Net2 and Papercut pending

[jimmy210195]

Hi all,

 

We are sixth form college of about 2000 students and 200 staff. We are in the process of tendering for new MFDs and installing new turnstile gates. I have been reading up on Papercut and Net2 and how the mifare cards work. Has anybody found a way not to have to manually enter card numbers into each system or scanning the card twice, directly into each system? Is there some software that could sync from a single data source and translate the number into the correct format needed for each system?

 

Thanks

Jimmy

[lmrogers]

I've got a similar setup. I went with a Magicard 300 card printer with encoder paired with CardExchange for design and printing. This also allows us to read the card information and write it back to in my case Active Directory. I am storing 2 versions of the card information in there and then from PaperCut syncs directly from one of the attributes and then Salamander syncs the other card number over to Net2.

[jimmy210195]

Thanks, that sounds great and a massive time saver! Are you using mifare 1k cards? Is there a specific version of Card Exchange needed to give the syncing capabilities?

[mdrabble]

@Imrogers which version of CardExchange do you use and do you do you need any additional plugins?

[lmrogers]

So I went with CardExchange Enterprise Edition v10 with the LDAP Plugin. Think they also used to do a Net2 plugin but it made more sense to have AD as the source of truth and then sync everything from there.

 

I go all the hardware and software from ID Card Center - ID Card Centre | For all your Identity and access control needs

[FragglePete]

This is how we do it here:

 

We print MiFare Cards and these are given to Sixth Formers at the start of the term. Students accounts are in a particular door AD Group.

Students must then register these cards on any MFD device within the Sixth Form - it will prompt for their username and password on the MFD Device when swiped and register their card id number in PaperCut.

 

A script runs about twice an hour on the Print Server that dumps the user database to a .csv file and takes the Card ID number from each student and copies the Card Number into a field within AD.

 

We have Intoaccess Net2ADSyncServer (Synchronize Active Directory and Paxton Net2 ) installed on our Net2 Server - this monitors AD Group memberships and if it sees any changes to the groups and also any updates to the AD Field that contains their card number updates the Net2 server almost instantly. One off cost with perpetual support and updates.

 

If a student account is disabled (which gets done automatically by Locker overnight) if they go off-roll, then their access is immediately revoked and can't get access to the main pedestrian gate or Sixth Form building onsite.

 

Works well for us. I know Locker does also integrate with Net2, but doesn't get around the problem of having to register the cards manually to each student.

 

Pete

[gaz350b]

Are you doing any cashless catering? I assume not if not why not just pre-emp that as a future move get cashless catering system in to do all the integration and then do the cashless catering part at a later date.

a lot of systems will just dump their ID Card number into AD. then something like papercut on the printing side pulls that card number into papercut.

[lmrogers]

Are you doing any cashless catering? I assume not if not why not just pre-emp that as a future move get cashless catering system in to do all the integration and then do the cashless catering part at a later date.

a lot of systems will just dump their ID Card number into AD. then something like papercut on the printing side pulls that card number into papercut.

 

I have worked at a school previously and had a similar setup, except with the addition to cashless catering. At that school Civica had a piece of connection software that worked with CardExchange so that when cards were printed it would write the card number back to the cashless database, the Civiva connector would then write that back to AD and Salamander would handle the Net2 entries.

 

I'm sure other cashless providers could offer something similar. Or script something to update their system from AD if you have a table with a decent primary key in both to match users.

 

The biggest problem I've ever had and not come across the solution for is entering card numbers into sign in systems like SignIn App, Inventry and EntrySign.

[Chris_Cook]

We use Liveregister Cashless Catering, Papercut and Salamander.

 

LR writes the code into AD, Papercut reads this from AD, and Salamander syncs from AD to Net2.

 

We've used LR to push direct as well.

[supportman]

We use Kyrocera printers which associate the card on first use I believe.

[thimon]

Same as supportman, PaperCut allows users to self assign their cards on first use. One less dataset to sync from somewhere.

[mdrabble]

On 2/11/2025 at 11:26 AM, FragglePete said:

This is how we do it here:

 

We print MiFare Cards and these are given to Sixth Formers at the start of the term. Students accounts are in a particular door AD Group.

Students must then register these cards on any MFD device within the Sixth Form - it will prompt for their username and password on the MFD Device when swiped and register their card id number in PaperCut.

 

A script runs about twice an hour on the Print Server that dumps the user database to a .csv file and takes the Card ID number from each student and copies the Card Number into a field within AD.

 

We have Intoaccess Net2ADSyncServer (Synchronize Active Directory and Paxton Net2 ) installed on our Net2 Server - this monitors AD Group memberships and if it sees any changes to the groups and also any updates to the AD Field that contains their card number updates the Net2 server almost instantly. One off cost with perpetual support and updates.

 

If a student account is disabled (which gets done automatically by Locker overnight) if they go off-roll, then their access is immediately revoked and can't get access to the main pedestrian gate or Sixth Form building onsite.

 

Works well for us. I know Locker does also integrate with Net2, but doesn't get around the problem of having to register the cards manually to each student.

 

Pete

Which version of Net2ADSyncServer do you run?

 

I'm presuming as I have different access levels in place for staff and sixth form, I would need the ultimate.

[FragglePete]

I updated not that long along to the latest version, application version is showing as 3.6.3.0 and we are running the Professional Version.

 

I had seperate door AD Groups depending on level of access.  Students is quite straight foward, and then I have seperate Staff groups depending on specific access to some doors or different time access.  By default they get put into the basic Staff Door group, but then I may move them to another group, for example Staff with Minibus access (for PE Teachers primarily) who have the ability to open the main vehicle gate out of hours when returning from a sports fixture, etc.

 

Pete