SmartOffice™, an Innovative Approach to Bringing the Power of Advanced Access Control to the SMB

How does someone get into the office? Do you have a key card for that? Is there an intercom that visitors talk to when they approach your building, and where or who does that go?   And what do you have to touch to get in – a lock? The fob reader? A door handle? Do you even want to touch something, especially now, that you don’t know who has touched most recently?

Why not use an app on a smartphone to get in? Look, we use it for everything else these days, right? And the less we can touch these days, the better. Deciding on who is allowed entry to an office building is similar to who can use your business phone system. Efficiencies can be had if one ties the administration of access to the building to the administration of the business phone system.  

And that’s where Sangoma comes in and why we have a product called  SmartOffice. We’re leveraging our business communication systems and cloud expertise, bringing the power of advanced Access Control to your smartphone. Many businesses, from small to medium, lack any advanced access control. There might be a physical key, or a key fob, to get into the building.   Why not have an affordable advanced access control system, all managed by a smartphone everyone in the office carries all the time? And because you are using the Wi-Fi or cellular connection from your smartphone to communicate with the access control system to physically open locks, there is less to touch. And therefore, it’s safer for all of us.  

SmartOffice is integrated with the Sangoma UC system. The user directory information can be accessed, simplifying the management of users, groups, and permissions for office access and the PBX from one location.   It’s also very secure. Partly because it uses your mobile device, which is already password protected, but also because it uses the Sangoma Cloud service, which authenticates every user and every action done with SmartOffice, ensuring a certified person has access to the premises.

Use your Smartphone while you are walking up to the building to open the specific door you are walking towards. It can connect via the cellular network or building Wi-Fi if you are close enough. And IT will know exactly who and when the door opened. Sangoma SmartOffice uses advanced wireless IoT technologies to communicate with many existing door strikes and mag locks as well. And there are no expensive card readers or traditional access control systems to install because you’ll leverage the existing local network infrastructure.  

For example, I travel quite a bit to different Sangoma locations. I have multiple different key cards and fobs for the various buildings. I’d have to dig through my backpack to find the right one, if I had it at all. Now, I go to my phone, open the app, find the location I’m at, and open the door. Easy! And easy to onboard and exit people as well.

At Sangoma, we have a growing suite of cloud Communications as a Service (CaaS) solutions. Adding Access Control as a Service (ACaaS) to our existing Unified Communications (UCaaS), Communications Platform (CPaaS), Video Meetings (MaaS), SIP trunking (TaaS), Fax (FaaS), and Device (DaaS) and leveraging our cloud expertise also made sense.

The office environment has evolved from a single brick and mortar facility to be virtual and accessible at all times, from anywhere. Bringing other SME communications forms to the UC platform, such as Access Control, is natural, and Sangoma is leading the way. Go ahead, walk up to your building, unlock the door while you are walking towards it, and get into your building without touching anything.

To read more about SmartOffice, please go to www.sangoma.com/access-control.

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