Attendance
Reimagining Attendance Management for Modern Workplaces
Role
Product Designer
Timeline
Apr-May 2024
Team involved
1 Designer, 1 PM, 1 Engineer
What is Attendance Management?
Attendance management is the process of tracking and managing employee time, including:
Recording when employees start and end their workday
Tracking breaks and overtime
Managing leaves and time-off requests
Monitoring work hours and attendance patterns
Ensuring compliance with company policies
Integrating with payroll for accurate salary calculations
Why Are We Building This?
The current market presents several challenges that traditional attendance systems fail to address:
Spreadsheet Inefficiency
Manual attendance tracking in spreadsheets is messy and error-prone
Time-consuming calculations for employee salaries
High risk of payroll processing delays
Legacy System Limitations
Outdated and costly solutions
Poor user interfaces
Lack of flexibility for modern work arrangements
Modern Workplace Needs
Need for both remote and on-site attendance tracking
Requirement for seamless payroll integration
Demand for employee-friendly interfaces
Need for accurate, automated time tracking
Understanding Policy Management: Through the Lens of HR Reality
For growing companies, managing HR policies is a constant challenge. Imagine being an HR admin, carefully selecting employees one by one to assign leave policies, only to realize you need to do it all over again when new employees join next month. Or worse, discovering that some employees have incorrect holiday calendars because someone forgot to update their policy assignments after a recent office location change.
We saw HR teams struggling with:
Hours spent manually selecting employees for each policy
Inconsistent policy assignments leading to employee confusion
Policy updates requiring tedious employee-by-employee changes
Growing companies finding it increasingly difficult to manage policies at scale
Risk of human error in policy assignments affecting employee experience
Typical HR in a growing company before clusters
Becoming One With The Users
Initially, we thought policy management was straightforward - HR admins need to assign policies to employees. How complex could it be? Let's just give them a better interface to select employees. This was our thinking when we first started exploring the problem.
But when we dug deeper through conversations with HR admins who manage policies daily, we realized we were missing the bigger picture. The truth? We were building a slightly better version of the existing manual process, not solving the core problem.
Through extensive discussions with HR teams, we uncovered the real needs:
Groups needed to be dynamic to handle company growth
Policy assignments needed to be consistent and error-free
Different policies needed different grouping logic
Group composition needed to be easily verifiable
Changes needed to be traceable for audit purposes
Refactoring > Redesigning: Solving Core Problems First
After analyzing dozens of companies' policy structures and countless hours of user interviews, we identified two fundamental problems that needed immediate attention.
First, the manual selection process wasn't just time-consuming - it was becoming impossible to manage as companies grew. "Need to apply different leave policies for different office locations." "Need to set up special holiday calendars for specific teams." "Need to handle attendance policies for different shifts." Each request showed how manual selection was breaking down at scale.
Second, we realized that growing organizations needed more than just bulk selection - they needed intelligent automation.
"Need policies to update automatically when employees change departments."
"Need to ensure new employees automatically get the right policies."
"Need to track why certain employees have specific policies."
These weren't just feature requests - they represented fundamental gaps in how policies were being managed.
Product team presenting the expert findings
The Technical Deep Dive
We dove headfirst into building our group management engine. The foundation was our condition-based group system. Instead of treating groups as static lists of selected employees, we reimagined them as dynamic sets of conditions.
Breaking down group definitions into meaningful conditions:
Building an intuitive interface: We created a visual approach where creating groups felt natural and obvious. Each condition became a clear choice that HR admins could easily understand and modify.
Real-time updates: The system automatically maintains group membership as organizational changes occur, ensuring policy assignments stay current without manual intervention.
Traditional: "Manually selected list of 50 employees"
New: "Department = Engineering AND Location = Bangalore AND Employment Type = Full-Time"
Design takeaway
Users don’t ask “Open the shifts page”; they say “Open the Thane Café schedule.”
Our interface mirrors that real-world language.
Key behaviours & guard-rails
Behaviour
Add employee
Bonus
Make schedule inactive
Clone schedule
System action
• Prompts to map missing job codes.
