Access Control Module Overview
Synergy Access is a scalable access control solution by Synel which allows your company to secure and control the access to your organisation, giving you total control over the various access points within your premises.
Synergy Access is available as an add-on module to Synel’s Synergy Workforce time and attendance platform or as a completely standalone solution.
Whether you are looking for the benefits of hosting your access control solutions in the cloud – such as not having to worry about managing servers, simplicity to scale, automatically keeping your solution up to date, and the highest levels of data security; or the more traditional approach of an on-premise server, Synergy Access provides options for both infrastructures.
Control access points with security groups and time zones
With Synergy Access your business can create specific security groups to control user access to specific doors.
The added benefit of setting time zones allows you to control the days and times that users can gain access to your premises, reinforcing your security even further.
Synergy Access allows you to create an unlimited number of security groups and users can be members of multiple groups within your access control solution.
Control an unlimited number of access points
Synergy Access is suitable for all sizes and types of businesses organisations – whether you are small/medium enterprise or a large business, school, institution or factory.
Synergy Access allows you to control access to anything from a few doors in one location, to thousands of access points over multiple sites.
The way in which Synergy Access scales makes it cost-effective for any size solution.
With Synel’s hosted cloud architecture (SaaS) its even simpler to join sites together on the same solution and scale up or down, as required
State of the art, access reader technology
Synergy Access is compatible with a wide range of access reader technology, including MIFARE, Proximity, biometric and facial recognition, there is a solution for practically any application.
Access card and facial recognition technologies deliver a truly touch free experience for users – perfect for businesses who wish to adapt to the ‘new normal’ during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Real-time dashboard
With Synergy Access, administrators can see at a glance a host of information on users, such as who is in or out of the building as well as the current state of doors, such as ‘door closed’ or ‘door held open’.
Stateful alarms can be sent to alert managers by e-mail for specific conditions, such as alerting when a door is held or forced open.
Automate your Fire Evacuation procedure
With the optional Fire Link module, Synergy Access can automatically open gates, doors and turnstiles when a Fire Alarm is triggered.
Synergy Access can also play an important role in your muster/evacuation procedure as reporting is provided with a fire report for rapid analysis following an emergency incident.
If Synergy Access is connected to your fire panel, this can also be automatically e-mailed to appropriate managers or printed at any networked printer(s).
ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition)
With the optional ANPR module, ANPR system server and a compatible camera to read vehicle registration number plates (VRN), Synergy Access can also control access to bollard and car park / entrance barriers by simply identifying authorised vehicles and granting access accordingly.
Number plates can be added/removed from the database via the Synergy Access browser-based Graphical User Interface (GUI) by an administrator, and this is then pushed in near real-time to the local ANPR system server which controls access.
Entrance authorisations are based on badge lists, company system, Time zones, Antipas back and Pin code enabling the system to restrict and control access to the work area.
Synergy Workforce provides various reports enabling access to information concerning the system’s definitions or its access control data in a different sorting format.
Key Terms for Access Control include:
- Badge – the media used to gain entry either a card, key fob or Bio-metric measurement
- Security Groups – The designation of one or more doors allowed to be access and when combined into a group which employees can be assigned to.
- Time Zones – The list of days and times when a door will open.
- Readers – The scanning mechanism beside the door.
- Controller (door) – The Unit that makes the decision to open or not based on software control.
- Online – Software and Controllers are in constant contact, each swipe on a reader is relayed to the server for access decisions based on the very latest information.
- Offline – Door controllers keep a valid list of Badges and Time zones and the door makes it’s own decision to open based on ”last Known Good Info”
Online vs Offline mode.
Both modes have their own advantages and disadvantages and user must consider which mode is right for them
Online doors are in constant communication with the software, each time a badge is swiped they send a query to the server asking if it should open the door or not.
The Advantage of this mode of operation is that new badges and employees become active immediately after User creates/edit records in the database.
However this requires a constant and acceptable speed of connection between all the doors and the server.
If the network fails at any point between the door and the server such as a switch or router failure or the connection speed is slow the door will retry asking the query of the server several times and will await a response to each query in turn before it falls back on it’s own decision by switching into offline mode and checking its own stored list of valid cards.
Each retry adds a delay to the decision to open the door resulting in a > 5 second delay on a door if the network fails.
Online doors should still be sent regular updates at least every 24 hours so their backup list is current at the end of the previous day.
Offline doors do not send the query to the server asking if they should open for each badge, they have a stored list of which cards are allowed in locally so the decision rests in the door controller.
Without the need to ask and wait for a reply the door responds to badge swipes much faster and will open and Reject within < 2 seconds.
This speed of response however comes at the cost of updates.
Offline doors need to be told when a badge has been added or withdrawn from the active list.
This would involve either waiting for the next scheduled update (usually overnight) or the software user sending the updates manually from the GUI.
Synergy Workforce can work in both Online and Offline mode, your installer will normally discuss these with you and make a recommendation for the best result for you
Online Pros | Online Cons | Offline Pros | Offline Cons |
Always up to date No need for user intervention after adding a card | Speed and Server communications dependent Can be slow if there are problems with the link to the server Increased network traffic if used over a metered connection | Doors respond to badges faster Can run independently of the server as does not require constant communication. Less network traffic on metered connections | List only as accurate as the last time it was sent to the door. For immediate activation manual intervention required or a scheduled send |
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