Suggestions and opinions on new Visitor management system

[dapaulio]

Title is self explanatory so... on your marks, get set, GO.

[Jcx500]

Entrée Visitor Management – EDIT Website I Use Entree works great and has lots of features and has a great web gui

[howartp]

Inventry is probably the market leader, but be aware they have a far better marketing team than they do a development team.

[Edu-IT]

We use Passtab.

[elsiegee40]

Have you been told you have to have an electronic system for GDPR? You don’t. There are perfectly compliant paper based systems.

[andyfield]

If you have an ipad try "Sign In App" . It's really good and great value for money.

[Sylv3r]

https://www.swipedon.com/

[DrBeaker]

We've got Inventry now. Apart from some initial setup issues, seems OK. Best thing - I don't have anything to do with it now, it's all down to Reception and the SIMs admin to input people into there etc and Inventry pulls it through from SIMs.

 

Had a few issues one was about AV and backup. I told them AFAIC it's not my machine so that's your problem, not my problem.

[DrCheese]

Inventry works pretty well for us - It's management console is a bit of a trainwreck tho (It's very slow and bugtastic) - I will say their support is very good tho & generally solves all our issues very quickly.

[DrBeaker]

Inventry works pretty well for us - It's management console is a bit of a trainwreck tho (It's very slow and bugtastic) - I will say their support is very good tho & generally solves all our issues very quickly.

 

Have you tried the Inventry Evac bit out yet? It apparently does work on an iPad but not yet had chance to try it. I'm curious e.g I'd like to put it on an iPad, in a lockbox at the firepoint. So when there's a fire, break the lockbox/glass, unlock the iPad and run the app - BUT there's a whole lot of variables there for it to work.

[markwilfan]

Inventry works pretty well for us - It's management console is a bit of a trainwreck tho (It's very slow and bugtastic) - I will say their support is very good tho & generally solves all our issues very quickly.

Just don't rely on their app. It's shocking but luckily it's being updated at the end of Feb 2019.

 

Also the multi site functionality of inventry central is buggier than a cow pat in a Somerset field in August

[markwilfan]

Have you tried the Inventry Evac bit out yet? It apparently does work on an iPad but not yet had chance to try it. I'm curious e.g I'd like to put it on an iPad, in a lockbox at the firepoint. So when there's a fire, break the lockbox/glass, unlock the iPad and run the app - BUT there's a whole lot of variables there for it to work.

Evac app sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. Sometimes gives you the wrong thumbnails of visitors and sometimes doesn't show any staff signed in at alll

[markwilfan]

We've got Inventry now. Apart from some initial setup issues, seems OK. Best thing - I don't have anything to do with it now, it's all down to Reception and the SIMs admin to input people into there etc and Inventry pulls it through from SIMs.

 

Had a few issues one was about AV and backup. I told them AFAIC it's not my machine so that's your problem, not my problem.

Be aware the share they set up if not domain joined will be r/w for everyone

[DrCheese]

Just don't rely on their app. It's shocking but luckily it's being updated at the end of Feb 2019.

 

Updated in the past?!

 

and yea, ran into the share issue too - I dumped ours on the domain and set it up properly...

 

Also note that they'll have teamviewer installed for remote support that they can connect to whenever, tho they do record your consent on support calls now but you may feel iffy about this being a thing at all.

[markwilfan]

Updated in the past?! [emoji14]

 

and yea, ran into the share issue too - I dumped ours on the domain and set it up properly...

 

Also note that they'll have teamviewer installed for remote support that they can connect to whenever, tho they do record your consent on support calls now but you may feel iffy about this being a thing at all.

Yeh in the past... Read that as it hasn't been updated yet. I suspect outsourced Devs especially considering all the engrish that appears in their GUI and language packs

[dapaulio]

Have you been told you have to have an electronic system for GDPR? You don’t. There are perfectly compliant paper based systems.

 

Yeah but I am trying to drag this school into the 21st century. 🤪

[TechMonkey]

It depends on what you are after. If you are just looking to see who is coming in and out then one of the iPad systems will be fine and very cheap. Some even do Bluetooth printers so badges can be printed. If you want any kind of interaction with Pupils then you will want a link to your MIS and you are really looking at Inventry. When we were looking, other companies made positive sounds about they could link with other systems or they would sort something out, but only Inventry were definite that they could read AND write back. This has saved our Receptionist countless hours, especially if there is a local incident or a weather issue, as she can just scan down a list, ensure the marks are correct, click a button and the registers are all updated.