• Optional toggle to auto-assign any matching open shifts
• Future published shifts are soft-deleted
• Pattern links severed
• Alerts posted to the audit feed
• Locks rota editing
• Existing shifts become read-only
• Attendance still logs punches for payroll
• Copies templates, patterns, policies—but not members or shifts.
Why we designed it this way
Smooth onboarding and fewer forgotten vacancies
Prevents “ghost” shifts and keeps calendars truthful
Seasonal sites can pause operations without losing history.
Multi-location roll-outs happen in minutes, with no accidental staff leakage.
Strategizing the Product: Design, Dev, and Business Alignment
Every HR tool offers some way to assign policies - how could we make Clusters truly valuable? We decided to focus on our strength: making policy management both powerful and simple.
We discovered distinct user needs:
HR admins who needed quick, accurate policy assignments
HR managers who needed oversight and policy consistency
Finance teams who needed clear policy tracking for payroll
Employees who needed clarity about their applicable policies
We had to keep supporting existing policy management while building toward our vision. Our first milestone was replacing manual selection with basic condition-based groups, but we knew we could do much more.
Key behaviours & guard-rails
Behaviour
Add employee
Bonus
Make schedule inactive
Clone schedule
System action
• Prompts to map missing job codes.
• Optional toggle to auto-assign any matching open shifts
• Future published shifts are soft-deleted
• Pattern links severed
• Alerts posted to the audit feed
• Locks rota editing
• Existing shifts become read-only
• Attendance still logs punches for payroll
• Copies templates, patterns, policies—but not members or shifts.
Why we designed it this way
Smooth onboarding and fewer forgotten vacancies
Prevents “ghost” shifts and keeps calendars truthful
Seasonal sites can pause operations without losing history.
Multi-location roll-outs happen in minutes, with no accidental staff leakage.
Behaviour
Add employee
Bonus
Make schedule inactive
Clone schedule
System action
• Prompts to map missing job codes.
• Optional toggle to auto-assign any matching open shifts
• Future published shifts are soft-deleted
• Pattern links severed
• Alerts posted to the audit feed
• Locks rota editing
• Existing shifts become read-only
• Attendance still logs punches for payroll
• Copies templates, patterns, policies—but not members or shifts.
Why we designed it this way
Smooth onboarding and fewer forgotten vacancies
Prevents “ghost” shifts and keeps calendars truthful
Seasonal sites can pause operations without losing history.
Multi-location roll-outs happen in minutes, with no accidental staff leakage.
Key behaviours & guard-rails
Behaviour
Add employee
Bonus
Make schedule inactive
Clone schedule
System action
• Prompts to map missing job codes.
• Optional toggle to auto-assign any matching open shifts
• Future published shifts are soft-deleted
• Pattern links severed
• Alerts posted to the audit feed
• Locks rota editing
• Existing shifts become read-only
• Attendance still logs punches for payroll
• Copies templates, patterns, policies—but not members or shifts.
Why we designed it this way
Smooth onboarding and fewer forgotten vacancies
Prevents “ghost” shifts and keeps calendars truthful
Seasonal sites can pause operations without losing history.
Multi-location roll-outs happen in minutes, with no accidental staff leakage.
Understanding Policy Management: Through the Lens of HR Reality
For growing companies, managing HR policies is a constant challenge. Imagine being an HR admin, carefully selecting employees one by one to assign leave policies, only to realize you need to do it all over again when new employees join next month. Or worse, discovering that some employees have incorrect holiday calendars because someone forgot to update their policy assignments after a recent office location change.
We saw HR teams struggling with:
Hours spent manually selecting employees for each policy
Inconsistent policy assignments leading to employee confusion
Policy updates requiring tedious employee-by-employee changes
Growing companies finding it increasingly difficult to manage policies at scale
Risk of human error in policy assignments affecting employee experience
Typical HR in a growing company before clusters
Becoming One With The Users
Initially, we thought policy management was straightforward - HR admins need to assign policies to employees. How complex could it be? Let's just give them a better interface to select employees. This was our thinking when we first started exploring the problem.
But when we dug deeper through conversations with HR admins who manage policies daily, we realized we were missing the bigger picture. The truth? We were building a slightly better version of the existing manual process, not solving the core problem.
