who is in the campus

!!!! Who is in Your Campus !!!

The main feature of any visitor management system is to screen the unwanted individuals. An internal watchlist to can be used to alert the security officers of malicious individuals, disgruntled employee or any other individual who are not wanted inside the school facility. External databases can be accessed directly from the Visitor Management System to screen the individual against registered sex offenders.

True Fact

As per 2013 Survey

Visitor management: More and more university, hospital and school protection professionals are realizing that paper guest logs are no longer acceptable ways of keeping track of visitors. More than two in five campuses (43%) say that lack of a visitor management system is one of their top five access control challenges. The issues with sign-in sheets are many, including illegible handwriting, lack of confidentiality and the potential for counterfeit visitor badges. Consider adopting a software solution to help you better manage campus guests as well as decrease your institution’s exposure to liability.

Source: http://www.campussafetymagazine.com/files/resources/CampusSafety2013Yearbook.pdf

As per 2010 Survey

In 2009–10, about 74 percent of public schools recorded one or more violent incidents, 16 percent recorded one or more serious violent incidents, and 44 percent recorded one or more thefts.

Source: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/crimeindicators/crimeindicators2011/ind_06.asp

Enhance Security

The schools use Access Control Systems for their staff. The same access control system can be leveraged for visitor and contractor management to grant temporary access. In this way the school can showcase more security and professionalism. Some of the large campuses in the country are using Visitor Identity Management systems to track visitors and contractors entering the premises.

This enhanced visitor management system allows us to analyze the visitor trends and patterns. In case of any unwanted visitor the system allows to quick flag the information to the Security Personnel and School Administrators. In the worse situation, during a fire emergency in the campus, it will be impossible to determine who is still in the campus since it is the human factor to enter the inconsistent check-in and check-out times.

In addition to basic visitor management facilities like information capturing, badging and reposting some of the visitor management systems has self service capabilities that allows the staff and employees to preregister their  visitors.

Shortcomings of Traditional Method

1.     You can capture the photo of the visitor

2.     It is difficult to read the handwriting of people

3.     The names of the employees will be much visible in the log which will make it easy for the intruder to just enter the name of the employee from the list above.

4.     During the time of emergency it is difficult to track the number of visitors who are inside the premises.

Uses of Visitor Management System

1.     Integration of Visitor Management systems with the existing access control systems

2.     Custom Badge Design allows you to have one or many of these, name of the person being visited, type of the visitor, expiry date and time of the visit and photo.

3.     The self service allows preregistration of the visitor and scheduling the visit.

4.     In case of a security alert, the information is flagged to the concerned Security Personnel and the Administrators.

5.     The visitor destination such as floor, building, department can be addressed and appropriate privileges can be assigned

6.     In case multiple school campus allows integration with the central database

Not recommended

A visitor Kiosk is not the recommended solution in the campus. Let us consider a situation that a visitor enters the campus with the stolen ID proof and enters the same details in the kiosk to avoid getting tracked as a match on the watchlist. Instead of reducing in the school environment, you are actually adding risks. It is always a best to have face to face contact with the visitor before granting access to the premises,

Data Analysis

The data analysis allows to analyses the visitor trends like

1.     Visitors who stayed overtime

2.     Type of ID proofs presented by the last 100 visitors

3.     Areas within the campus with more visitor footprint – need to explore and improve security.

4.     Total Badged Visitor hours

5.     Repeated Visitor in the past 4 weeks

6.     Visitor Denied Access 

Applying Real Time and Predictive Analysis to Visitor Identity and Access Management

Through the use of real-time and predictive analytics, that data can become a powerful resource. The use of Real-time and predictive analytics enables organizations to turn their data stores into knowledge and insight with swiftness and exactness as required time on time, and I think this cannot be achieved by any human. This insight could enable a different action to be taken – potentially improving an outcome, saving money or even saving lives, yes really I mean it.

Let us imagine a situation in a hospital with the Identity and access Management Application installed, of the last 100 visitors to the hospital with this age group, department, affiliated clinics, 31% visited the Neurology Department, 45% visited Intensive care unit and 30% visited Cardiology department and 5% other diagnosis. The one month visit rate was 30% between the age group 20-30 years and 35% between the age group 40 -50 years and the peak visit timings was 7.00 AM to 8:00AM  and 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM. Now the Security Administrator of the hospital can explore data across the departments, time and age or any other parameters. Now decision can be made for an individual department using population based content.

