical and virtual cards). This retrieves the worker record from the app’s cache. It also confirms to the card checker WHEN the record was last synched with the RIW database. 

Any card checks being performed offline are still logged in the RIW App, and when internet connectivity is re-established, these checks and swipes get transferred to the main RIW database.

A similar approach can be done by scanning into the RIW App the QR code on the worker’s card image on the main RIW system (if logged in to the main application) to collect the crew that is expected to start work. This can work well if the card checker will meet their crew in an area without internet connectivity and KNOWS who will be in their team. They can then swipe in the workers in an area of no internet connectivity using the cached records to enable this.

 

Using the RIW App – Android only

Near-field Communication (NFC) is the technology you use for all sorts of payments using your phone etc.

The RIW cards are SMART – they have an encrypted, contactless chip stored within the plastic – so they can be securely authenticated and read using the RIW App. If the card checker’s Android phone has NFC (and almost ALL do), the phone can be turned into a Smartcard reader using NFC. This reads the data securely directly from the card chip. This does not need any internet connectivity - so you can check people’s physical smartcards using NFC anywhere. Therefore no mustering is required.

However this doesn’t work with virtual cards (as these don’t have a chip) and nor does it work with the iOS version of the RIW App (however there will be an NFC version of the iOS app released  - est 2021).

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