We’re excited to announce the next big release of Simple In/Out Desktop, featuring a completely redesigned Desktop Presence experience that makes automatic status updates smarter than ever.

Automatic Status Updating is a central feature of Simple In/Out, and one we pioneered all the way back in 2011 with Geofences. We’ve been listening to our customers and found that Desktop Presence didn’t always accurately update statuses for laptop users who frequently change locations. For these users, they’d either need to forgo Desktop Presence or change settings frequently. This is far from automatic, so we set out to do even better.

Smart Network Detection

Simple In/Out Desktop 3.0 can intelligently understand your network conditions to automatically update your status based on where you’re actually working—all without requiring you to change any settings. When you’re connected to your office network, Desktop Presence can automatically mark you as “In the Office.” When you’re working from home or another location, it knows you’re not in the office and can update your status more appropriately, such as “Working from home.”

No more manual toggles, accidental “In” statuses when working remotely, or confusion about your location. Desktop Presence runs in the background, adapting intelligently to your environment.

Behind the scenes, this feature works by administrators adding restrictions to a Desktop Presence setting based on the physical location’s network settings. Users can enable as many restricted Desktop Presences as they like while still having only one unrestricted Desktop Presence activated. Simple In/Out Desktop will use the appropriate settings at the appropriate time, based on the user’s computer’s network conditions.

Flexible Idle Time Settings

We know that every workplace is different. Some teams want frequent status updates to ensure accuracy, while others prefer fewer updates to avoid every interruption resulting in a status update. We now give administrators the power to customize idle time thresholds based on their company’s unique needs.

Administrators can adjust how long a computer must be idle before Desktop Presence updates a user’s status as away. Want more granular tracking? Set the idle time to 5 minutes. Prefer to reduce status changes throughout the day? Increase the idle time threshold to as much as 1 hour.

Upgrade Today

Simple In/Out Desktop 3.0, featuring the new Desktop Presence upgrade, is now available for download right on our website. If you’re using Simple In/Out Desktop, your update rolls out automatically. Not using it yet? Get started now and enjoy hands-free status management.

As always, we appreciate your feedback and suggestions. Features like these come directly from listening to our users, so reach out to us any time.

Today we’re announcing a new option that gives administrators more flexibility in managing how their members use Simple In/Out: the Global Microsoft Teams Presence Switch.

Based on feedback from a few of our customers, we’ve added a new switch in Company Settings that allows administrators to globally disable the Microsoft Teams Presence feature across their entire organization.

What Does This New Switch Do?

When disabled, this new control:

• Removes existing Microsoft Teams Presence connections for all users in your organization
• Prevents new Microsoft Teams Presence connections from being established
• Maintains full Microsoft Teams integration for the user interface within Microsoft Teams
• Preserves all other functionality - users can still manually update their status and use all other Simple In/Out features

Why Would You Want This?

Many of our customers love the convenience of automatic status updates through Microsoft Teams Presence, but some organizations have found that they prefer more intentional, detailed status communication from their team members.

Here’s the scenario: When Teams Presence is active, a user’s Simple In/Out status automatically syncs with their Microsoft Teams availability (showing as “Available”, “Away”, “Busy”, etc.). While convenient, these generic status messages don’t always provide the specific context that managers and team members need.

With the Global Teams Presence Switch disabled, administrators can encourage their teams to leave more descriptive status comments like “Client meeting until 3 PM” or “Working from home”.

Microsoft Teams Integration Stays Intact

It’s important to note that disabling Microsoft Teams Presence does not affect your Microsoft Teams integration for the user interface. Your users can still see Simple In/out within Microsoft Teams, see the board, perform status updates, view announcements, etc. The only thing that changes is that status updates won’t happen automatically based on Microsoft Teams availability - users will need to manually update their status when they want to change it.

As always, we’re committed to giving administrators the tools they need to customize Simple In/Out for their organization’s unique workflow. This new feature is available immediately for all Simple In/Out customers.

Have feedback or suggestions for other administrative controls you’d like to see? We’d love to hear from you - just reach out to us.

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA - also known as two-factor authentication) is now available in Simple In/Out.

MFA adds a second step when signing in, increasing security by requiring your password and a time-based code. This helps protect your organization’s data from compromised passwords.

In rolling out MFA, we chose to support authenticator apps (like Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, 1Password, and others) that generate time‑based one‑time passcodes (TOTP). We opted not to use SMS because text messages can be intercepted or redirected and are widely considered less secure. Using an authenticator app provides stronger protection without relying on your phone number or the cellular network.

