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GainPlus included DKIM for outgoing emails

GainPlus has recently included DKIM on our mail servers so that mail sent from our Leave (and soon to come Payroll) servers will be signed by keys managed by our own PKI certificates.  What does this mean to users?

Well, perhaps not a lot will be seen by users. 

Techopedia explains DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)

“The digital signature used in DKIM provides an additional way to tell whether an email is forged. Spammers often forge headers or other aspects of an email to make the message look like it comes from a legitimate source. DKIM uses domain information to authenticate the email’s origin.
Experts point out that DKIM will not necessarily eliminate spam, but it will help to ensure that a legitimate source stands behind a message and is responsible for it. It’s important to note that a message can be validated at various points in its trajectory, and that the specifics of this authentication method may vary according to service providers.”
User’s mail servers need to be able to understand DKIM, but many modern mail servers do, including O365 and Google mail servers.
Security is important to GainPlus and we go the extra mile to protect our client’s data, whether on our servers or in transit.

May 2018 Updates

We’ve made improvements in a couple of places in Totem Leave, both on the surface and in the background

  • Firstly, we now log when an employee cancels leave, so that it will show in the employee’s activity log, visible both to the employee and their manager. See two examples:
  • Also, we now take steps to alert the HR admin of a company when an email address in their staff list fails to be deliverable. When a mail is identified as undeliverable, the address will be quarantined until an update is made. The admin will be advised by a message in the Daily Focus, as well as when they log into the system.
  • We’ve improved white-label capabilities of the program
  • Daily Focus mail has been reordered to provide higher visibility to more important notifications.

The updates will roll out to all companies this month.

How are Totem renewals calculated?

In short, annual renewals are based on a Company’s active employee count and charged at 40 Baht per employee per month.

The Totem keeps track of the maximum number of active users on a monthly basis throughout the year. Renewals are based on the last number of active users and a calculation is made to “True Up” the previous billed period based upon the totals of maximum active employee numbers per each month over that period.

NOTE: It is the responsibility of the company using Totem to manage their active and inactive users. If employees who have left the company are not marked as inactive they will be charged as active employees. Further note: the entire history of inactive employees is kept for two annual periods providing the company continues to use Totem.

Still not clear?  Here’s an easy example.

Continue reading How are Totem renewals calculated? →

How to handle Time off in Lieu Leave in Totem

A group of our clients in Thailand requested the opportunity to manage Time off in Lieu for public holidays. This is how we do it in the current version of Totem:

You can decide to manage time off in lieu leave credits by adding them to an existing leave type, eg annual leave, or you can create a special type of leave for this. In this example, we’ll create a leave type called Compensation leave to which we will add credits.

Continue reading How to handle Time off in Lieu Leave in Totem →

Changes in the “August Eclipse” version of Totem

We’ve been hard at work at GainPlus providing some extra functionality to our award winning Totem Leave Management software. Following user feedback we now cover the following:

How many hours a day?

Firstly, we’ve rejigged our database backend so that we now handle times by the hour! Previously we handled full days, half days and quarter days but some of our companies using Totem (you know who you are!) requested the ability to handle leave by the hour, and so this release brings it to you. To deliver these changes, we’ve had to update lots of screens and reports, but now it’s done, and it’s awesome!
Your users will see these changes when they apply for leave. They can select a specific time for leave and they can then choose the starting time and the number of hours requested.

Users will also see the new display in their leave balance table, which now shows days and hours.

Continue reading Changes in the “August Eclipse” version of Totem →

How to set up a shared use computer in your office for staff to access Totem

Why is there a problem?

As part of Totem’s in-built security when a link is issued for a user to access your Totem web site the URL contains a unique identifying token which enables access to the site. Without this token, a user will not be able to get to the login screen! So if users are sharing a common computer, with a general login, it would be difficult to manage the access of different users.

What’s the answer?

One of the settings in Totem allows access to your Totem website using a special URL containing a shared token. Users still need to use their username and password. The administrative person looking after the shared computer can save this URL as the Home Page in the computer’s browser. From then on, any employee who has been identified as permitted to use this access can click on the browser’s home page and be taken to the Totem Logon page where they have access to their Leave details.

Thai Labour law states that your company needs a leave policy

Thai Labour law states clearly that for companies with more than 10 employees certain leave policies must be in Thai, in writing and be part of published Work Rules which must be generally available to staff.

If you don’t follow this requirement your ability to be successful in any Labour Court proceedings will most likely be compromised. Our recommendation is to recognise this commercial risk as well as the legal requirements. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.

  1. You company needs to have policy conditions which cover:
    1. Annual Leave
    2. Sick Leave
    3. Maternity Leave
    4. Personal Business Leave
  2. You should probably also have a policy relating to the following as well:
    1. Training Leave
    2. Sterilisation Leave
    3. Military Service Leave

If you don’t already have these policies, now is the time to look at doing something about it. We provide a framework boilerplate for these policies at this link  and its simple enough to download the paper, make changes and publish at your organisation.

By doing so you then will have covered your legal requirements and reduced the commercial risk. If you already have written policies, have a look at what we’ve done and see how your policy compares.

We’re looking forward to providing your company with simple, paperless leave management by our Totem Leave Management Software.