General Clock Troubleshooting Issues

The potential issues that a clock may experience are:

Issue Details and Resolution
The clock is unresponsive and does not accept input. Wait a few minutes, as a background process may be running, such as sending swipes or updating the firmware. If after waiting a few minutes, no messages or prompts are displayed, a hardware issue has occurred. Power the clock down and back up.
Red connectivity icon is displayed. The 8000 cannot communicate with the system server. The following are possible causes for connectivity issues:
  • A cable is loose or unplugged. Check the cables connecting the 8000 to the network.
  • The user name and/or password specified on the clock is not valid. Ensure the user name and password specified on the clock is valid.
  • The WFM URL entered into the clock is not correct.
Invalid badge message is displayed. The clock does not recognize the employee's badge number.
  • Ensure the correct badge number is being used.
  • Ensure the clock is included in the reader group(s) assigned to the employee.
  • Ensure the clock is connected to the system.
The date and time displayed on the clock are incorrect. For more information, see Troubleshooting Time Synchronization.
Clock performance is extremely slow in processing key presses. The clock's performance will decrease when many processes are running or when the available memory runs low. Please note that when the clock starts up, there are many background processes running to get the clock ready for use.

You can improve performance by reducing the amount of data on the clock, such as limiting the number of employees or labor metrics, as well as scheduling processes to run less frequently. See Clock Worker Threads.

It is possible the performance problem is related to the number of employees assigned to the 8000 and the page size setting. Try decreasing the value of the page size setting to improve performance.

For example, if there are more than 1000 employees assigned to the 8000 (in the same reader group as the clock), changing wbsynch.webservice.pageSize to 50 may improve the performance.

As the number of employees increases and performance slows, lower the page size value. However, the adverse effect of decreasing the page size value is that the 8000 will take longer to download data from the system.

Clock reboots or re-initializes by itself. There are several possible causes:
  • An automatic reboot of the clock was initiated because a software update was completed.
  • The clock reboots because an authorized user with access to the clock's operating system issued a reboot.
No employees are displayed in the Admin Console Ensure that the clock can connect to the system instance. A successful connection requires the correct URL and clock name, and a valid username and password. The name identifying the clock is stored in the Reader Name field on the Readers page. The page can be accessed by selecting Maintenance > Reader Setup > Readers.

In addition, check the log for errors that might point to network communication problems.

None of the keys are working. If the clock does not respond after pressing any of the keys on the keypad, a background process may be running, such as sending swipes or updating the firmware.

If the seconds are not advancing on the display, the clock is unresponsive. Power the clock down and then power the clock up.

Clock punches are not displayed on the timesheets. Ensure that the Clock Processing task is running in the Job Scheduler and is scheduled to run frequently enough.

Verify that the last run time of the Clock Processing task has occurred recently and after the clock swipe occurred.

Ensure that you are viewing the correct employee's timesheet for the correct dates.

In the Admin Console, check the Journal tab to ensure the clock punches exist and have a value of T in the SENDTOXML column. If there is a backlog of clock punches without a T value, the punches are not being sent to the system. If so, check the Log tab of the Admin Console for communication errors and verify the connection between the 8000 and the system server. See Using Administration Console.