Sempya ID verification: guide for HR

Running employee ID cards that anyone can check by scanning them: uploading your staff list, activating a printed batch, photos, suspensions and leavers, and what the public page shows.

This guide is for the people in your company who look after staff records and ID cards. You do not need any technical knowledge. If something here does not match what you see, contact Sempya at support@sempya.co.zm.

Address of the HR site: https://verify.sempya.co.zm/admin

1. Signing in

1. Open the HR site and enter your work email address.
2. You receive an email with a sign-in link. It works once, for 15 minutes.
3. Open the link and press Sign in.

There is no password. If the email does not arrive, check your spam folder, then ask for a new link. You can ask for at most five links an hour.

What you can do depends on your role:

• Administrator and HR editor can change everything below.
• Viewer can look at everything but change nothing.

2. The dashboard: what needs attention

The first page after signing in has a Needs attention box. It lists:

• Staff without a card: current employees who do not have an active card yet.
• Unassigned cards: cards that exist but are not given to anyone yet. If someone scans one, the page says "Card not yet activated".
• Cards of staff who left: a cancelled card to collect from the person. A card shown as "still active: revoke it" should not happen, so open it and cancel it.
• Printed cards not in the app yet: if this message appears, upload the printer's card file first (section 4).

If everything is in order, the box says Nothing needs attention.

3. Uploading your staff list

Use this for the first list and for every update after that.

1. Go to Imports and choose Upload a staff list. You can use Excel (.xlsx) or CSV, up to 10 MB and 10,000 rows. The first row must hold the column names.
2. Check the columns. The app suggests which column is which, for example "Emp No" is the employee number and "Name" is the full name. Change anything that is wrong, then confirm.
   • Columns with NRC or ID numbers, addresses, phone numbers, pay, bank details, dates of birth or next of kin are dropped straight away and never stored. They appear crossed out. You don't need to remove them from the file first.
3. Check the rows.
   • Red rows are errors. Fix them or skip them before you can finish. Examples: a missing name, the same employee number twice, a number that belongs to a different person.
   • Yellow rows are warnings and can be imported as they are. Examples: a missing employee number, or a job title spelled differently from the usual spelling.
   • Many warnings have a one-click fix, and Apply all fixes every row of the same kind.
4. Press Commit. Nothing changes in your staff register until you do.

Uploading an updated list again is safe:

• staff are matched by employee number and only the differences are applied;
• an empty cell never wipes information that is already there;
• a status change needs a date;
• bringing back someone who left needs a confirmation on that row.

Optional: a card column

If your list has a column called Card No, Card Number or Card Serial (a column called just "Serial" is treated as a row number and ignored), the card with that serial is given to the person on that row in the same step. The serial is the one printed on the card, for example ACM-00042.

The card must already be in the app, either from the printer's card file or as a pool card, and it must not be given to anyone else yet. If there is a problem, the row says what to do. You can always choose Clear the card cell and give the card out later. Common problems:

• the card belongs to somebody else;
• the serial is not in the app yet;
• the card was cancelled;
• the person has left;
• the person already has another active card.

4. Uploading the printer's card file (one step)

When a batch of cards is printed, it comes with a card file (manifest.csv). It lists every card's serial and its link.

1. Go to Cards and choose Upload the printer's card file.

2. The app checks every card and matches it to your staff:

   • first by employee number;
   • if a card has no number, by the exact name, but only when a single person in your register has that name.

3. You see a summary: how many cards will be active, how many go to the unassigned pool, and how many are already in the app. The Needs attention list shows only the rows that need your decision. Examples:

   • two staff share the name on the card;
   • the person has left;
   • the person already has a card.

   Choose the right person, choose Leave unassigned, or skip the row.

4. Press Confirm. The matched cards are active immediately. Every card keeps exactly the serial and link printed on it.

Good to know:

• A row you leave undecided becomes an unassigned card. You can give it out later.
• You can upload the same file again at any time. Cards already in the app are left alone. A card that was unassigned the first time is given out automatically if its person is now in the register, for example after you added them with a staff list.
• The card file never changes your staff register.
• A card from an earlier upload that is still unassigned is given out automatically only when its employee number now matches. If only the name matches, it appears under Needs attention and you confirm it.
• Skipped rows still count as printed cards. The app remembers their serials so they are never handed out again. Until you bring them in, by uploading the file again and including them, you cannot issue new cards (see the next point).
• While a card file waits for your Confirm, or while printed cards are known but not in the app yet, the app will not let you issue new cards. This keeps a new card from getting a serial that was already printed. The message tells you what to do. Usually you upload and confirm the card file. If some printed cards were spoiled or lost before anyone got them and will never be used, ask Sempya (support@sempya.co.zm) to void those serials; after that they stop blocking you.
• Replacing a lost or damaged card (Reissue card) is always possible, even while new cards are blocked.

5. Activating your printed cards

Cards arrive from the printer already carrying their QR codes, but scanning one at that point says Card not yet activated. A card becomes active when it is linked to a current employee. There are two ways that happens.

If the printer made the cards for named people (the usual case), you activate the whole batch in one step:

1. Make sure your staff list is uploaded first (section 3), so the people exist in the register.
2. Go to Cards → Card files and upload the file the printer sent back.
3. The check shows every card in the file, who it matches, and anything it cannot match. Nothing is saved yet.
4. Press Confirm. Every matched card is created and linked to its person in one go, and those cards are live from that moment.
5. Scan two or three of the printed cards yourself to confirm they show the right person.

