On this page (9)
- Access rules with schedules and date ranges
- Card, vehicle and visitor: how the decision on a passage is made
- List of people present on site
- Cards for visitors and contractors
- A temporary card for an employee who has forgotten theirs
- Controlling passages and controller status
- What access control does not do
- Frequently asked questions about access control
- Related
Access rules with schedules and date ranges
At most sites, the right to enter takes a more complicated sentence than “this person may use this door”. A maintenance technician needs to get into the switch room, but during working hours. A subcontractor has access for the duration of the contract and not a day longer. A tanker driver is allowed onto the loading gantry, but only on the day for which they are booked.
An access rule in TraxSystem takes both times and dates into account. The schedule sets the hours and days on which the rule applies, and the date range limits how long it is valid. You can also give one person a permission for a specific period without touching the rules of the whole group.
Offline cards, meaning cards stored in the controller’s memory in case the connection to the server is lost, work by date range only. The hourly schedule does not apply in offline mode. This is a hardware limitation that has to be taken into account when planning critical points.
Card, vehicle and visitor: how the decision on a passage is made
TraxSystem decides each passage independently on three tracks: card, vehicle and visitor. Each track has its own sequence of blocking checks, because it asks a different question: does this card have the right to enter here, does this vehicle have permission to drive in, is this visitor expected and by whom.
The direction of a passage follows from the type of access point, not from whether the person is already on site. A turnstile has two readers, and they determine whether a card read is an entry or an exit. As a result, presence on site stays reliable even when someone has followed another person through without presenting their card on the way in.
Anti-passback control, which refuses a second entry without an exit in between, makes sure that one card cannot be used by two people. The system compares card numbers in a way that recognises the same number written in decimal in one system and in hexadecimal in another.
A passage through a point with a camera can leave a photo in the event record, and if the camera has clip recording switched on, a short MP4 recording as well, from 5 to 60 seconds long, including up to 30 seconds from before the passage. The clip can be attached to an alert sent by email, so security gets the footage together with the notification.
List of people present on site
The list of people present in TraxSystem covers everyone who is registered: employees, visitors, subcontractors and drivers waiting at the dock. It is the basis for evacuation and the argument raised most often in conversations about implementation, because it touches on the personal accountability of the site manager.
Presence is closed automatically once the maximum length of stay has been exceeded, so the list doesn’t fill up with people who left unnoticed through a side gate three weeks ago.
Cards for visitors and contractors
Reception issues a visitor card from a pool, and once it is returned the card goes back into circulation. Cards are kept in three pools: for visitors, for temporary workers and for temporary cards for your own staff.
Contractors are handled with work lists. The company sends a list of names and the dates, the pass office creates a work list from it and assigns each person a card from the separate pool for temporary workers. The permissions travel with the card, so a refurbishment crew gets exactly the passages the contract provides for. Reception hands the card over, and only from that moment does it open doors, so a card waiting in a drawer won’t let anyone in under someone else’s name. The whole process is described on the contractor staff page.
Exit always works, even for a person whose permission has already expired, because someone who is on site must have a way out. The only exception is an unreturned card when card return is switched on: from the last day of the work, the card does not open the normal exit and directs the holder to the card return reader.
A temporary card for an employee who has forgotten theirs
Six in the morning, the shift is coming in, and one of the workers has left their card in another jacket. They give their name at reception, reception compares them with the photo in their record and issues a temporary card from the third pool. For a set time (twelve hours by default), the temporary card opens exactly the same doors as the employee’s own cards and records working time in the same way.
During that time, the person’s permanent cards are blocked. The block is not a punishment for forgetting: a card the employee doesn’t have on them may have been stolen. If someone presents a blocked card at a reader, the passage stays closed and security sees an event with the owner’s name and an instruction to retain the card. The next day the employee hands the temporary card back at reception, and their permanent cards work again, with no manual unblocking.
The permanent cards are not unblocked when the temporary card expires. Only returning it unblocks them, because until then nobody knows where the employee’s own card is.
Controlling passages and controller status
An operator with the right permission can open a passage remotely and can see what is happening at each point.
Access controllers communicate with the TraxSystem server through a REST interface. Monitoring shows which device has stopped responding before staff notice it and before someone is standing at a locked turnstile at six in the morning.
What access control does not do
Access control in TraxSystem does not replace the vehicle entry log. They are two independent registers, separated in the permissions as well, because a vehicle on site and a person on site are separate questions. Nor does the module do HR: it works out time from passages and exports it, but it does not calculate pay, holidays or absences. The details are on the time and attendance page.
Identification is based on the card and personal details; the system does not use biometric recognition as a basis for access. Without controllers, access control does not work. What remains then is the register of people and reports on data entered by hand, which are useful but don’t open any door.
The system does not cover people who came in without registering. That is a limitation of every card-based system, and you need to know about it when planning the evacuation muster.
Frequently asked questions about access control
Do we need to replace our readers and controllers?
Usually not. The system describes the hardware already installed at the site and communicates with the controllers through a REST interface. The list of supported hardware tells you what will work without changes.
What happens if the link to the server goes down?
The controller works from the cards stored locally, restricted by date range. When the connection comes back, the events go into the log.
Can one person have different permissions in different periods?
Yes. A rule for one person for a specified period is a separate mechanism and does not require any change to the group rules. A missing end date is treated conservatively, so a permission is not left open indefinitely by oversight.
An employee has forgotten their card. Do they have to go home?
No. Reception issues them a temporary card that works like their own cards. Their permanent cards are blocked in the meantime and unblock automatically when the employee returns the temporary card at reception.
Can a warehouse tenant run its own access points?
Yes, and it then sees only its own traffic, even though it uses the same instance of the system. There is more about this arrangement on the logistics park with tenants page.
Related
Time and attendanceRoom bookingHealth and safety and evacuationPermissions and personal dataSupported hardware
Further reading: Time and attendance vs access control · Permissions vs visibility scope · Enforcing a site ban for a driver