Suspicious leave approval alerts

Created by Garry Jowett
Last updated: Apr 25, 2020
3 min read

Get visual alerts in the leave approval process where REACH believes there may be a suspicious parent approval. 

IP address alerts will help you to monitor and identify instances where students may be approving their own leave by impersonating their parents or guardians.

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IP Address alerts for suspicious approvals

During the approval procedure for leave requests one of the many things that REACH monitors and records in your audit log is the IP address of all participants. The IP address is the digital location of the user when they transact on REACH. 

We can use this IP address to help us identify any suspicious approvals that are being processed for students which fall into the following categories;

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1.  When the Approving Parent or Host IP address is the same as the Student IP Address
When a leave request is created by a student and the Parent or Guardian's approving IP address matches the leave creation IP address of the student.  This will indicate instances where it is possible that a student is attempting to approve leave as the parent.

2.  When the Approving Parent IP address is on the School Network
When a Parent or Guardian's approving IP address matches the school's IP address.  This will indicate instances where it is possible that a student is attempting to approval leave as the parent from the school's identified network. 

When we identify leave request that fit these profiles we mark them as potentially suspicious on your Manage Leave screen with an IP Alert icon. 

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Assessing the details of an IP Alert

Clicking on any leave item that contains an IP Alert icon in the Manage Leave screen will open up the details view of the leave request.

Here you can identify what the trigger for the IP Alert was and in the Leave Audit Trail you will be able to identify the approval transaction that triggered the IP Alert.




Alerts do not prevent approval

IP Alerts do not prevent you from approving a leave request, they are merely a prompt that draws your attention to the information in the approval procedure that might indicate that a student is attempting to approve their own leave request in place of their parent.

IP Alerts are a flag that suggests to staff that there is information that they need to be aware of before approving the leave request.




.How to set your School IP credentials for IP Alert tracking

In order for REACH to monitor your school's IP network for suspicious approvals we need to know what your network addresses are.

Setting these credentials requires access to the System Configuration menu in REACH. 
Go to System Configuration > Network > School External IP Ranges



IP Address can also be set to create a Geo-Fence

In the network settings section you can also create a geo-fence using your campus IP address details so that students who are permitted to sign themselves back in from off campus leave events must be on the campus network in order to sign back in to campus.