Verkada Guest enables your organization to quickly and securely manage guest access to your building and key areas. Guest leverages camera feeds, and door events to track guests and hosts across your organization.
Setting up Guests
General Setup
Once a Verkada Guest license has been activated in your organization, a Guest tab will appear on your home page. Click on this tab to begin setup:
This will open in a new tab and display several different options for Guest management. Let's start by selecting the settings button on the top right-hand side and selecting All Settings. This will open the general settings page, which has the following options:
Account
The account page allows you to manage the company name, logo, colors, as well as upload a badge background image. These settings will provide the default values for all Guest sites.
Sites
The sites section is used to convert pre-existing camera sites into Guest sites. Once a Guest site is created, you will have additional per-site configuration options.
Hosts
This section enables you to choose who in your organization will be hosting guests, which is used for tracking and logging.
In order to add a host, you can choose one of the following methods:
Upload .csv file
The .csv file must have the following headers, which are case-sensitive:
fullname | phone | photo | |
Example Guest | +1 650-123-4567 |
Note: Both the phone and photo columns must exist, however populating values for these columns is optional.
Use existing SCIM integration
Alternatively, if your organization has an existing SCIM integration you can import hosts from your SCIM-managed groups.
Notifications
Users can choose how they want to be notified once their guests are on site. They have the option to do this from the Admin tab as well as from guest.verkada.com.
Data Retention
For your guests' privacy, you can customize how long to store sensitive data.
Security
For enhanced security, you can toggle on Enable Enhanced Email Authentication so that guests can only accept an invite that originates from your company's domain.
Users & Roles
This section displays a list of Guest users and their associated roles. See here for more information on user roles and permissions.
Managing Guest Sites
Sites are used to segment guest management across your organization. As seen above, Guest sites are created in the All Settings > Sites section:
Once your site is added a new window will appear showing a number of management options:
Details
The details section contains options including changing the location of your site, changing the default logo of your site, changing the default badge of your site, and a toggle for zero-contact check-in.
Zero-contact check-in will display a QR code on your iPad which guests can scan to check in, rather than entering information on the iPad itself.
Guest Types
Guest types determine what information is required from a user when they check in, including documents to sign, personal information to provide, etc. The options selected will determine the guest flow and guide the guest through the check-in process.
Once you add a new guest type, you will see a button appear which allows you to configure the required information for each type.
Note: When the feature “Scan photo ID and perform security screening” is selected, the guest will be asked to submit a photo of their ID to be scanned against an aggregated list of sex offender registries. To learn more about this feature, please review the article, “Verkada Guest Security Screen”.
Badge Print Settings
When configuring a new guest type or editing an existing one you can customize how badges will look when printed.
Process
Select the guest type you want to edit
Select the sample badge under Badge Print Settings
From here you can edit the badge settings:
Select whether the badge is printed in landscape or portrait view
Toggle on Enable Badge of the Day which will automatically print Verkada's custom-designed badges on certain holidays and special occasions
Toggle on Add a border which can be used to communicate information about the type of guest who has checked in based on the border and color you select for the guest type
Note: You will need to have a color printer added to your site in order to print badges in color. To add a printer to your site follow the steps in this article.
Default Host
When the guest is unsure of their host, the default host serves as a fallback. For instance, you may want to specify the receptionist as your default host.
Tablets
Select Add Tablet when you are ready to enroll your iPad into the Guest dashboard. Once selected you will be prompted to enter a code that will appear on the Guest app.
Printers
A site-specific code will appear here to enroll your printer into your Guest dashboard. To enroll your printer tap and hold the bottom right corner of your Guest app to show a pin pad which will enable printer-specific options.
Documents
Use this section to upload new documents. When a new document is added you are able to insert variables that will be automatically populated with the guest's information upon check-in.
Default documents include a COVID-19 questionnaire, a health document, and an NDA document.
Denied Entry
If a guest fails their COVID-19 screening, security screening, etc. they will be denied entry. This section allows you to configure how to inform the guest of denied entry, and which host to notify.
Setting Up a Tablet
To begin, download the Verkada Guest app onto your iPad from the app store. Once installed, the guest app will display a 6-character code which is used to add the iPad to your organization under Site Settings > Tablets > Add Tablet.
You should now see your newly enrolled tablet in the site settings page. Selecting the tablet will reveal key device information such as what the Guest app will look like, the OS, the IP address, the app version, and which printers the tablet can print to.
Once your Guest app is set up you will be able to press and hold the bottom right corner to display the printer setup menu. From here enter the PIN code found under Printers in your site settings.
Once the PIN is entered you will be able to select any Airprint enabled printer to begin printing badges.
Guest Dashboard
Once a Host has been added to your general settings guests will be able to start signing in. When a guest signs in:
Their host will be notified via text and email
The guest's name, reason, host, and sign in time will be listed in the Guest dashboard
Selecting the guest in the Guest dashboard will show all cameras that the guest was located on as well as all documents the guest signed
Admins will also be able to sign out a guest and re-print the guest's badge
Admins, guest site managers, and guest site viewers will also be able to view the following:
Logs of guests at a particular site
Analytics showing all guest and host events