Alcra staff guide
Alcra staff work in the staff console of the BioTrack portal, at app.biotrack.alcra.co. Staff sign in with passkeys like everyone else, but a staff account is separate: it can never be a member of a customer organisation, and a customer account can never be staff.
Staff roles
Section titled “Staff roles”| Role | Can do |
|---|---|
| Staff operator | Organisations, sites, first-administrator invitations, licences, support codes, replacing and revoking PCs, recorded payments, retention changes, the Installations and Pricing pages. |
| Staff administrator | Everything an operator can, plus setting the price, emergency administrator invitations, approving account recovery, disabling accounts, the staff Team and the platform Audit. |
Destructive actions ask for a passkey check within the last five minutes, and the most destructive ones for a typed confirmation. Staff sessions end after 30 minutes without activity, and after 8 hours at most.
What staff can see
Section titled “What staff can see”Staff see metadata only: organisations, sites, PCs and their health, licences, subscriptions, payments, and the names, emails and roles of portal members. Staff never see employee names, scans or attendance. If a customer needs help with attendance data, they share their screen.
Set up a new customer
Section titled “Set up a new customer”- Organisations → New organisation. Enter the Organisation name, how long to Keep attendance data for (1, 3, 5 or 7 years), the First site and its Site time zone.
- On the organisation’s page, under Licences, add the licences the customer bought: 1 to 20 at a time, with an optional order or invoice reference.
- Under People, select Invite and invite the customer’s first administrator.
- Add further sites under Sites → Add site if the customer has them.
The customer’s administrator then accepts the invitation and links each PC. See Link this PC.
Once an organisation has an active administrator, only a staff administrator can invite another administrator for it. This Emergency administrator invitation needs a reason and a passkey check, and the existing administrators are told.
Support codes
Section titled “Support codes”Where nobody at the site can sign in to the portal, issue a code and give it to the site through an approved private channel. The code is shown once and never stored in readable form. The site enters it on the PC’s link screen under Have a code from BioTrack support?.
- Activation code: Sites → Activation code. Choose how long it stays valid (at most seven days). Redeeming it links the PC to that site and uses one of the organisation’s free licences; with no free licence nothing happens and the code stays unused.
- Replacement code: Installations → Replace PC, with a reason. Use it when an installation has moved to another computer, for example after a backup was restored there. The new PC takes over the installation, its cloud data and its licence, and the old PC stops sending as soon as the code is used. Confirm with the customer that the old PC is retired first. If the old PC was lost or stolen, revoke instead.
Release a licence or revoke a PC
Section titled “Release a licence or revoke a PC”Installations → Revoke, with a reason of at least 10 characters and the word REVOKE. The installation stops syncing at once and its licence is released for another PC. The PC itself stops collecting the next time it reaches the cloud and shows This PC’s licence was released. Revocation cannot be undone; the site must link a PC again.
Use it when a PC is retired at the customer’s request, lost, or suspected to be compromised.
Retire an unused licence (for example after a refund or a mistake) from the Licences list, with a reason. A licence held by a PC cannot be retired, and retiring is final.
Payments and pricing
Section titled “Payments and pricing”- Record payment on an installation records a payment made outside Paynow, such as cash or a bank transfer: 1 to 8 quarters, the amount in USD and a unique receipt or transfer reference. It extends the subscription at once, like a Paynow payment.
- Pricing shows the price per quarter in force, its history and whether Paynow is connected. Staff administrators set a new price there. A payment always uses the price in force when it started.
- A Paynow payment whose amount does not match is marked failed and needs resolving with a recorded payment.
Data retention
Section titled “Data retention”On the organisation’s page, Data retention → Change, with the customer’s approval or change reference. The page refuses a change if someone else changed it since you loaded it. Reducing retention permanently deletes older cloud data at the next hourly run, so get the customer’s written approval and a backup or export decision first.
Account recovery
Section titled “Account recovery”When a person who has no other administrator in any of their organisations loses their passkey, the request comes to staff administrators under Recovery. Confirm the person’s identity, for example by phone, before selecting Approve. Staff accounts never recover on their own: every staff member should have at least two passkeys.
Daily checks
Section titled “Daily checks”- Installations, filtered to Silent for over a day. A silent PC is usually powered off or off the network; confirm with the site before assuming anything worse. Look also for Offline or Not collecting PCs and their warnings: a PC time zone that differs from the site’s, a clock a minute or more out, and refused changes.
- The subscription filter (Paid, Lapsed, Never paid) shows customers whose cloud reporting has paused.
- Audit for staff actions you do not recognise.
Keep at least two active staff administrators, each with at least two passkeys, and remove staff access on the day someone leaves.