Emergency Lockdown

Learn how to trigger an emergency lockdown event on your access controller

Updated over a week ago

Verkada access controllers are capable of emergency lockdown events to help protect you, your colleagues, and your assets. During a lockdown event, all selected doors and/or buildings are locked down, and access to these doors are restricted to only authorized user groups.

⚠️ Requirement. You must be an Access Admin and a Site Access Admin to create a lockdown scenario.

Lockdown outputs and inputs require that a lockdown scenario has been created for the site that the controller is installed in.

Create a lockdown scenario

  1. In Verkada Command, go to All Products > Access.

  2. Click Location and select the site.

  3. Select Lockdowns > plus (+) icon to create a new lockdown.

  4. In Create, type the Lockdown Name, an Emergency Message (optional), and click Next.

  5. In Doors, select the doors that you want to configure for a lockdown and click Next.

  6. In Permissions, confirm which site is allowed to activate lockdown and toggle on when different groups an release a lockdown or unlock doors, depending on your use case. Click Done.


Clone a lockdown scenario

  1. In Command, go to All Products > Access.

  2. Click Location and select the site.

  3. Select Lockdowns.

  4. Hover over the lockdown name and click the Clone Lockdown Scenario icon to clone an existing lockdown.

  5. Select the site or subsite to clone the lockdown to.

  6. Follow the configuration window to configure the lockdown scenario and make any necessary changes.

Initiate a lockdown

Once a lockdown scenario has been created, you have access to the scenario and will see a new Lockdown button at the bottom left of your navigation bar.

In the event a lockdown is needed, follow these steps:

  1. At the bottom of your navigation bar, click Lockdown.

  2. Select the type of lockdown you want to initiate.

  3. Click Activate to begin the lockdown.

Release a lockdown

Any user who has access to release the lockdown can release a lockdown.

  1. At the top, click Release Lockdown on the red banner.

  2. Click Confirm.

    Watch this short video to learn how to initiate and release a lockdown.

Add a Lockdown button

You have the option to use auxiliary inputs to install physical buttons that can trigger lockdowns.

You need to wire buttons into the AUX cassette on your access controller (positive IN1 or IN2 and negative to GND). This is expected to be in a normally open (NO) circuit.

To add a lockdown button:

  1. Go to your AC41's details page. At the bottom, you should see an Auxiliary devices section.

  2. Click Add AUX > drop-down menu, and select Input Lockdown.

  3. Click Add and type a descriptive name.

  4. Select the respective input the button is connected to on the AUX cassette.

  5. Select the lockdown scenario you want the button to trigger.

No saving is needed; this page autosaves.

Add AUX output ports

The NC, COM, and NO outputs are used for lockdown events. You can configure this in command in the Auxiliary devices section.

  1. Click Add AUX and in the drop-down menu, select Lockdown Output.

  2. Click Add and type a descriptive name.

  3. Select the lockdown scenario.

  4. Select the AUX output.

Learn more


Need more help? Contact Verkada Support

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