The Genesis of i3Presence: the App for Managing Office Attendance
i3Presence, the app developed in-house by Intré and currently used to manage attendance in the company’s offices, was born from an idea conceived by Alessandro D’Amico and me, which in 2022 took shape in a Guild called FlutterMania.
In this article, I’ll walk you through the journey that began with the FlutterMania Guild and continued with three more Guilds to bring i3Presence to life — including its features and the chosen tech stack.
Introduction: What Guilds Are at Intré
To understand what I’m sharing in this article, it’s important to explain what Guilds are.
Intré has always placed great emphasis on learning. In the past, learning primarily took place at an individual level, and interactions between colleagues were sporadic. As the number of team members grew and awareness of the value of continuous learning increased, so did the need to create more learning opportunities. With the aim of enriching both the technical and cultural skills of its people—while also striving to be a competitive and attractive company in the market—Intré introduced Guilds for the first time in 2016.
Guilds are cross-organizational groups that bring together people from different teams to explore topics of shared interest.
A Guild group is made up of four to eight people from various teams, with the goal of promoting learning and knowledge sharing. Team members themselves propose the topic to be explored over the next four months of training. The learning flow that defines the Guilds is bottom-up, and making people the protagonists and owners of their own learning journey helps foster motivation and engagement.
How i3Presence Was Born
The FlutterMania Guild
It all started with Flutter, Google’s cross-platform framework based on the Dart programming language. This tool allows developers to create a single codebase for applications that run on multiple systems, including iOS and Android for mobile, web browsers, as well as desktop applications for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Thanks to continuous updates and its wide range of features, Flutter offers both stability and ongoing evolution. As proof of its growing adoption, Linux has recreated its installer using Flutter and plans to expand its implementation further.
During the first cycle of our Guild dedicated to Flutter, we studied the framework and developed a small app that enabled user authentication, event creation, and event display. The positive feedback we received prompted us to think about how we could turn this interest into something useful for Intré. That’s how the idea for i3Presence was born—an application designed to be integrated into Intré’s suite to manage check-ins, check-outs, and desk reservations.
The First Guild Behind What Will Evolve into i3Presence
At the end of this Guild, we achieved our first goal: implementing check-in and check-out through the scanning of NFC tags placed on each desk. Driven by enthusiasm, we decided to continue with another Guild session, setting new goals:
- Publish the app on the Apple Store and Google Play.
- Manage bookings through the integration of an SVG map.
- Implement admin-specific features.
- Integrate notification management.
The Second Guild And the Beginning of Development for i3Presence
In the new Guild cycle, we defined the app architecture, identified the necessary features, and set priorities by creating a backlog in YouTrack and selecting the technologies to be used. Only after this preparatory phase did the actual development begin.
The Third Guild, the Continuation of Developments, and the Release of the i3Presence App
In November 2024, we involved some people at Intré to test the application and identify potential issues. After further developments, i3Presence has been officially in use within the company since February 2025. A great achievement, born from a simple Guild for deepening knowledge.
A big thank you goes to all the colleagues who participated in this project to make it concrete and real; a special thanks goes to the designers at Thanks Design, who supported the project from the beginning by defining the app’s workflow and graphic style using Figma.
Work Organization and Technology Stack of i3Presence
Although it was a Guild, the nature of the objective made it natural to manage the project with a structured approach. We worked in teams, writing the app code using pair programming, performing several merge requests and code reviews.
Below is the technology stack of i3Presence:
What Are the Features of i3Presence
The application offers two main features: managing office check-ins and check-outs, and desk booking.
Managing Check-ins and Check-outs
An NFC tag has been installed on each desk, containing a code that identifies the desk and another that refers to the office location. Upon entering, the user has two options:
- Scan the NFC tag.
- Manually enter the registration in case of temporary issues.
Desk Reservation
The user can reserve a desk for the day they will be going to the office. This section offers two display modes: ‘List’ and ‘Map’. The desks are dynamic, and some may be ‘locked’ for colleagues who regularly attend the office. Users with administrator privileges can manage and modify the desk arrangement flexibly.
Other Features of i3Presence
In addition to these two main features, the application offers several other implementations, including:
- Company dashboard where you can view the list of reserved desks, your bookings, and the people in the office today.
- User profile with entry and exit history.
- Desk management by administrators.
- Notifications to remind colleagues to check out when leaving the office.
- Integration with the company’s identity server.
Conclusions
i3Presence is a prime example of a digital product designed and developed within the Guild. During its development, we deepened our knowledge of the tools that make up the i3Presence technology stack (Kotlin, Docker, Flutter, Keycloak, PostgreSQL, GraphQL). Moreover, by treating it as a real project with a structured approach, we worked in teams, practiced pair programming, and carried out several merge requests and code reviews.
i3Presence is now in use within the company, and improvements are underway based on feedback received from our colleagues.