A guard tour patrol system is a system for logging the rounds of employees in a variety of situations such as security guards patrolling property, technicians monitoring climate-controlled environments, and correctional officers[1] checking prisoner living areas.
It helps ensure that the employee makes their appointed rounds at the correct intervals and can offer a record for legal or insurance reasons.
Checkpoints can consist of iButton semiconductors, magnetic strips, proximity microchips such as RFIDs or NFC- or optical barcodes.
Data collectors can also be programmed to ignore duplicate checkpoint activations that occur sequentially or within a certain time period.
Newer, light-weight guard touring systems utilize QR codes or barcodes rather than expensive electronic components.
A mobile phone app is used to scan (take a photo) of the QR code which creates a time stamp in the system.
At the end of the shift or 24-hour period an authorized person (usually a supervisor) would unlock the watchclock and retrieve the disk.
New touring solutions rely on cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) combined with mobile or fixed on-site devices.
In operation, the role of the watchclock system, described above, has largely been replaced by some combination of GPS, RFID/NFC, or QR coded labels.
Users prove that they have visited particular locations or performed tasks by scanning these tags or via GPS generated maps.