Emerging real-time analytics have the potential to provide this kind of significant value. The idea is to enable depth of insight across a broad distributed set of data — at a minimum, across a hospital and its many departments and affiliated clinics, but even better across its multiple hospitals, where traditionally an observable pattern can be hidden by the number of visitors, repeated visitors.

Predictive analytics work in a similar way, but with a focus on analyzing data and providing probabilities of various outcomes in the future. In the scenario above, imagine Predictive analytics system provides the additional information, like the predictive return of the visitors due to the patient admitted for a longer term.  A same visitor with the 48 hour return rate on initial visit. Based on this type ok knowledge, the security officers can predict the Visitor flow to each department and relatively plan the workforce in each department.

So both real-time and predictive analytics take the power of data beyond mere storage, categorization and traditional periodic reporting. Key insights like the proverb needle in a haystack; just increasing the amount of data storage is as good as adding more and more hay, but real-time and predictive analytics serve as a powerful magnet to accelerate the search for the needle

My new site a Ux designer coming up shortly

I will post the link once the website is ready,  please give me your feedback.

When wrtiting a title.......

A title must be simple but informative and easy to understand. A title presents the message of topic or chapter in just a few words.

• Length of the title

Keep your titles simple, short and clear. Avoid long ones.

• Avoid Abbreviations

Avoid abbreviations by writing out the full word.

• Do not use –of genitives

Right: Prime minister’s daughter

Wrong:  Daughter of the Prime minister

Right: Usage hours

Wrong: Hours of usage

• Parentheses

Avoid parentheses in a title

• Do not use comma

Do not use comma in a title unless the title is a list of items.

An alternative to Adobe illustrator - Inkscape

Inkscape is an open source alternative to Adobe illustrator

 

Download it from the link below:
http://www.inkscape.org/download/


This tool allows you to import .ai files.You can edit the image and save it in .png and .emf format.

I found this interesting.

Affect and effect

Affect

Meaning: to influence

Affect is a verb

Examples:

• Your decision will not affect me.
• The season affects the flowers and fruits.
• Do not allow this incident to affect your work

Effect

Meaning: result, bring out

Effect is used both as a noun and a verb.

Examples:

• This drug has adverse side effects. Noun
• When the company effected layoff, employee were given larger pay. Verb
• The prescribed medicine had immediate effect on the pain.

Tips

Effect

Use effect if one these words is used just before the word: on, into, take, the any, an, or and

Use effect when you are telling about the result

Affect

Use affect if you are describing facial expressions.

Use affect when you are describe someone or something.

Crazy time

Windows was a glass

Virus was something that I had to visit a doctor

Worm was a young insect (caterpillar)

Bug was an insect too

Button was on cloth

Radio button was a knob on by old Radio

Tweet was the sweet chirp of birds

Hertz a car rental company

By burn it meant I set fire

FAT was opposite of thin

Java, the beans for coffee

An apple, keeps doctor away

Server, was at the hotel

Chip, a potato wafer

But all in my PC now

Proof reading tips

Whenever you are writing an article, an email, a manual etc, it is important to ensure that it is free of mistakes. The spell checker is good to use but is far from foolproof.  This is when proof reading comes into picture.

Below are a few tips that will make proofreading effective.

Print the document

It is a well known fact that people read differently on screen and on paper. Proof  reading works better on paper then on screen.

Avoid distraction

Since the job demands you to spot mistakes, you need to concentrate. Switch off the mobile phones, log-off from the chat, any social networking sites. For sure, silence will work wonders for this activity.

One at a time

Never try to find all mistakes at the same time.  List the mistakes that you intended  like the following

• Typos
• Missing words
• Formatting mistakes

Know the rules of the game

Some rules of the game include:

• Look out for homonyms
• Check punctuation
• Use and so on instead of etc
• Use through instead of via etc
• 1 t0 9 in figures, 10 and above in words

 Read backwards

When you read backwards you concentrate on the words and not the meaning.

Check for the number value

Ensure the number used and the place value of the numbers are correct.

A last step

Once you have finished proofreading, get another person to proofread it again. You will be amazed to see mistakes you have missed.  Ensure the mistakes are corrected.

