Smarter Access Control
Access Reimagined
If you work in an office building you probably have a badge that will let you in the door. We saw the current state of the access control market and we knew there was a big opportunity to reimagine a decades old industry.
I was the lead designer for Smarter Access Control — a powerful, cloud-based access solution designed for small and medium-sized businesses. Fully integrated with the rest of the Alarm.com platform, Smarter Access Control enables service provider partners to offer a single, unified small and medium business security suite that includes video, intrusion, and access control.
There are three big entities in an access control system.
WHO has access
WHEN they have access
WHAT can they access
One of the goals was to design a system that is both flexible and powerful.
The Problem with Access
Imagine you add a new connected door to an office, what if you have an unexpected company holiday after-hours? What if an employee quits? You don’t want to go in and make tons of small adjustments for each thing you need to do, it all had to happen in one place.
The biggest pain point for customers of old school access solutions is that there isn’t a single place where they can get a glance of the system and the people involved, these systems are fragmented.
Plans, Plans, Plans
I introduced the concept of access plans as a way to manage users, access points and times — a single entity where users can manage access for their business.
On the users page it’s easy to see what type of access credential a user has, along with what access groups they belong to, it is easy to identify the most important information for each user without having to go to a detail page.
On a user’s detail page you can immediately see the credentials they have, the plans they belong to, and a small visual representation of the access times they have.
The system is flexible enough that access to any part of it (schedules, users, access points) can be changed from anywhere in the system, but the first time around we guide the customer through the experience with a quick step-by-step.
Access control seamlessly integrates into the Alarm.com mobile app, a customer can easily add a new user to an access group or remotely buzz somebody into a door from anywhere.
““We are testing the system and it seems quite slick, it’s clear you have put a lot of thought into the design to make it easy”.
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After a year of design and development, we launched an entirely new branch of business for the company in a 6.5 billion dollar market. General availability started in March 2018.
We retrofitted the entire VA headquarters with a Smarter Access Control system, it now enables the company to manage and control more than eighty doors and nearly 600 cardholders.
The response from our pilot program was overwhelmingly positive. In mid 2018 we had 204 paying accounts installed with 676 readers. With a goal of 800 doors installed per week by the end of the year. Learn more about Smarter Access Control.