Getting started is quick:

• Enable Multi‑Factor Authentication in your Simple In/Out account settings (Settings → Password & Security).

• Scan the QR code with your preferred authenticator app (or copy/paste the text code).

• Enter a generated time‑based one‑time passcode to confirm your MFA is configured correctly.

• Save your recovery codes in a safe place, just in case you lose the device with the authentication app.

The next time you sign in to any of our applications, integrations, or our website, you’ll enter your password and the code from your authenticator app.

For administrators, we’ve added information about your users’ MFA configurations to the user editing page and to our Contacts report.

Security is always a priority for us, and MFA is a big step forward. If you have questions or need help getting set up, just let us know. We’re always here to help.

Simple In/Out is an excellent tool for emergency evacuations/mustering. After all, having your phone right in your pocket eliminates the need to grab a tablet, look for paper sign-in sheets, or search for printers. With one look inside the Simple In/Out app, you’ll know who is IN and must be present at your muster point.

If you have multiple locations and users that can be IN any of them, things can be trickier. While it’s easy to see all your IN users at the top of the board, knowing which to account for was always a matter of scanning the board for relevant matches. In an evacuation, every second counts.

Today, we’re shipping a significant improvement to Simple In/Out phone searching capability, allowing users to search across both user names and current status comments simultaneously. The new search lets you search for “office”, “warehouse”, or “annex” and see only users whose current status comment includes that phrase. During an evacuation, this can save you tons of time when accounting for your users.

While this seems like a simple change, it’s powerful. And, it’s one of several changes we’re planning for the future to make evacuation/mustering even better in Simple In/Out.

Simple In/Out has always been the original in/out board to support automatically updating your status. We pioneered Geofences back in 2011, Beacons with iOS 7, and Networks (first on Android, and we’re the only product ever to support Networks on iPhone). We also have Desktop Presence for our Windows and Mac users.

Today, we’re announcing a significant change to Simple In/Out’s permissions, which allows administrators to restrict users to automatic status updates only. Administrators can now limit a user to update their status automatically via Geofences, Networks, Beacons, and Desktop Presence, but not allow them to update their status manually in any way using our apps or website. Doing so significantly simplifies the user’s Simple In/Out interface while maintaining the ease of use of automatic status updates.

We’ve resisted this change over the years, just in case a user’s automatic update fails (due to poor network conditions, a dead battery, or a faulty setup on their phone). The user’s only recourse when a failed status update occurs is to contact a manager/administrator and have them correct the record. However, after careful consideration, we realized that for many of our customers, this workflow is a significant benefit. Some administrators would rather be contacted directly by their users if an automatic status update does not occur. Alternatively, some administrators prefer that users correct the record only via a device running FrontDesk or TimeClock in a physical location they control.

Administrators can now realize the above use cases within Simple In/Out. Importantly, these permissions are only options. Everyone’s Simple In/Out behavior today remains the same as it was yesterday, unless an administrator changes the permissions.

We hope that these additional options for our administrators around the world unlock new use cases and make Simple In/Out more beneficial than ever.

Simple In/Out has a long history of word-of-mouth advertising. Our customers have been gracious enough to mention us to their friends and help us grow. We owe our success to our customers and their love of our product.

Today, we’re excited to launch the Simple In/Out Referral Program — a fantastic way for our loyal users to earn rewards while helping other organizations discover the benefits of Simple In/Out.

How It Works

As a user of any Simple In/Out subscribing organization, you can now earn a $25 USD gift card for every successful referral to your favorite app store (Apple, Google, or Amazon). Here’s how easy it is:

1. Refer a new organization to Simple In/Out
2. They subscribe and stay active for 90 days
3. You earn a $25 USD gift card as our thank you!

Users can generate URLs right on simpleinout.com by clicking Settings in the upper-right, followed by Referrals on the left. Share your link and your positive experience with Simple In/Out with other organizations. You can track any referrals you have in progress right on our website. There’s no limit to how many organizations you can refer.

Why Refer Simple In/Out?

You already know the value that Simple In/Out brings to your organization. With our comprehensive suite of applications for phones, desktop computers, tablets (FrontDesk, TimeClock), televisions, Microsoft Teams/Outlook/365, and Slack, Simple In/Out makes attendance tracking effortless across any workplace. Whether it’s a small business looking to modernize its attendance system or a large enterprise needing robust reporting and notification features, Simple In/Out scales to meet any organization’s needs.

