ERE (Executive Report Evaluator)

What it is for

ERE is the program on the office computer that reads the batons. A guard's baton remembers every point it touched and when. Put the baton on the download station, and ERE collects the clockings, sets the baton's clock, empties it for the next round and shows the report. Nothing has to be chosen or set up first: the station is found by itself, and the first download makes the first site.

It replaces the older Tagtough desktop software and works with the same batons, ID points and Doc Pro station. ERE is free, has no monthly fee and keeps the data on your own computer. When you also want the patrols online, it sends them to Tagtough Online.

The reports

• Detailed: every clocking at a site, one line each, with the time since the one before. The same point clocked twice is marked as a duplicate and can be left out. A summary gives the number of clockings, the first and last, and the longest, shortest and average time between two. In Advanced mode the lines can be coloured by that time: green when quick, red when long.
• Overview: one row for each point and one column for each hour (or any block of time). Green where the point was clocked, red where it was not. A missed round shows at a glance.
• Downloads and By Download: every time a baton was read, and exactly what one download held, in the order the baton recorded it, with any problem during the download.
• Baton: every baton with a name and notes of your own, how often it was downloaded, whether its clock was out of sync, and the last time it reported a low battery, a lost clock, moisture, a high temperature or rough handling.
• Groups/Points: the sites, their points, and in Advanced mode the teams of staff and collections of assets. Name, move or ignore a point with a click. A point that is often clocked twice or often missed is marked for checking.
• Site statistics: how often each point was clocked, and the patrols: how many, the quickest, average and longest, and which points each one missed.

In Advanced mode there are also the Staff report (who carried the baton and what they clocked), Attendance (who clocked in for each shift and who was late), Assets (when each asset was last checked) and Guard evaluation (each guard against the ideal number of clockings, the same as on Tagtough Online).

Patrols

ERE recognises a patrol by the point it starts and ends at, usually the guardhouse or the gate. It is the first point ever clocked at the site, or the one you choose. From there it works out how many patrols there were, how long each took and which points were missed.

Points that are new or out of place

A tag that a baton brings for the first time is named Point 01, Point 02 and so on, and put with the site of the other points on the same baton. Click a name to give it a real one. A stray or test tag can be ignored, and a point can be moved to another site, made a member of staff or an asset from one list.

The baton itself

Every download also checks the baton. ERE sets its clock to the computer's time and corrects the times of the clockings by how far the baton's clock was out. It reports what the baton says about itself: a low battery, a lost clock after a power loss, moisture or tampering, a high temperature or rough handling. Records that could not be read cleanly are read again, and a download that did not finish is never stored as if it were complete.

Paper, PDF and Excel

Any report can be printed, saved as a PDF to send to a client, or exported to Excel with real numbers and times that can be sorted and added up. A long Overview is spread over as many landscape pages as it needs.

Online, if you want it

ERE works on its own. In Advanced mode it can also:

• send every download to Tagtough Online, including downloads made while the internet was down,
• fetch the downloads of a Remote Uploader on the same network,
• keep the to do list and other settings in step with Tagtough Online.

Registering

ERE is free. It is registered once on each computer with an email address: a six digit code is emailed and typed in. A computer without internet is registered with an unlock code from Magtouch over the phone. With the version check on, ERE tells Magtouch which version it runs and which batons it downloads, not the clockings, so that it can offer upgrades and help when a baton gives trouble.

Backup

ERE makes a backup of everything by itself once a week, and a backup can be made or restored at any time from the program. Moving to a new computer is a backup, an install and a registration with the same email address.

Help

The help is built in, with links that open the report or setting it describes, a search box, and worked examples: naming the points of a new site, checking last night's patrol, finding who was late.

Installing

• Windows 10 and 11: run the installer and follow its steps. Windows may warn that the publisher is not known; choose "More info" and "Run anyway". If ERE does not find the Doc Pro when it is plugged in, install the Doc Pro USB driver from the downloads above and plug the Doc Pro in again.
• Mac (Apple silicon, M1 and later): open the disk image and drag ERE into Applications. The first time, macOS says it cannot check ERE and does not open it: open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down to "ERE was blocked" and click Open Anyway. After that it opens as usual.
• Linux (Ubuntu, Debian): open the .deb with the software installer, or run sudo apt install ./ERE-0.04-linux.deb. Log out and in once, so that you may use the download station.

The first time it starts, ERE asks for your email address to register.