Visual WebAccess® offers new web technology with many benefits
by Heinz Roth

primion's browser-based access control solution shows the way to the future.

With the new Visual WebAccess® product, primion offers a total web-based access control solution. It is an innovative further development of Visual Access®, primion's Windows-based solution that for many years now has enjoyed a worldwide success. The result of this development work is a future-safe software package that can be integrated into any IT structures.

Using the newest technologies, primion's developers have created a java-based solution, which can operate on all platforms and on all operating systems. This, of course, offers their customers a whole raft of advantages including:

• A significant reduction in administrative and operational overheads for the company and its associates since the software can be made available to all Internet and Intranet users thanks to the consistent use of web technologies.
  
  
• There is no need for the IT department to commit valuable and often scarce resources to the maintenance and update of client installations, as no client software has to be installed.
  
  
• There are no integration issues now or in the future because of the use of platform-independent web technology.
  
  
• With the workflow scenarios, all employees can be very efficiently integrated into the correction process, allowing them to assume ownership of their own data.

The system can handle up to 250,000 cardholders and is scaleable to match the current requirements of the user. As such, it is just as suitable for smaller organisations as for large multi-national, multi-site corporations.

Using the open HTML source code, the user can customise screen layouts on-line, to meet the organisation's requirements. At the heart of the system, there is one of a selection of standard, professional SQL databases such as Oracle, IBM DB2, MS-SQL Server or Borland InterBase.

Visual WebAccess® supports all ID standards, all proximity technologies as well as biometric recognition systems and since May 2003, the primion subsidiary in Graz, Austria has been developing readers, exclusively for primion.

The reader program covers models with read distances from 2cm to 60cm, built around three principal proximity technologies, Hitag, Mifare and Legic.

The system enables the integration of many different software options such as Visitor Administration, Cardholder Histories, Card Design and Creation, extensive Event Control and Alarm Management, a universal Import/Export Generator to enable data exchange over different interfaces and in different data formats as well as interfaces to several different Building Management Systems.

Workflows bring increased efficiency

Some of the exciting system expansions that Visual WebAccess® offers include the integrated Visitor Management with workflow pre-booking of known visitor appointments and also the assignment of extended access rights, with the integration of management hierarchy structures for the approval of such workflow requests.

The application of access rights is made easier through the fact that Location definitions, including full address data and a photograph, can be allocated to physical readers and the zones they are assigned to. In this way, a cardholder who needs extended access rights for a particular building for a specified length of time for example, only has to define the location and the timeframe and the system then takes care of the actual access rights that are needed, including any additional rights that are needed to get to the location in question. The cardholder no longer needs an in depth knowledge of how the system has been set up.

It is also possible to set up a complex yet comfortable Event Control mechanism with integrated Process Visualisation. This allows you to combine different events with each other and define different follow-on actions that should be triggered when an event or a specific series of events occur.

For example, if Webcams are installed as part of the whole system, a specific event or events can cause defined cameras to picture the location(s) where the event(s) occurred and store the pictures and/or send them as e-mail attachments to security staff, for example.

With the Process Visualisation, you can also display building graphics onscreen with integrated alarm points.

Visual WebAccess® can also, of course, be connected with fire and intruder alarm systems and through the Alarm Management System you can define up to 99 different levels of alarm priority.

In terms of hardware, the IDT Door Controller Panels offer unparalleled levels of flexibility. The software can support almost 10,000 panels each of which in turn can control up to 128 location and time-based zones or access levels. This gives you more than enough combination options and places no practical limits on the local control and monitoring of access.

Economies of scale through integration

Visual WebAccess® and its sister program Visual WebTime® can be integrated in both Building Management and HR Management Systems. primion also offers a certified SAP interface, enabling you to communicate directly with the SAP R/3 product and integrate with the time management module offered there.

The performance scope of the door panels supports many different hardware structures. In the case of installations in multi-tenanted buildings, they can manage data from different companies separately, they are modularly scaleable up to capacities of several thousand cardholders and they can be equipped with all commonly used communication interfaces. Last but by no means least, they currently support reader technologies from some 45 different reader and manufacturer types making them an ideal way of upgrading existing other-manufacturer installations, without having to replace all the existing readers, in order to allow your customers to enjoy the benefits of primion's new and powerful Visual WebAccess® software.