Our goal at IOTIQ is to constantly develop our products, to keep them technically up to date and to adapt them to all individual wishes in order to provide all our customers with an optimal user experience. This also includes developing new products that make work environments even more digital, efficient and, yes, practical.
Since our founding in 2017, our developers have been working on digital solutions for coworking spaces. Companies and individuals working in these shared workspaces pay for and expect a stable and reliable infrastructure that supports them in all areas. To enable us to digitalize this infrastructure, we have already developed automated beverage billing and room booking systems, as well as an office management software for when there is a pandemic. Now we want to go one step further and include an additional aspect, namely the spaces themselves.
In coworking spaces, as mentioned earlier, many businesses and entrepreneurs work under one roof in individual offices or open, shared spaces. Some coworkers only need a key to open the front door, because they work in the open spaces anyway. Other coworkers, however, need multiple keys because they are part of a company that needs to lock its internal offices and has designated workstations. The distribution of these keys, however, can be chaotic and confusing, because sometimes only a limited number of keys are available, company members can change quickly, or people lose track of who now has a key and who does not.
To address this key problem, we have come up with a new product that we have been working on all year now: AccessCtrl. AccessCtrl is a digital access management system with smart locks that manages and controls user access. The hardware consists of an electromechanical lock containing several components, all combined with software.
How does our smart door lock work?
As mentioned above, AccessCtrl consists of several components that can be categorized into hardware and software. Entrance doors are protected by locks, the smart locks, which users can open using their activated keys (NFC card or the AccessCtrl app on a smartphone). In the background, a web application, i.e. a desktop application, is used by an administrator to add keys, coworkers and select hierarchies of groups and areas. Individuals can be managed, keys can be assigned, users and groups can be given access rights, and users can be added to groups. The goal of this system is to ensure that the permissions and access rights set up in the web application are reflected in the concrete elements.
What steps does the customer go through in the AccessCtrl workflow?
We distinguish between two phases that are necessary for a successful AccessCtrl workflow. First, the setup phase: This is the onboarding phase for new customers, i.e. the process of digitally and physically installing all the elements that need to be set up once.
Then the operational phase: After setup, this is the phase where users are added to the system and keys are configured. Cards are also assigned to users, and access rights are granted to assigned areas or groups.