Melissa Jacobs, Product Manager at Powell Tronics, is pleased to announce that its in-house development team has recently completed a fully integrated service with Microsoft's Active Directory and Impro's ImproNet access control system.
It was installed at Somerset College in the Western Cape, a school with both boys' and girls' boarding houses. All students and staff are loaded on to the Windows Active Directory and it was important for the efficient functioning of the school to have a single, accurate database to control users. It was imperative to the school that if a user's Active Directory login details were no longer valid, then access to the computer laboratory, as well as the boarding houses, should be simultaneously disabled.
For these reasons, the client chose the Impronet Access control solution with Windows Active Directory integration to control the database of active users via biometric access on the doors.
The benefit of using this system is that all of the hard work has already been done in Windows Active Directory. A grouping for the students was already set up in Active Directory, so there was no duplication in implementation. Additional consideration was needed for cleaners and contractors in terms of access control. User groups had to be added for those people who were not already loaded onto Active Directory.
A specification was drawn up and, on approval, the application was designed and implemented. The client set milestones, which were readily achieved by the contractor/service provider, Cape Town-based Integratek, and assisted by Powell Tronics, resulting in the speedy implementation of the solution.
The aim of the solution, besides controlling access, was to eliminate issuing keys to staff, as replacements were quite costly. Using biometrics was therefore an obvious option. The client admits that timing of the implementation was of the utmost importance, as one had to consider that, although all student and staff information was integrated into the Impronet database, enrolment of fingerprint templates still had to be undertaken. This proved to be time-consuming, as only one enrolment station was used.
Biometric access control using the Morpho Biometric terminals/readers at the computer laboratory provided the client with a good overview of the seamless nature of the integration implementation. The client has confirmed that all their exceeded expectations were met.
The benefits of a fully integrated solution as above can be enjoyed by any industry.
Provided by: Powell Tronics
Tel: +27 (0)21 448 0156
E-mail: marketing@powelltronics.com
www: www.p-tron.com
Installed By: Integratek
Tel: +27 (0)21 914 8488
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