How do automated desk check-ins work using office wi-fi?

Instead of clicking a button or scanning a sticker, you can be automatically checked in to your desk by simply walking into your office. This means that, in addition to mobile, you can be checked in automatically via a network connection on the web, tablet, or our Outlook add-in. Let's walk through how this works:

1. An admin associates one or many public IP addresses with a building in Robin. This is the address that the outside internet sees when you’re connected to the building’s wifi.

2. Your device connects to wifi.

3. The Robin app pings our servers over the internet.

4. We check if that incoming IP address matches one of the buildings the admins told us about. If it does, then Robin will: 
   • Look for unconfirmed desk reservations in that building that are within the check-in window and start no more than 4 hours from now.
   • Confirm any of those we can find and update the attendance status to "Checked in or confirmed on-site".
   • Send a push notification to the user, letting them know they've been checked in. 
   • If the user doesn't have a desk reservation, a visit is created for them, and they're reflected as "In office". 
     • Their attendance status is updated to "Scheduled - Confirmed on-site." 

FAQ

1. How long does it take for automatic check-in to happen? 

You might be checked in within a few minutes, or it may take up to an hour. Your presence is regularly checked on a timer, and the frequency of the timer can be unpredictable.

2. Should I still scan my sticker?

Go for it! If you remember to scan your sticker, fantastic! The automated check-in is great for those who have a hard time remembering to check in.

3. It seems like I only get checked in when I wake up my phone or open the app. I thought this was supposed to be automatic.

Phones will often defer background work until an opportune time to conserve battery. Interacting with the phone, especially with our app, provides a strong incentive to do that background work and ping our servers. If you hadn’t touched your phone, you probably would have been checked in slightly later.

4. I didn't get automatically checked in. Why?

Make sure you're giving the servers enough time ( at least an hour) to communicate. However, if you're waiting patiently for hours, and maybe you lost your desk to Abandoned desk protection, then that's not the experience we are going for. Check these things in order of most likely to least likely:

• Connect your phone to office wifi.

• Make sure you don’t have low battery or are in any sort of battery-saver mode.

• Make sure you’re logged in to the correct organization on the Robin app.

• Make sure the Robin app is up-to-date, both in the App Store and under Settings > Check for updates within the app

• iOS: Make sure Background App Refresh is enabled for the Robin app (on by default)

• Android: Check out Don’t kill my app! to see if your manufacturer is being mean

• Stuff generally works better if you avoid swiping the app away and killing it, though we should still be resilient against that.

• Make sure push notifications are enabled for Robin app (on by default for Android)

• Make sure you’ve opted into desk check-in reminders within the Robin app (on by default)

• Check if you’re receiving the push notifications that remind you to check in to your desk. If you aren’t getting them, something’s wrong. Uninstall and reinstall the app.

• Make sure you aren’t using a VPN or proxy server on your device.

• While connected to the office wifi, make sure that your IP address matches the one configured by the admin. You can see your phone’s IP at https://ipecho.net/plain . IP addresses can change, but US business-class internet service usually provides a static IP. You'll need to reach out to your office admin to check this.