I recently had occasion to look into the field of visitor management systems. Like many schools, we were reliant several different logbooks and hand-printed visitor badges. We also knew that a few people (both students and adults) were not diligent about checking-in or out of campus. Finally, having visited more than a few area companies with computer-based visitor systems, we knew that there was a better way to track who is in our school, even if their names were “who, what or I don’t know.” (see above)
I started by thinking about all of the people we have coming and going on campus everyday. They include:
- employees
- students
- parents of students
- vendors
- substitute teachers
- contractors
- construction workers
- volunteers
- prospective students and their parents
- tutors
- visitors to athletic and arts events
- delivery personnel
While many of these people are checked at the front desk, not all of them are. Some quietly slip in and out of campus with much notice, some are “known” people whose familiarity has led to our trust in them, and some come at such odd hours or in numbers (e.g., athletic contests) that we don’t bother with a check-in procedure.
If any of this sounds familiar, you may also be wishing you had a better system. My research unearthed a multitude of options, ranging from systems meant to deal with thousands of visitors to those geared specifically to the K-12 market. Some systems are based on a client-server architecture which you host on site, while others are stand-alone kiosks, and still others are web-based.
Visitor Management Systems and Other Computer Systems
While you may think that a visitor management system will be an isolated technical system, you should consider these potential interactions:
- Access Control. If your school uses an electronic access control system (proximity badges, swipe badges, keypads, biometrics) you probably already are using a visitor management system. If you are still using keys, but are considering electronic access control, then you should pay attention to whether or not the visitor management system will support this. Systems from larger companies with a broad range of security services are more likely to offer such support.
- Directory Server Integration. At the very least you will want the ability to perform bulk uploads of employee, student, and parent information into the system. Ideally, the system could link to your director servers such as LDAP, Open Directory or Active Directory.
- Field Trips. Students and teachers regularly leave campus where attendance must be monitored. It could be quite helpful if there’s a mobile app associated with the system to scan student IDs as they get in and out of vehicles for field trips. A nice side-benefit might be electronic health forms for students that could be carried with the adult mentor.
- Emergency Operations Plan. If you need to evacuate a building, shelter-in-place, or lockdown is extremely helpful to be able to print a list of all campus visitors for your emergency responders.
Web-based or Client-Server?
Call me new-fashioned by I don’t understand why anyone would purchase a system that is not cloud-based and browser-based. Clearly the entire industry is moving this way for all of the obvious reasons such as rapid software updates and patches, cross-platform support, ease of deployment, often better security and data back-up than what can take place in-house, and lower costs to name a few. Despite what I see as overwhelming advantages, the majority of the systems I found are still client-server applications meant for installation on a LAN.
Common Attributes of Visitor Management Systems
All of the systems I found share a number of common features:
- print visitor badges, often with scannable barcodes and visitor photos
- scan government issued ID cards and/or business cards and check names against a national database of registered sex offenders
- send alerts via email, SMS, or both when a positive match of the visitor to the sex offenders database is made
- run additional checks against your own database to check for restraining orders, non-custodial parents, VIP visitors, or any other individual who may require special considerations
- pre-register visitors
- automatically alert hosts when visitors arrive
- scan barcodes for ease of entry/egress
- print visitor reports by name, date, host, reason for visit, etc.
- multi-language support
- create automatically expiring badges
Systems that are focused on K-12 markets, often include these additional features:
- track volunteer hours
- print tardy passes for students who arrive late to school
- track early dismissals
Alphabetical List of Selected Visitor Management Systems
- Capsure
- Complete Campus Security Systems IdentaKid
- EasyLobby
- HallPass ID Systems
- Hunt Engineering Systems DLS-III
- KeepnTrack
- LobbyGuard K-12
- LobbyTech
- LobbyTrack
- PlascoTrac
- Positive Proof
- Raptorware V-Soft
- SchoolCheckIn
- SchoolGate Guardian
- Sisco FAST_PASS
- STOPware Passage Point for K-12 Schools
If your school is using a visitor management system, one of those mentioned above or another system, I’d love to hear from you.
See the attached file, Visitor Management System Survey for a list of attributes you may wish to consider in evaluating a system for your school.
