# US 2019/0318320 A1 · Predicting upcoming missed clockings and alerting workers or managers

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- Number: US 2019/0318320 A1
- Document ID: US20190318320A1
- Status: Published application
- Kind: A1
- Application number: 16/381,472
- Filed: 2019-04-11
- Published: 2019-10-17
- Earliest claimed: 2018-04-12
- Assignees: Kronos Technology Systems Limited Partnership
- Applicants: Kronos Technology Systems Limited Partnership
- Inventors: Michael A. Scarpati; Thomas J. Walsh; Gregory Lamarre Anderson
- Web page: https://patentgrep.com/patent/US20190318320A1

## CPC

- G06Q 10/1091: Recording time for administrative or management purposes
- G06Q 10/06393: {Score-carding, benchmarking or key performance indicator [KPI] analysis}
- G06Q: INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY [ICT] SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR ADMINISTRATIVE, COMMERCIAL, FINANCIAL, MANAGERIAL OR SUPERVISORY PURPOSES; SYSTEMS OR METHODS SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR ADMINISTRATIVE, COMMERCIAL, FINANCIAL, MANAGERIAL OR SUPERVISORY PURPOSES, NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR

## Abstract

Workers often forget to enter clockings indicating when they have arrived or left work or transferred between work activities. Various embodiments provide a system that predicts the risk of potential missed worker clockings and delivers alerts to the workers and/or their managers when that risk is high. The system analyzes historical data to find previous instances of missed clockings at an organization, extracts feature information regarding the context of the missed clockings, and calibrates a missing clocking risk model. The model is then used in either an online or batch mode to predict the risk of workers missing upcoming scheduled clockings. Based on these risk scores and system configurations, alerts are generated for employees and managers reminding them about the upcoming clockings and lowering the amount of missed clockings and subsequent remedies.

## Claims

### Claim 1

A method for providing alerts prior to potential missed clockings, the method comprising:
retrieving historical employee clockings;
identifying missed clockings based on an alignment of the historical employee clockings;
extracting features representative of the missed clockings;
generating a predictive model based on statistical correlations of the extracted features;
for each upcoming scheduled clocking in a prediction window, determining a risk factor of the upcoming scheduled clocking being missed based on the predictive model; and
based at least in part on the risk factor, presenting an alert prior to the upcoming scheduled clocking.

### Claim 2 (depends on 1)

The method of claim 1, wherein identifying missed clockings further comprises comparing scheduled clockings from a historical employee schedule against actual clockings from the historical employee clockings in order to identify missed clockings.

### Claim 3 (depends on 2)

The method of claim 2, wherein a scheduled clocking with no associated actual clocking within an allowable buffer for matching is identified as a missed clocking.

### Claim 4 (depends on 1)

The method of claim 1, wherein determining a risk factor of the upcoming scheduled clocking comprises identifying each upcoming and scoring scheduled clocking in a given timeframe.

### Claim 5 (depends on 4)

The method of claim 4, wherein the timeframe represents the next day.

### Claim 6 (depends on 1)

The method of claim 1, wherein determining a risk factor of the upcoming scheduled clocking is performed in response to an event.

### Claim 7 (depends on 6)

The method of claim 6, wherein the event is one of:
a schedule being posted,
a schedule being updated,
a missed clocking, and
a request by a user.

### Claim 8 (depends on 1)

The method of claim 1, wherein presenting an alert further comprises:
determining whether the risk factor meets a given threshold for an associated user;
in response to the risk factor meeting the given threshold, alerting the associated user prior to the upcoming scheduled clocking.

### Claim 9 (depends on 8)

The method of claim 8, wherein the upcoming scheduled clocking is associated with an associated employee; and the associated user is a manager overseeing the employee.

### Claim 10 (depends on 8)

The method of claim 8, wherein the upcoming scheduled clocking is associated with an associated employee; and the associated user is the employee.

### Claim 11 (depends on 1)

The method of claim 1, wherein presenting the alert comprises repeating the alert unless a user acknowledgement is received.

### Claim 12 (depends on 1)

The method of claim 1, wherein presenting the alert is performed in accordance with alert configurations.

### Claim 13 (depends on 1)

The method of claim 1, wherein extracting features representative of the missed clockings comprises identifying an employee's miss rate for at least one of:
clockings within a recent time period,
all historical clockings,
clockings at a given time of day,
clockings on a given day of the week, and
clockings based on location.

### Claim 14 (depends on 1)

The method of claim 1, wherein extracting features representative of the missed clockings is performed in parallel on multiple servers.

### Claim 15

An apparatus for providing alerts prior to potential missed clockings, the apparatus comprising at least one processor; and at least one memory including computer program code, the at least one memory and the computer program code configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the apparatus to perform at least the following:
to retrieve historical employee clockings;
to identify missed clockings based on an alignment of the historical employee clockings;
to extract features representative of the missed clockings;
to generate a predictive model based on statistical correlations of the extracted features;
for each upcoming scheduled clocking in a prediction window, to determine a risk factor of the upcoming scheduled clocking being missed based on the predictive model; and
based at least in part on the risk factor, to present an alert prior to the upcoming scheduled clocking.

### Claim 16 (depends on 15)

The apparatus of claim 15, wherein presenting an alert comprises:
determining whether the risk factor meets a given threshold for an associated user;
in response to the risk factor meeting the given threshold, alerting the associated user prior to the upcoming scheduled clocking.

### Claim 17 (depends on 15)

The apparatus of claim 15, wherein the apparatus comprises a plurality of processors and wherein extracting features representative of the missed clockings is performed in parallel on the plurality of processors.

### Claim 18

A computer readable medium tangibly encoded with a computer program for providing alerts prior to potential missed clockings, the computer program executable by a processor to perform actions comprising:
retrieving historical employee clockings;
identifying missed clockings based on an alignment of the historical employee clockings;
extracting features representative of the missed clockings;
generating a predictive model based on statistical correlations of the extracted features;
for each upcoming scheduled clocking in a prediction window, determining a risk factor of the upcoming scheduled clocking being missed based on the predictive model; and
based at least in part on the risk factor, presenting an alert prior to the upcoming scheduled clocking.

### Claim 19 (depends on 18)

The computer readable medium of claim 18, wherein presenting an alert comprises:
determining whether the risk factor meets a given threshold for an associated user;
in response to the risk factor meeting the given threshold, alerting the associated user prior to the upcoming scheduled clocking.