Blog
12 WAYS TO OPEN A DOOR
If your door is an ordinary one, there is only one way to unlock it – with a key. But what if you use Door Cloud for your doors? It turns out there are no fewer than 11 additional ways to open a door! Let’s take a look!
1. MOBILE
Door Cloud’s philosophy is “Mobile first,” so let’s start with that. The most obvious way is quite simple. You download the app, request an invitation, get your credentials, and receive a list of doors you are allowed to open. From then on, you open the app, tap on a door from the list, and voilà, the door opens!
2. KEY LINK
Having a mobile app to open doors is perfectly fine for regular users. However, for one-time visitors or guests, the app might be overkill. For them, there’s a much simpler solution called Key Link. It is a web link that the host, a regular user, sends to guests to open doors. The guest receives the link on their mobile device, is directed to the door-opening web page, and taps OPEN.
3. REMOTE OPEN
Using a mobile app or Key Link, you don’t necessarily need to be at the door to open it. You may be able to let a coworker or cleaner enter while you’re away on a business trip. Depending on your organization’s policies, you may be allowed to open doors from anywhere or just from certain locations.
4. CARD
The most popular way to open an electronically controlled door is certainly by using a card or badge. You flash your card at the reader, and the door opens. It’s simple and fast—no mobile, no apps, accounts, or passwords—yet you need a card reader installed at the door. And, of course, you need to have your card with you.
5. NFC
When using a card, you obviously need to be at the door. Sometimes, that is exactly what we want. When using mobile, to ensure strictly local opening, the doors may be labeled with NFC tags. You flash the mobile phone at the tag, the app reads it from the background, and the door opens immediately. It works faster since there’s no need to handle the app.
6. NOTIFICATION
Another way to avoid handling the mobile app is to set up a door-approaching notification. Instead of unlocking the phone and opening the app, you just tap on the notification, and the door opens.
7. BIOMETRICS
If you don’t want to use a mobile phone or cards, you can have a biometric reader (such as a face reader) at your door. Some of these readers can identify you without any additional info, just by matching your face with a previously collected sample. Some readers need to be combined with cards or PIN codes. Some may require a card to carry your sample. Either way, you would need a biometric reader that emulates a card reader and perhaps also some management software that goes with it.
8. BLUETOOTH
When opening a door, the mobile phone communicates with the door controller via the internet, so both need to be online. If either is offline, you can still open doors via an auxiliary Bluetooth connection. That may take a couple of seconds longer than online opening, but it’s still okay as a backup.
9. LOCK & UNLOCK
As a Door Cloud admin, with sufficient management rights, you can unlock or lock doors permanently until you decide to resume normal operation.
10. SCHEDULED (UN)LOCK
Not only that, you can also set it up to happen automatically, so that doors get locked or unlocked during pre-programmed times.
11. TOGGLE
There is a completely different way to control doors called “Toggle Mode.” Instead of opening a door just for a couple of seconds, in toggle mode it stays open. The next access closes it back, and so on. Toggle mode is typically used for classrooms or meeting rooms where one person lets a group of people in and then locks the door when they leave.
There you have it, 11 additional ways to open a door with Door Cloud. Remember, you may still have a good old mechanical key stored somewhere safely, just in case. That would be the twelfth way. You can choose to use any of these methods—or even all of them. Also, note that you can freely combine all twelve of them for any door, any user, at any time.