Through extensive discussions with HR teams, we uncovered the real needs:
Groups needed to be dynamic to handle company growth
Policy assignments needed to be consistent and error-free
Different policies needed different grouping logic
Group composition needed to be easily verifiable
Changes needed to be traceable for audit purposes
Refactoring > Redesigning: Solving Core Problems First
After analyzing dozens of companies' policy structures and countless hours of user interviews, we identified two fundamental problems that needed immediate attention.
First, the manual selection process wasn't just time-consuming - it was becoming impossible to manage as companies grew. "Need to apply different leave policies for different office locations." "Need to set up special holiday calendars for specific teams." "Need to handle attendance policies for different shifts." Each request showed how manual selection was breaking down at scale.
Second, we realized that growing organizations needed more than just bulk selection - they needed intelligent automation.
"Need policies to update automatically when employees change departments."
"Need to ensure new employees automatically get the right policies."
"Need to track why certain employees have specific policies."
These weren't just feature requests - they represented fundamental gaps in how policies were being managed.
Product team presenting the expert findings
The Technical Deep Dive
We dove headfirst into building our group management engine. The foundation was our condition-based group system. Instead of treating groups as static lists of selected employees, we reimagined them as dynamic sets of conditions.
Breaking down group definitions into meaningful conditions:
Building an intuitive interface: We created a visual approach where creating groups felt natural and obvious. Each condition became a clear choice that HR admins could easily understand and modify.
Real-time updates: The system automatically maintains group membership as organizational changes occur, ensuring policy assignments stay current without manual intervention.
Traditional: "Manually selected list of 50 employees"
New: "Department = Engineering AND Location = Bangalore AND Employment Type = Full-Time"
Design takeaway
Users don’t ask “Open the shifts page”; they say “Open the Thane Café schedule.”
Our interface mirrors that real-world language.
Key behaviours & guard-rails
Behaviour
Add employee
Bonus
Make schedule inactive
Clone schedule
System action
• Prompts to map missing job codes.
• Optional toggle to auto-assign any matching open shifts
• Future published shifts are soft-deleted
• Pattern links severed
• Alerts posted to the audit feed
• Locks rota editing
• Existing shifts become read-only
• Attendance still logs punches for payroll
• Copies templates, patterns, policies—but not members or shifts.
Why we designed it this way
Smooth onboarding and fewer forgotten vacancies
Prevents “ghost” shifts and keeps calendars truthful
Seasonal sites can pause operations without losing history.
Multi-location roll-outs happen in minutes, with no accidental staff leakage.
Strategizing the Product: Design, Dev, and Business Alignment
Every HR tool offers some way to assign policies - how could we make Clusters truly valuable? We decided to focus on our strength: making policy management both powerful and simple.
We discovered distinct user needs:
HR admins who needed quick, accurate policy assignments
HR managers who needed oversight and policy consistency
Finance teams who needed clear policy tracking for payroll
Employees who needed clarity about their applicable policies
We had to keep supporting existing policy management while building toward our vision. Our first milestone was replacing manual selection with basic condition-based groups, but we knew we could do much more.
Key behaviours & guard-rails
Behaviour
Add employee
Bonus
Make schedule inactive
Clone schedule
System action
• Prompts to map missing job codes.
• Optional toggle to auto-assign any matching open shifts
• Future published shifts are soft-deleted
• Pattern links severed
• Alerts posted to the audit feed
• Locks rota editing
• Existing shifts become read-only
• Attendance still logs punches for payroll
• Copies templates, patterns, policies—but not members or shifts.
Why we designed it this way
Smooth onboarding and fewer forgotten vacancies
Prevents “ghost” shifts and keeps calendars truthful
Seasonal sites can pause operations without losing history.
Multi-location roll-outs happen in minutes, with no accidental staff leakage.
Behaviour
Add employee
Bonus
Make schedule inactive
Clone schedule
System action
• Prompts to map missing job codes.
• Optional toggle to auto-assign any matching open shifts
• Future published shifts are soft-deleted
• Pattern links severed
• Alerts posted to the audit feed
• Locks rota editing
• Existing shifts become read-only
• Attendance still logs punches for payroll
• Copies templates, patterns, policies—but not members or shifts.
