A meeting room booking that opens the door itself

A meeting room booking with door access is also a permission for the lock for the length of the meeting: attendees get in with their own card, and a visitor without a card gets a code that works only at that room and only during the booking. At most companies the room calendar and access control are two separate systems that know nothing about each other. The calendar says the room is booked, and access control doesn’t know who for. In TraxSystem the Room booking module connects the two.

You can see the result of the missing link in any corridor: a meeting arranged a week ago, everyone arrived on time, and they are all standing outside a locked door, because the card for that wing is held by the facilities team.

An unlocked room, a key at reception and escorting visitors

The simplest and most common workaround is to leave the room permanently unlocked. That works until the projector disappears or someone takes the room without a booking.

The second workaround is a key or a master card carried by reception, an assistant or security. With two meetings a day that is a small thing; with ten it is half of somebody’s job, and that somebody was supposed to be doing something else.

With visitors from outside the company, that leaves escorting, because the visitor has no card. Someone goes down to the gatehouse to fetch them, brings them in, and after the meeting walks them back to the exit.

All three work around the same gap: the booking has no connection whatsoever to the lock.

The booking as a permission for the room door

In TraxSystem a room booking is an entry in the calendar and, at the same time, a permission for the door for the duration of the meeting. An attendee who is in the system’s records gets in with their own card, the same one they use to enter the building. For the duration of the booking the card also works at that room, and after the meeting it stops.

A visitor without a card gets a code that works only at that room and only during that booking.

The access window is set wider than the meeting itself, by a dozen or so minutes on each side. Otherwise the first person to arrive would be standing outside the door until the hour, which is the same problem the booking was meant to solve.

Doors on the way to the room: corridor, lift, door onto the floor

Meeting rooms are rarely by the main entrance. On the way there is usually a corridor, a lift or a door onto the floor, and any of these can be locked.

If the booking only opens the room door, the problem simply moves one door back: the attendee reaches a locked corridor with their card and is again looking for someone to let them in. That is why each room needs both its own door and the zone entrances on the way specified, and the permissions for them have to expire with the booking rather than stay granted forever.

What a room booking will not solve

A booking in TraxSystem won’t replace your company calendar. The meeting won’t appear by itself in Outlook or Google Calendar, and attendees get a separate notification.

Nor will it let a visitor onto the site. The code opens the room, but not the gate or reception, because getting onto the site is a separate matter and a separate process.

The system won’t check whether the room was actually used. Badge-ins at the doors are visible, as at any other door, but the system doesn’t release a booking because nobody turned up.

Without a controller at the door, opening won’t work. A room without a controller still has the calendar and notifications; only the door stays on a key.

Questions and answers

See also: Booking meeting rooms and guest rooms · Guest rooms on site: who is staying overnight and who knows about it · Permissions vs data visibility scope: what is the difference