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DOOR ACCESS CONTROL VIA ESSENSYS OPERATE
Keyless Door Access Control using Operate and Brivo
Keyless Door Access Control using Operate and Brivo

Provide your customers with keyless access to your workspaces using the Operate-Brivo integration

Stuart avatar
Written by Stuart
Updated over a week ago

Introduction

Brivo is an access control platform that allows you to provide your customers with the possibility to access your premises keylessly, including using a smartphone app. Operate integrates with Brivo based on your customer Licences, thus automatically providing them with physical access to your offices once their licence is activated. 

This integration is only available to Enterprise customers. Please get in touch with our support team if you would like to find out more!

This guide will help you configure Brivo and will show you how to make sure your users gain access seamlessly.

Getting Started

There are a few steps to follow before Brivo is available for your customers: 

  1. Prepare your Brivo account (e.g. you have an account ready and you have configured your Cards).

  2. Install and configure Brivo in Operate.

  3. Edit your Contact records to ensure they have door access control enabled as well as a valid Card ID. 

  4. Create and activate a Licence for a Brivo-enabled Location and Office, which will automatically grant access to the Contacts under that customer's Account (if correctly configured). 

Let's go through each of these stages, one by one!

Prepare your Brivo Account

First, you will need to be a Brivo customer and set up an account at https://www.brivo.com

To ensure that Brivo integrates with Operate correctly, you will need access to a master account, from which you should be able to retrieve API keys. You will need them when connecting Brivo to Operate, in the next step. 

In addition, you will need to:

  • Configure access groups in Brivo. Here is how. You will need a group that grants access to the Location (main building access), as well as one for the Office (this group may include access to the office itself and to the floor or any other access points needed to reach needed spaces). 

  • Add Cards. as Brivo show here. Please choose a card format that works for you and keep note of it, as it will be required when integrating Brivo and Operate. The integration will only use one card format per Location. 

Install and Configure Brivo in Operate

To install the Brivo integration, please follow these steps: 

  • Go to Settings > Integrations and search for 'Brivo'.

  • Click Install, then Open

Once Brivo is installed, you can go back to the Integration any time and simply click Open to continue. You will need to go through the below steps for each Location that you want to add Brivo to.

  • On the welcome page, click Start.

  • Next, select the Location for which you would like to enable Brivo and click the Configure link next to it. 

  • Enter your Brivo credentials: Master login, Public and Secret API keys. Click Next.

  • Once logged in, Operate will allow you to configure the Location's card format and groups. Please select the same card format that your Location specific cards are using in Brivo. Please see Brivo's help page for further information.

  • Now select the Location's access group. This group should grant access to the main bulding access point(s). 

  • The next step lets you add your offices to a Brivo access group. Operate will allow you to select from the groups you created in Brivo for each of your offices. This might be a tedious process if you have many offices to configure, but please take your time and configure them each. You will only need to do this once unless you reset or reinstall the integration; or you make group changes in Brivo. If an office is not added to a group, then Brivo access will not work. 

  • Save your setup when you are ready. If you ever need to reconfigure the integration, you can click 'Reset Brivo DAC and all your group assignments will be removed.

Prepare your Contact Records for Brivo Access

Before your customers' staff can access your premises, you will need to ensure that each person is added as a Contact in Operate. Your existing contacts will all need to be edited and the following fields populated, so that they will sync with Brivo: 

  • Tick the 'Enable Door Access Control' checkbox. 

  • Enter a valid Card ID. You will need to retrieve this from Brivo, as shown below.

NOTE: If you do not see these fields on your Contact record pages, please add them to the Contact page layout.

  • You can retrieve Card IDs from Brivo by going to Setup > Cards > Card Bank. For each Contact you will need to retrieve an unassigned Card. When you have no more unassigned IDs, you can create more.  

  • Make sure you save your changes to the Contact record in Operate. 

Activating Brivo Access via a Licence

Brivo will activate only if the customer's Licence will include an Office product record as a Licence item, under the 'Offices' section. 

Your Licence will also need to be activated before any Contact is invited to join Brivo. 

If an Account has several Licences, all of them will be scanned by the integration and access will only be granted if at least one is active and for the offices included in the active Licence, not those under Licences with other statuses.

If a customer has active Licences across multiple Locations, please keep in mind that Operate creates a duplicate Account when a new Licence is added for the same customer at a different Location. This will require you to double check the Contacts under the new Account record and make sure that relevant staff is given access.

User Synchronization

New Operate Contacts are added to Brivo in about two minutes from their creation time. Access will also be granted in a similarly short time, after the initial Brivo setup. to existing Contacts which fulfill the criteria below. Operate and Brivo check user synchronization every four hours. Below are the criteria that you will need to consider to make sure that your users are synced successfully.

Access is Granted if:

  • The Operate Contact record contains at least a First Name, Last Name and Email address. Each email address will need to be unique to each user. 

  • The 'Enable Door Access Control' box is enabled on the Contact record in Operate.

  • The Operate Contact record has a valid Brivo Card ID populated into the corresponding field. 

  • The Account to which the Contact record belongs is active, meaning that its Start date is prior or coincides with the current date and its End Date is blank or is in the future. 

  • There is an active Licence under the Account to which the Contact belongs. This licence should be created for a Brivo-enabled Location and include a Brivo-enabled Office. An active Licence means that its status is 'Activated' and the Licence Term is ongoing. Once the Licence is no longer active, access will be revoked for all associated Contacts. 

Access is Revoked if:

  • The Operate Contact record is edited and the 'Enable Door Access Control' checkbox is disabled and the Card ID is removed.  The same occurs if the Card ID is deleted in Brivo. 

  • The Contact record is deleted from Operate. 

  • The Account to which the Contact belongs is either deleted or terminated by adding an End Date which has passed.

  • The Office record is deleted or is removed from the active Licence.

  • The Licence is deleted, terminated, expired or reverted to draft. 

  • Brivo Groups are deleted. In this case, you will need to go back to Operate > Settings > Integrations > Brivo > Open > Configure your Location > Find the Office and assign it to a new Group.

  • The User is deleted from Brivo - If this is done, then the user might temporarily lose access, until the scheduled synchronisation takes place (which as mentioned above, occurs every four hours automatically). You can add the user back by editing the Contact record in Operate, where you can disable/re-enable Door Access Control. This should help re-sync the user within the next couple of minutes. The user will need to configure their Brivo account again.

How do Users Gain Access?

Once an Operate Contact has been synced, they will receive an invitation email from Brivo, from which they can configure their pass and gain access. 

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