In most depots, the tablets and handhelds belong to the vehicle or the building, not to a person. The early shift hands over to the late shift, a driver is off and an agency driver takes the route, and a handheld lives on a charging shelf between uses. Standard username and password logins were designed for one person on one device, and they fit this badly.
What goes wrong with passwords
- They're slow. Typing a long password with gloves on, in a cab, at 5:30am, is how people end up sharing one login.
- Shared logins destroy accountability. If everyone uses "depot1", nobody knows who delivered what.
- They need an account for everyone. Drivers and warehouse staff end up consuming user seats for an app they use for ten minutes a day.
- Leavers keep access. A password written on a sticky note survives long after the person has left.
A better pattern: pair the device, sign in the person
Separate the two questions: is this device allowed? and who is using it?
1. Pair the device once. A manager adds the tablet in the web app and gets a one-time activation code. Someone types the workspace name and the code into the tablet. The code works once and is never shown again. From that moment the device is trusted.
2. Sign people in with a number and a PIN. Each person has an employee number and a short PIN set by the office. They enter both at the start of a shift. The PIN is stored hashed, and repeated wrong PINs lock that person out for a while.
3. Keep a record. Every sign-in is logged against the device, so you can see which person used which tablet and when.
Rules worth having
- Refuse obvious PINs. 0000, 1111 and 1234 shouldn't be accepted.
- Lock after a few wrong tries. Five wrong PINs and a ten minute lock is a reasonable balance for a PIN that is short by design.
- Make a lost device easy to switch off. One click should end any session on it and stop new sign-ins.
- End sessions when the person is made inactive, not only when a token expires.
- Pair a replacement with a new code that makes the old pairing stop working at once.
Do drivers need a user account?
Not for the driver app. If drivers and helpers sign in with a number and a PIN on a paired device, they don't need an email address, a password reset flow or a user seat. They can only reach the driver app, not the rest of the system. The same goes for warehouse staff and their app.
That is how device pairing and PIN sign-in work in Fleetnyx. A manager adds a device, enters or reads out the code, and the driver app or warehouse app asks for the number and PIN from then on. It runs in a browser, so it also works inside an Android WebView on a managed tablet.
Agency and temporary staff
A temporary driver is the case that shows the pattern's value. Give them a driver number and a PIN, they sign in on a paired device without needing an account, and the driver app asks for their licence details before the route starts. When the agency stops sending them, make the record inactive and their sessions end.