Why we designed it this way
Smooth onboarding and fewer forgotten vacancies
Prevents “ghost” shifts and keeps calendars truthful
Seasonal sites can pause operations without losing history.
Multi-location roll-outs happen in minutes, with no accidental staff leakage.
Key behaviours & guard-rails
Behaviour
Add employee
Bonus
Make schedule inactive
Clone schedule
System action
• Prompts to map missing job codes.
• Optional toggle to auto-assign any matching open shifts
• Future published shifts are soft-deleted
• Pattern links severed
• Alerts posted to the audit feed
• Locks rota editing
• Existing shifts become read-only
• Attendance still logs punches for payroll
• Copies templates, patterns, policies—but not members or shifts.
Why we designed it this way
Smooth onboarding and fewer forgotten vacancies
Prevents “ghost” shifts and keeps calendars truthful
Seasonal sites can pause operations without losing history.
Multi-location roll-outs happen in minutes, with no accidental staff leakage.
Understanding Policy Management: Through the Lens of HR Reality
For growing companies, managing HR policies is a constant challenge. Imagine being an HR admin, carefully selecting employees one by one to assign leave policies, only to realize you need to do it all over again when new employees join next month. Or worse, discovering that some employees have incorrect holiday calendars because someone forgot to update their policy assignments after a recent office location change.
We saw HR teams struggling with:
Hours spent manually selecting employees for each policy
Inconsistent policy assignments leading to employee confusion
Policy updates requiring tedious employee-by-employee changes
Growing companies finding it increasingly difficult to manage policies at scale
Risk of human error in policy assignments affecting employee experience
Typical HR in a growing company before clusters
Becoming One With The Users
Initially, we thought policy management was straightforward - HR admins need to assign policies to employees. How complex could it be? Let's just give them a better interface to select employees. This was our thinking when we first started exploring the problem.
But when we dug deeper through conversations with HR admins who manage policies daily, we realized we were missing the bigger picture. The truth? We were building a slightly better version of the existing manual process, not solving the core problem.
Through extensive discussions with HR teams, we uncovered the real needs:
Groups needed to be dynamic to handle company growth
Policy assignments needed to be consistent and error-free
Different policies needed different grouping logic
Group composition needed to be easily verifiable
Changes needed to be traceable for audit purposes
Refactoring > Redesigning: Solving Core Problems First
After analyzing dozens of companies' policy structures and countless hours of user interviews, we identified two fundamental problems that needed immediate attention.
First, the manual selection process wasn't just time-consuming - it was becoming impossible to manage as companies grew. "Need to apply different leave policies for different office locations." "Need to set up special holiday calendars for specific teams." "Need to handle attendance policies for different shifts." Each request showed how manual selection was breaking down at scale.
Second, we realized that growing organizations needed more than just bulk selection - they needed intelligent automation.
"Need policies to update automatically when employees change departments."
"Need to ensure new employees automatically get the right policies."
"Need to track why certain employees have specific policies."
These weren't just feature requests - they represented fundamental gaps in how policies were being managed.
Product team presenting the expert findings
The Technical Deep Dive
We dove headfirst into building our group management engine. The foundation was our condition-based group system. Instead of treating groups as static lists of selected employees, we reimagined them as dynamic sets of conditions.
Breaking down group definitions into meaningful conditions:
Building an intuitive interface: We created a visual approach where creating groups felt natural and obvious. Each condition became a clear choice that HR admins could easily understand and modify.
Real-time updates: The system automatically maintains group membership as organizational changes occur, ensuring policy assignments stay current without manual intervention.
Traditional: "Manually selected list of 50 employees"
New: "Department = Engineering AND Location = Bangalore AND Employment Type = Full-Time"
Design takeaway
Users don’t ask “Open the shifts page”; they say “Open the Thane Café schedule.”
Our interface mirrors that real-world language.
Key behaviours & guard-rails
Behaviour
Add employee
Bonus
Make schedule inactive
Clone schedule
System action
• Prompts to map missing job codes.