 

Inventry are not perfect, I think some of there components need a real good rewrite and update. Their restarting module will not work unless it is a full admin, which is fine if it is a standalone PC, but if it is on the domain no way that is going to happen. That is how we got around the Virus and backup, added it to our domain, but that did confuse them a bit as suddenly they had to deal with GPOs and permissions. I would much prefer a proper cloud solution, but c'est la vie. I almost had a total barney with one of their support people as they would not deal with the issue, just kept telling me to restart the PC and could not understand that a program want full admin rights would not run without someone logging in with credentials (UAC). So in the end I rolled my own solution that worked. Investigating further it looks like they just need to change a flag in their coding but they could not understand this. That is the only issue I have had with support, other times they have been really quick, helpful and on it.

 

Development is afoot to integrate with Paxton door locks, so if a member of staff swipes through a door they will be signed in, losing the need for extra Inventry sign in boxes.

 

As I said, they are not perfect but they do what we need, all the other companies we spoke to could do bits and pieces or promised the world but it wasn't there as a finished product.

 

So, decide your requirements, decide what is really important to you know, what might be important in the future and choose accordingly.

[pooley]

I use http://www.swipedon.com at both my schools, cheap to buy, just need and ipad and a label printer to go with it.

[markwilfan]

Interesting about Paxton integration. I broke our inventry by trying to set it up. Was told it wasn't ready yet. Even though the configuration was there in the GUI doh. I was told it would just be if you signed in it would unlock a door so interesting what you said about signing in via a Paxton door

[Jamman960]

https://signinapp.com/ works very well on the iPad for us, they're in the process of implementing sims attendance integration so we've finally gone ahead with it. We needed 3 sign in locations so Inventry prices were through the roof.

 

James

[TechMonkey]

Interesting about Paxton integration. I broke our inventry by trying to set it up. Was told it wasn't ready yet. Even though the configuration was there in the GUI doh. I was told it would just be if you signed in it would unlock a door so interesting what you said about signing in via a Paxton door

 

Ah, yes, what I was talking about is still in development. The current options are for unlocking a door when an action happens. But we have absolutely no need for that at all. We have asked to be on the early release when it is ready to be tested as otherwise it may be a while before it is fully released and if it works well we will not buy the staff sign in boxes.

[DrBeaker]

... Inventry are not perfect, I think some of there components need a real good rewrite and update. Their restarting module will not work unless it is a full admin, which is fine if it is a standalone PC, but if it is on the domain no way that is going to happen. That is how we got around the Virus and backup, added it to our domain, but that did confuse them a bit as suddenly they had to deal with GPOs and permissions. I would much prefer a proper cloud solution, but c'est la vie. I almost had a total barney with one of their support people as they would not deal with the issue, just kept telling me to restart the PC and could not understand that a program want full admin rights would not run without someone logging in with credentials (UAC). So in the end I rolled my own solution that worked. Investigating further it looks like they just need to change a flag in their coding but they could not understand this. That is the only issue I have had with support, other times they have been really quick, helpful and on it.

....

As I said, they are not perfect but they do what we need, all the other companies we spoke to could do bits and pieces or promised the world but it wasn't there as a finished product.

 

So, decide your requirements, decide what is really important to you know, what might be important in the future and choose accordingly.

 

Ours was all decided upon before I even started there, first I knew of it was the guy turning up and asking for IP addresses etc. Typical school-IT communication path there. To that end the powers-that-be decided to pay for the system and support, I'm going to let them deal with the issues.

[dapaulio]

Thank you all for your suggestions, I have plenty of to go with.

Our office team have a meet and greet with Egan Reid later this week. (One of their suggestions) Has any one used them? How do they compare?

[The_IT_Guy]

Is anyone able to give me an idea of cost with Inventry via PM? Just so I can see if we need to rule it out before we start. Thanks

[DrBeaker]

Is anyone able to give me an idea of cost with Inventry via PM? Just so I can see if we need to rule it out before we start. Thanks

 

Ours was all decided by others, admin etc, before I started this role. I only found out about it when the Inventry engineer turned up on the day. I can ask but I don't expect a reply to be honest.