Proof reading marks and symbols

 We have a set of certain proofreading symbols used, get familiar with it.

See the link below for the proof reading symbols

http://webster.commnet.edu/writing/symbols.htm

Nice quote

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint. - Mark Twain

Publications guide and Style guide

What is a Style guide?

A style guide is a book that outlines the necessary rules a writer must follow for any kind of documentation. The rules the writer has to follow may be simple things like grammar and punctuation or something more than this like citation, layout, and format.

What is a Publication guide?

A publication guide is information set that deals with the guidelines the writer should follow to submit the project.  In a wider sense the publication guide covers the set of rules the writer should follow to complete each topic successfully and also the information on what the writer should not do on that particular topic.

A style guide is just a part of the publication guide.

What do you include in a Publication guide?

A Publication guide may include the following:

• Steps for publication planning
• Logo and icons used in writing
• Illustration guidelines
• Legal agreement and disclaimer statements
• Copyright information
• Documentation process
• Documentation tips
• Dictionaries, naming conventions, Glossary
• Template guidelines
• Help  on project back-up, project file location and so on

 Why is Publication guide required?

A Publication guide is a framework or a reference to help future contributors to accomplish the task successfully. These guidelines may help the newbie or those who or not familiar with the project.

Looking at this from the company perspective, it saves money and time of the writers as they do not have to reinvent the wheel.  A publication guide covers a wider range of documents like the newsletter, marketing publications, brochures and so on

Punch line

 A style guide is a set of stylistic guidelines of a publication and publication guide is a documentation of documentation

SMALL TRUTH OF LIFE

Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, its beauties and cruelties; it accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap.
Hermann Hesse

Software Documentation - Types of manuals/guides

Before you start writing, you must first decide on the type of manual. Each type of manual has a different set of audience, purpose and an objective.

If the reader is trying to learn the application, then you need to write a tutorial. If the user is already using the application and just wants some information, then the user is looking out for a reference manual. If the user is just upgraded the application, then the user is looking out for a release notes, to get the updates.

Documentation in a software industry can be broadly classified into two groups namely

• Process documentation
• Product documentation 

Process documentation

It is very important to manage the process for an effective management of the company. A software development process involves a lot of cognitive task rather than physical task; the only way of visibility is attained through technical documentation. Process documents include the following:

• Reports
• Mails and messages
• Standards documents
• Planning and estimation
• Scheduling

Product documentation

Product documentation is describing the delivered software product. Product documentation includes two types of documentation set namely:

• User documentation set: A set of documents which tells the user how to use the product.
• System documentation set: A set of documents to cater the needs of the maintenance engineers.

User documentation set

Users of the software product are not all the same. As technical writers we must structure the content for different tasks and expertise levels. I think it is not necessary for me to explain end user and system administrator. I will be using these terms frequently.

The user documentation set includes

• Functional Specification Document
• Installation Guide 
• Quick Start Guide 
• User Manual 
• Reference manual 
• Administration guide
• Release notes

Functional Specification Document outlines the behavior of the application. The documentation typically describes what is needed by the system user as well as requested properties of inputs and outputs. This document does not describe the internal architecture of the application. It just describes the interaction between the user and the software application.

Installation Guide is for the system administrators. It provides the complete details and the step-by-step instructions to install the application. It contains the complete list of the hardware and the software requirements to install the application. It also explains the configuration changes and the system settings to be changed prior or post installation.

Quick Start Guide aims to provide the overview of the application. It mainly explains the menus, sub-menus, and navigation option etc of the Graphical user interface (GUI)

User manual is to assist the user to use the application. It is also commonly called manual. It explains the application in a language that a non-technical user can understand.

Reference manual is for the experienced users. It describes about the features and its usage. A reference manual provides the complete list of error message and its recovery procedures.

Administration guide is for the system administrator for installing maintaining and managing the application. If hardware is involved, it explains the administrator’s task in maintaining the application.

Release note is a document distributed with software product, often when the product is still in the development or test state (e.g., a beta release). For products that have already been in use by clients, the release note is a supplementary document that is delivered to the customer when a bug is fixed or an enhancement is made to the product.

System Documentation Set

System Documentation includes all the documents right from the requirement specification to the final acceptance plan. Documents describing the design, implementation and testing of a system are essential if the program is to be understood and maintained.