IN THE FIELD — GROUP LEADERS
A passport that expires too soon or a visa never noted on the record is better spotted before the last few days. Here is what OmraDesk shows the group leader and your agency.
Before a departure, you check your pilgrims' passports and visas. Your group leaders' papers slip through more easily: their record sometimes dates from an earlier season, and the passport on it is not always the one in their pocket.
Take Karim, who leads groups for your agency and for another one. Your Umrah trip leaves on 20 November and comes back on 5 December. On 10 November, ten days before departure, he opens his group leader space. At the top of "My departures", a box is waiting for him: "To sort out before", followed by the name of your package and the departure date.
The box has two lines. His passport expires on 12 March 2027, but it must be valid six months after the return. And no visa is saved for this departure. Further down, the trip's card carries the line "Passport or visa to sort out".
Karim renewed his passport this summer but never put the new one in his space. He taps "Update my passport": his details open, with the passport number field ready for typing. He enters the new number and the new expiry date, then saves. He goes back to the box, taps "Save my visa" and enters his visa end date. When he opens "My departures" again, the box is gone.
At your agency, the notification bell had received two alerts about him that same morning, one for the passport and one for the visa. After his two saves, his trip bar on the schedule no longer has a warning sign, and his record shows the visa date as entered by Karim himself. The next morning, the bell receives nothing more for him.
The reminder starts ten days before the departure day and lasts until the return day, inclusive. This period is fixed. The "Alert lead time" in your settings is there to warn you when a trip is short of staff; right next to it, a line reminds you that group leaders' passports and visas have their own reminder, ten days before departure.
For each trip concerned, the box says what is wrong: a passport with no number or no expiry date, a passport that expires too soon, no visa, or a visa that ends before the return. The "Update my passport" and "Save my visa" buttons open the right form straight away in "My details".
The reminder stays in his space: it is not sent by e-mail. For your trip, it is worked out from Karim's record with you, including a MoFa check done at your agency. His other agency sees nothing of your trip. A local guide, who lives in Saudi Arabia, does not get this reminder. And a group leader who works through a simple link, with no account, has no space: only your agency is warned, and you complete his record yourself.
For OmraDesk, a passport needs sorting out if its number or expiry date is missing, or if it expires less than six months after the return day. For a return on 5 December 2026, it must be valid until at least 5 June 2027; that exact date is enough. For a return on 31 August 2026, the limit falls on 28 February 2027.
The passport checked is the one on his staff record. If that record has neither a number nor a date, OmraDesk takes the one on his client record, when he is booked on the trip with a booking file. The two are never mixed: a new number entered without a date counts as an incomplete passport, even if the old date is still known elsewhere.
When Karim saves his new passport in his space, each of his agencies receives it on his record. He enters it only once.
In "My details", the "Visa" card shows his visa end date, or "Not filled in yet". The "Change" button opens a single field, "Visa end date". Below the field, he reads that his agencies see this date, marked as entered by him, and that an agency MoFa check comes first.
The date goes onto his record at every agency he belongs to, marked as entered by him. If he saves a new date later, it replaces the old one on all his records, including a date you may have entered by hand.
The date also follows him when he joins a new agency: when he accepts an invitation, when his request to join the team is accepted, or when he accepts an agency's request. It then goes onto his new record, unless that agency has already entered a date there itself, in which case the agency's date is kept.
If a MoFa check run by your agency from his record has found his visa, that result comes before the date Karim entered. In every case, the visa must cover the stay up to the return day: a visa that ends on that day is still fine.
On the schedule of the Staff page, the group leader's trip bar carries an orange warning sign. The trip panel, when you open it, gives the details under the group leader's name, for example "Passport: expires on 12/03/2027, less than 6 months after the return" or "Visa to fill in".
In the back office, your group leaders appear as "group escorts", and the package tab of that name shows the same lines under each group leader's name. On a group leader's record, the visa date shows where it comes from: a MoFa check, an entry by hand, or an entry by the group leader himself.
More than ten days before departure, and at any time for a local guide, the schedule and that tab only flag a passport or visa that ends before the return. A warning does not change the staff count for the trip: the person still counts towards the staff the trip needs.
Each morning, for published or closed packages, the bell receives one alert per document to sort out, and never two on the same day for the same document of the same person. These alerts reach the people who manage the team schedule and the agent in charge of the package. Clicking one opens the group leader's record on that trip, in the Staff page; if the agent has no access to that page, his link leads to the package's tab instead. The papers of someone who has access to the trip in the app, without being assigned to it, are checked too.
Once your next package is ten days from departure, open its tab: the documents to sort out are written under each name.
We walk you through the group leader's space and your team schedule, using one of your upcoming departures as the example.