Have questions about the referral program? Contact us and we’ll be happy to help you get started. Thanks to all our customers for being part of the Simple In/Out community. We’re excited to reward our users for helping us grow!

We are thrilled to introduce a new feature in Simple In/Out: Announcements! This feature enables managers to quickly and efficiently communicate important information, ranging from company-wide meetings and office closures to casual updates.

Why Announcements?

Simple In/Out is already equipped with exceptional applications for phones, desktop computers, tablets (FrontDesk, TimeClock), televisions, and Microsoft Teams/Outlook/365. This wide reach allows us to effectively display information wherever your users are. We believe Simple In/Out is ideally positioned to meet this communication need.

For our Pro and Enterprise customers, Announcements also support notifications directly on Simple In/Out for both phone and desktop users. If you need to send time-sensitive notifications to your users, Simple In/Out is here to help.

Stay connected and keep everyone informed with Announcements — now available in Simple In/Out!

Hallo!

We’re thrilled to announce that Simple In/Out now supports localization in German. German joins English, Spanish, and French as languages we support. You can use simpleinout.com and all our apps and integrations in these languages.

Along with this change is an increase in the number of settings you can maintain within Simple In/Out. You can now have up to 500 Groups, Geofences, Beacons, Networks, and Desktop Presences. While users can still only activate so many Geofences/Beacons per device (per Apple and Google’s restrictions), you can have many more options for your users.

Finally, we allow up to 50 Company Quick Picks per organization (up from 20).

Auf Wiedersehen.

Hot on the heels of the most significant permission upgrade we’ve undertaken in years, we’re announcing another exciting upgrade to Simple In/Out. This upgrade centers around Scheduled Statuses and unlocks many new capabilities and workflows.

Scheduled Statuses have historically been singular points in time: the time Simple In/Out applies the Scheduled Status as your current status on the board. While this feature is maintained as-is, we have added an optional end time. End times alter a Scheduled Status from a singular point in time to a time span.

Scheduled Statuses with end times immediately benefit how they appear on the board and the Scheduled Statuses report. Meetings now have more context for their duration. Vacations now span multiple days, removing the need to add many Scheduled Statuses to relay that information to co-workers on the Scheduled Statuses report.

When a Scheduled Status containing a time span begins, Simple In/Out will update your current status as always. Simple In/Out will intelligently examine your current status when the ending time comes. If it’s the same as the Scheduled Status, Simple In/Out will update your current status to what it was before the Scheduled Status began. This behavior enables an excellent meeting experience, a widespread use case for Scheduled Statuses. If you are IN with an upcoming Scheduled Status for an hour-long meeting, your current status could be updated to BUSY at the beginning of the meeting and back to IN at the end of the meeting. All automatically!

The above use case is made even better with our native calendar integration, which now honors event duration and end times.

We’ve also made two additional improvements to the Scheduled Statuses report. First, it refreshes automatically, allowing users to leave it open throughout the day and see updated schedules as they change. Second, we leave already-applied Scheduled Statuses on the Scheduled Statuses report for a day, so it’s easier to see what happened earlier in the day without resorting to a different report.

Scheduled Statuses with end times was a wildly popular request over the years, and we’re thrilled to bring these improvements to Simple In/Out.

Simple In/Out has a robust permissions system based on roles. Every user has a role, and your role dictates what you can and cannot do. While we’ve had many levers to customize user permissions, these settings were largely all-or-nothing. You could see all the users on the Simple In/Out board or none of them. You could run reports on all of the users or only yourself. You could update any other user’s current status or not.

Today, we announce the most extensive role upgrade ever: group-based permissions. Simple In/Out allows users different permissions depending on their group assignments. At first glance, this change may seem minor, but it opens up numerous basic and advanced use cases.

Users can be limited to viewing only those on the board who belong to the same groups. In today’s era of Single Sign On, this is crucial for maintaining compartmentalization. Administrators can restrict permissions, such as updating the statuses of other users (past, present, and scheduled) so that managers can only perform those actions on users they oversee. Reporting is another frequent request; now, managers may only run reports on users within their groups.

You may be asking about Linked Companies, a feature we offered to separate users. Linked Companies has been deprecated and will be removed from Simple In/Out. Linked Company customers can now achieve separation with roles without the added complexity and expense of entirely separated organizations. With group-based permissions, these customers will save time and money.

To take advantage of our new permissions, ensure you have a recent version of your Simple In/Out apps. We hope these new permissions unlock new worlds of possibilities.