• Optional toggle to auto-assign any matching open shifts
• Future published shifts are soft-deleted
• Pattern links severed
• Alerts posted to the audit feed
• Locks rota editing
• Existing shifts become read-only
• Attendance still logs punches for payroll
• Copies templates, patterns, policies—but not members or shifts.
Why we designed it this way
Smooth onboarding and fewer forgotten vacancies
Prevents “ghost” shifts and keeps calendars truthful
Seasonal sites can pause operations without losing history.
Multi-location roll-outs happen in minutes, with no accidental staff leakage.
Strategizing the Product: Design, Dev, and Business Alignment
Every HR tool offers some way to assign policies - how could we make Clusters truly valuable? We decided to focus on our strength: making policy management both powerful and simple.
We discovered distinct user needs:
HR admins who needed quick, accurate policy assignments
HR managers who needed oversight and policy consistency
Finance teams who needed clear policy tracking for payroll
Employees who needed clarity about their applicable policies
We had to keep supporting existing policy management while building toward our vision. Our first milestone was replacing manual selection with basic condition-based groups, but we knew we could do much more.
Key behaviours & guard-rails
Behaviour
Add employee
Bonus
Make schedule inactive
Clone schedule
System action
• Prompts to map missing job codes.
• Optional toggle to auto-assign any matching open shifts
• Future published shifts are soft-deleted
• Pattern links severed
• Alerts posted to the audit feed
• Locks rota editing
• Existing shifts become read-only
• Attendance still logs punches for payroll
• Copies templates, patterns, policies—but not members or shifts.
Why we designed it this way
Smooth onboarding and fewer forgotten vacancies
Prevents “ghost” shifts and keeps calendars truthful
Seasonal sites can pause operations without losing history.
Multi-location roll-outs happen in minutes, with no accidental staff leakage.
Behaviour
Add employee
Bonus
Make schedule inactive
Clone schedule
System action
• Prompts to map missing job codes.
• Optional toggle to auto-assign any matching open shifts
• Future published shifts are soft-deleted
• Pattern links severed
• Alerts posted to the audit feed
• Locks rota editing
• Existing shifts become read-only
• Attendance still logs punches for payroll
• Copies templates, patterns, policies—but not members or shifts.
Why we designed it this way
Smooth onboarding and fewer forgotten vacancies
Prevents “ghost” shifts and keeps calendars truthful
Seasonal sites can pause operations without losing history.
Multi-location roll-outs happen in minutes, with no accidental staff leakage.
Key behaviours & guard-rails
Behaviour
Add employee
Bonus
Make schedule inactive
Clone schedule
System action
• Prompts to map missing job codes.
• Optional toggle to auto-assign any matching open shifts
• Future published shifts are soft-deleted
• Pattern links severed
• Alerts posted to the audit feed
• Locks rota editing
• Existing shifts become read-only
• Attendance still logs punches for payroll
• Copies templates, patterns, policies—but not members or shifts.
Why we designed it this way
Smooth onboarding and fewer forgotten vacancies
Prevents “ghost” shifts and keeps calendars truthful
Seasonal sites can pause operations without losing history.
Multi-location roll-outs happen in minutes, with no accidental staff leakage.
The Feature Showcase
Transform how you manage employee policies with six powerful building blocks:
Mix and Match Conditions for Perfect Policy Fits
Build exactly the groups you need by combining these core attributes. Whether you're setting up attendance policies for your Bangalore engineering team or configuring leave policies for all full-time employees across locations, Clusters makes it simple.
Smart combinations let you:
Combine multiple attributes to create precise groups
Set up location-specific policies for different offices
Create department-specific policy variations
Handle exceptions with specific user additions
Build team-level policy configurations
Policy Assignment Made Visual
See your policies come to life with our interactive preview. No more guessing who's included or downloading spreadsheets to verify your selections.
Real-time member list updates as you build groups
Clear view of all employees in each group
Future-Proof Your Policy Management
As your organization evolves, Clusters evolves with you:
Scales seamlessly as your team grows
Adapts to organizational restructuring
Handles policy assignments efficiently
Maintains performance even with large teams
Automatic updates as employees join or change roles
