College Attendance Management System

Overview

College Attendance Management System (CAMS) is biometric and RFID based comprehensive attendance management system for Colleges. CAMS provide robust, secure and automatic attendance management system for both Students and Staff. CAMS has an inbuilt facility of sending automatic SMS and Email alerts to the Guardians of the students.

The Need

Compliance – All colleges in the U.K. offering courses to non-EU nationals are required to maintain records of student’s attendance, in compliance with the Home Office regulations.
More efficient student attendance – CAMS automates the student and staff attendance hence; reducing irregularities in the attendance process arising due to human error.
Saving Time – Important administrative and educational resources could be freed up by utilizing CAMS
Environment Friendly – Reduces paper and other resource requirements. CAMS with its extremely small carbon footprint is a greener option.
Better Guardian information system – Guardians are better informed about their wards whereabouts with automatic SMS, Bulk SMS and Email facilities in CAMS.
Improved Guardian – College Relationship – CAMS brings the two principal stakeholders in a student’s education closer, considerably improving the Guardian – College rapport, leading to an atmosphere of comfort and trust.


CAMS is built on cutting edge modern technology and designed to help Colleges and Guardians to deal with problems of truancy/absenteeism.

CAMS is built on robust client-server architecture and supports multiple simultaneous clients which enable admin staff to perform their function with utmost ease.

The system consists of the following technology elements as shown in the figure.
Biometric Attendance Devices
Biometric Mobile Devices
Radio Frequency ID (RFID) Tags
CAMS Local Server (CLS)
CAMS Online Server (COS)
CAMS Web Interface
CAMS Software
Bulk SMS facility
Automatic Email Alerts

In a typical CAMS setup there is a biometric device setup outside each class room. These devices are connected with the CAMS local server housed in the College.

Each day the students will register their attendance with the biometric device. The CAMS local server will download the attendance data in real time. The collected data will then be securely synchronized with the CAMS Online Server (COS). COS will process the attendance and send a set SMS message to the Guardians of the absentee student via CAMS SMS gateway server if required and activated. Once the attendance is processed all attendance related reports will be available on COS for print and download.

The reports will be available in PDF, CSV, HTML, Word, Excel, RTF, Text and XML formats. Authorized users can login into CAMS online via web to retrieve the records and reports as required.

Student Registration

Every student has to be registered and activated with the CAMS. While registering the student following information is required

Personal Details
Course Details
Course Duration
Scanned Visa Copy
College Details
Biometric Data

Registration can be done via the web interface provided to the college along with the biometric fingerprint reader. Once activated with the college all devices in the college will accept the biometric identification from the student and his attendance will be marked accordingly against the course his is taking. Once a student has been activated on CAMS the college will be sent a student ID smart card via CAMS card printing service. The Student ID card will feature the following:

Student ID number
College Name and Logo
Student Personal Details
Student Photograph
Course
Validity period

The design and information on student ID cards can be set by the college based on the templates provide by CAMS to the college administration.

Email and SMS

The system also allows the College authorities to send SMS alerts to guardians regarding special events and emergencies.

Automatic Emails can also be enabled where attendance reports can be emailed to the concerned person in a set cycle.

In-built SMS and Email templates are provided to the college. Custom templates can further be created within CAMS according the college’s needs.

Staff Attendance

CAMS also has fully integrated Time Manager Software which provides various employee attendance and HR related functionalities e.g. Shift Scheduling, Shift Rota, Attendance Summary, Leave Management etc. CAMS Time Manager Module can also be integrated with leading payroll processing software.

Secure Login

CAMS considers data security of paramount importance. A secure state-of-the-art biometric login system ‘VAJRA’ is employed to login to the CAMS system.

Users are required to authenticate themselves using biometric fingerprint data before they are granted access to CAMS.

Once logged in, the system maintains an automatic log of all activities carried out by the user within the system.

Features
Accurate Student Attendance
Automatic Attendance Collection
Daily Absentee Report
Automatic SMS alert to guardian of absentee student
Daily attendance Register
Monthly attendance Register
Yearly attendance Report
Attendance Summary Report
Bulk SMS facility for special events and announcements
RFID option
Mobile attendance data collection and reporting
Robust employee attendance system

Benefits


Ensure better compliance to Home Office regulations for attendance monitoring of Foreign Students.

Better student attendance management

Less administrative work

Better accounting of student’s whereabouts during College hours

More parental involvement in ascertaining student presence in College

Improves student attendance ratio

Better College staff attendance management

Data Protection Safeguards

The user’s fingerprints are never stored on the device or the software, only a uniquely identifiable digital data called minutiae is extracted encrypted and securely stored. Hence, there is no personally identifiable data which is stored on the system.

Encrypted data is stored using FIPS 250 compliant encryption.

High quality US FBI approved sensors are used to capture data; these sensors are capable of hardware encryption at source.

All data is stored in a 128 bit encrypted data packet within the system.

Application performs a secured encrypted verification match; this ensures that digital biometric data is never exposed to any environment.