Inventry sync with Net2/Paxton

[robjduk]

Hi all,

We have just had Inventry set up and in the middle of sending them our Mifare card numbers to sync over to the system. We believed after the initial setup it would sync across nicely with Net2 however this is not the case. The current setup involves us printing the card then walking the length of the school to tap it on the main screen to sync the card to the Inventry user but surly there is a better way?

 

We are talking to them at the moment about adding the Paxton/Net2 license. We don't want it to actually manage our doors, just sync cards from Net2 to Inventry without the manual timesink involved.

 

Can anyone confirm this is the way to go or is there another (even manual) way to get the Mifare numbers into Inventry easily? The engineer said we can add it to the scan code after a comma but that does not seem to be working.

 

Thanks all

[Jay241]

I am guessing you just need the Mifare card numbers to be assigned to a specific user in Inventry so they can sign in?

 

If this is the case, all you need is a USB Mifare reader, and you can use the Inventry Console on your PC that is the console back end to Inventry to add the codes to the back of the users accounts. You find the User on the system, edit their record and there is a option to add ID Codes to their accounts.

[CHiLL]

We don't use Paxton and our Inventry isn't tied to our door system (so this may not be entirely relevant), but we don't have to faff around with entering card numbers on Inventry. We just have "autocode" enabled on a new user's account when they're created in Inventry (users are synced from our MIS). Then a user can just associate their card manually by selecting their name and scanning their card when prompted (like Papercut card association). It doesn't use the same code, it creates an Inventry specific number, but we don't have to do anything else.

[MicrodigitUK]

Net2 unfortunately only holds part of the card number needed for InVentry. So you can’t sync cards from Net2 to InVentry. But you can the other way round as InVentry holds the full card number in hex format.

 

InVentry do have an extra program that can automatically import cards on schedule task from a basic CSV(Or it might be XML, can’t remember off top my head) referenced against MIS ID/ Admission number and the Mifare card number in hex. It’s just not part of a standard installation, and you have to know what you’re asking for to get it installed. The program has a name but I can’t remember it now, all I do know is it used more by their international schools that wanted an automated card import process.

 

What we do is keep 1 central database with SIMS ID and card number. Then when a new ID card is printed it is updated in this central database.

 

A series of schedule tasks and number conversion scripts then automatically imports from central database into Net2, Civica cashless, Papercut, InVentry, and library Oliver.

[MicrodigitUK]

P.S. A used Elatec TWN3 Mifare USB reader from an old photocopier will read the value in the correct hex format for direct input into InVentry and put the scan codes on the console application. You can normally find lots of them on eBay left over from old photocopier contracts and leases being sold off cheaply.

[robjduk]

Not impressed with Inventry support so far but thank you for your responses.

[speakercon]

I bought a cheap mifare usb reader off ebay for this, works excellently. Also use it to add cards to papercut.

[Chclark]

Inventry is our one sticking point at the moment. We have salamander provision users into our central net2 server. When cards are assigned here they write back to ad pager field which papercut syncs asked inventry if they can sync in this as well from ad or net2 direct to make it more seamless for the user but atm they say not.

[JoshNotJody]

Is there a way to grab the token number from Net2 and input it into Inventry as scan code?

[psydii]

Yeah:

open up net2, click a few times,  select, copy.

open up inventry, click a few times and then paste, click OK a few times.

Repeat for each user.

However, there is no guarantee at all that the Paxton readers and the inventry readers are interpreting the card numbers the same way round  - so you may have to run them through a conversion tool first.

 

The real trick is to provision the cards in a system that lets you export to other systems. When we've done a  large print run (typically at the start of the year), the support team of the system that produced the cards  exports the necessary details to csv for Inventry support team to bulk import into their system. Much like MicroDigitUK describes. (though inventry have never offered access to the tool - it seems they want to keep that out of our hands)

 

 

[itskdog]

16 minutes ago, psydii said:

there is no guarantee at all that the Paxton readers and the inventry readers are interpreting the card numbers the same way round

 

In my experience, InVentry (V4) and Net2 interpret card numbers differently enough that they can't be converted from Net2 back to InVentry, but InVentry card numbers can be converted to Net2 (and IIRC the documentation suggests that can be automated if you have a Net2 door licence in InVentry, which we do not due to the cost when we got it quoted)

 

InVentry takes the full card number as hexadecimal (base 16) and works with that as it is.

 

Net2 takes the card number as a decimal (base 10), then only keeps the last 8 digits.

 

I have an Excel spreadsheet I use to convert the card numbers (as the app I use on my phone to read the card number also spits out the card number as hexadecimal, conveniently). The formulae are as follows:

 

Cell A1: <Input card number as Hexadecimal, no colon separators, case insensitive)

Cell B1: =HEX2DEC(A1) This converts to decimal

Cell C1: =RIGHT(B1,8) This cuts to the last 8 digits for Net2 to use