If the cards were printed blank (a pool), activate them one at a time as you hand them out: open the card under Cards, enter the employee number, and press Assign card. It is live as soon as you save.

Either way, nothing needs to be done to the card itself. Activation happens in the register, and the printed card never changes.

What each state means

• A card is active when it is given to a current employee. Scanning it then shows that person as employed.
• A card is unassigned when it belongs to nobody. Scanning it shows "Card not yet activated".
• A card is cancelled when it has been revoked, and that is permanent. Scanning it shows Card cancelled and "Do not accept this card." A cancelled card can never be used again, so a lost card is replaced by a new one with a new link.

Each person can have only one active card at a time.

6. Cards for new staff

You have three ways to give a new employee a card:

1. Give them a pool card. Open an unassigned card under Cards, enter the employee number and choose Assign card. You can also put the serial in the card column of your next staff list (section 3).
2. Issue a personal card. On the employee's page, press Issue a card. Or, under Cards, choose Issue cards to issue one to every current employee who has none. Then use Export to download the print files for the printer.
3. Generate pool cards. Under Cards, choose Unassigned pool to create cards without names, ready to hand out later.

If a card is lost or damaged, open it and choose Reissue card. The old card is cancelled and a new one with a new serial is issued to the same person.

7. Photos

A photo helps the person checking a card to see that the card belongs to its holder.

Nothing is ever cut off automatically. Every photo first appears whole inside the photo box, and you then zoom and move it until the face sits properly.

The photo box takes the shape of your photo: a square photo is shown in a square frame, a tall photo in a tall one. Nothing is padded to a fixed shape, so faces are not left small in the middle of empty bands. If a photo is an unusual shape, what is left over is plain white.

One photo

1. Open the employee's page, go to Photo, and choose Add a photo (or Replace the photo). You can use JPEG, PNG, WebP, a photo straight from an iPhone (HEIC), or an Android "Ultra HDR" photo, up to 15 MB.
2. You see the photo inside the photo box, exactly as it will be saved. Zoom and resize the photo to fit properly in the photo box:
   • Size: make the photo bigger, so the face fills the box, or smaller. 100% means the whole photo fits.
   • Move left ↔ right and Move up ↕ down: move the photo inside the box.
   • Press Update the preview to see the result.
   • Reset to fit goes back to the whole photo.
3. Press Save photo, or Cancel to keep the old one.

Changing an existing photo

On the employee's page, press Edit photo (zoom and position). You can change the size and position again as often as you like. The app keeps a clean copy of the original photo, so making it bigger and then smaller again never loses quality, and Reset to fit always gives back the whole photo.

To take a photo away, tick the box and press Remove photo.

Many photos at once

1. Put the photos in one ZIP file. Name each photo with the person's employee number, for example E1042.jpg. You can put up to 300 photos in one ZIP.
2. Go to Photos and upload the ZIP.
3. The check shows which photos matched someone, which had no such employee number, and which are not usable (with the reason). Nothing is saved yet.
4. Press Save. Only the matched photos are saved, each one shown whole inside the photo box. A photo replaces the person's current one. If Sempya loaded a first set of photos for you, they arrived the same way and can be replaced here exactly like any other.
5. Open anyone whose photo needs better framing and use Edit photo.

Good to know

• The app makes its own copies of the photo. Location, camera and date details in the original file are removed.
• Very large photos may be refused with the reason. Examples: over 24 megapixels for PNG, WebP or iPhone photos, or over about 33 megapixels for JPEG. A phone's normal camera setting is fine.
• Photos of people who have left are not shown to the public, and you cannot add a new one for them.
• When you remove someone from the register, their photo is deleted too.
• A good ID photo shows the face on a plain background, without sunglasses or a hat.

8. Suspensions and leavers

On the employee's page, use Change status and always give the date it takes effect.

• Suspended: the person keeps their card. Scanning it shows "Suspended", with their name and photo, so the checker knows to ask you.
• Left: the person's active card is cancelled automatically. Scanning it shows "No longer employed" (with the month they left), no photo, and "Do not accept this card". Collect the physical card. It is listed on the dashboard.
• Bringing someone back: change the status back to active. Their old card stays cancelled, so issue them a new one.

You can also set statuses for many people at once through a staff list with a status column and a date column (section 3).

9. What the public page shows

The page opens when someone scans a card's QR code. It is your company's page: your logo, your name and your contact details come first. Sempya appears only in the small line at the bottom. You set these details under Employer profile.

The page is laid out like an identity card: the photo first, with a small round badge on its corner, then the person's name, then a coloured pill saying where they stand, then the details. Only a card that passes carries the green tick — every other state has its own colour and its own mark, so the answer is clear before anything is read.

Your contact details sit beneath, each on its own line with an icon — e-mail, website, phone and address — so someone checking a card can reach you with one tap. On a computer the card and your contact details sit side by side; on a phone they stack.

The page never shows NRC numbers, addresses, phone numbers, pay, department or your internal notes.

Changes show on the page within 30 seconds. The page also warns visitors to trust only the address verify.sempya.co.zm.

10. Help

• Questions about a card or a person: that is your company's decision. The public page sends people to you.
• Problems with the service: support@sempya.co.zm.