November feature updates: What's new in Zoho People?

We're back again with our monthly product updates, and this time we're bringing you some features that will help you better manage your workforce. With them, we hope to provide an even more exceptional experience to your employees while also helping you complete all your HR operations with minimal effort. Here's a list of everything new in Zoho People from November:

• Facial recognition for attendance

Having the right system to record employee attendance is necessary for accurate time-off calculations and payroll processing. And these days, this recording needs to be done in the safest and cleanest way possible. That's why we have introduced Facial Recognition in Zoho People, a contactless way to mark attendance.

Whenever an employee attempts to check in or check out through the Zoho People mobile application, their picture will be taken and matched with their Zoho People profile picture to confirm their identity. Check-in and check-out will only be successful when these two images match. If you don't wish to use this auto-verification process, there is an option to save the captured picture for manual confirmation. The saved pictures of employees can be accessed under the list view in the attendance module by reporting managers and admins to validate employee identities. Learn more about the Facial Recognition feature. 

• Document acknowledgement under organizational files

When sharing important files with your employees, like a company handbook, circulars, privacy and security policies, letters, and more, it's important to confirm whether the contents of the file have been read. This will help you ensure that your employees have received and are aware of the information shared in the document.

That's why we have introduced Document Acknowledgment, a new feature that allows employees to manually acknowledge the documents that have been shared with them. For this, administrators should enable the acknowledgement feature when sharing the documents. Employees can either acknowledge the document using the "I acknowledge that I have read this document" option on the document preview screen, or they can select the acknowledgement icon from the file's list view within the organizational files section of Zoho People. Admins can access reports that indicate the number of employees who have acknowledged the document. Learn more about how to use the document acknowledgment feature.

• Zoho Directory integration

With the Zoho People - Zoho Directory integration, we intend to help you manage user identity and access effectively and keep your online accounts secured. Once the Zoho Directory integration is enabled in your Zoho People account, there are four features to improve security: single sign-on, security policies, Active Directory sync, and sign-in activity. Single sign-on allows users to verify themselves with the help of their domain or identity provider. Security policies decide how users authenticate themselves with the help of  multi-factor authentication, password policies, allowed IPs, and session management.  You can sync your data from Active Directory to Zoho People, helping to ensure it stays more secure. Sign-in activity allows you to monitor active users, login history, and sign-in attempts. Learn how to enable the Zoho Directory integration.

• Leave Calendar sync format

As you may have known already, there is a feature in Zoho People's time off module that allows you to sync the holiday and leave calendar in Zoho People with either your Office 365 Calendar or Google Calendar. This prevents the need to juggle between two accounts. With a new enhancement, we have made this feature even more useful. You can now also decide the format that the leave and holiday details should be displayed in for both Office 365 Calendar and Google Calendar. It can be based on Employee ID, Employee Name, or Leave Type.  Learn how to sync the format of your calendars here.

We hope that these new features will allow your organization to manage all their HR operations effectively and step up their employee experience. Try them out and let us know how they improve your HR management in the comments section below! If you have any questions, please send us an email at support@zohopeople.com.