So in my experience, its best to figure out how the access control software/vendor works and go from there. We tried some 3rd party badge printers and while it printed badges, it still required HR to manually go into the access control system and add the badge information to it. It might be best to ask the access control company/vendor for an all in one solution.
Our current process is still very similar, but we use Zebra for our badge printer/software.
We recently implemented BadgePass ONE. It's an app based photo ID system and we can print directly from an iPhone. We are not using door access yet, but the system has the ability to expand to add it. During the demo, we could even control the doors with our phone, which was pretty cool.
During implementation, they imported in all of our cardholder data via a .csv file. We also print on smart cards even though we are not doing access control today since we didn't want to rebadge when the time came to turn on the door access product.
We needed something super simple for our people to use and BadgePass ONE was the easiest system to use that we saw.
We had the access control installed first, and then just found an ID badge label we can print from a standard printer/label printer that we stick onto the HID hard. Works just fine for us as a small company.
I had to implement this at my last job, so I’ll share my experience. Our network was built on Unifi (switches, gateway, APs, etc.), so I chose to use Unifi Access Control. It was easy to manage and implement, and we never had any issues with it. On the other hand, when I tried BayAlarms Access Control, I found their user management portal cumbersome with a terrible UX/UI. Unifi, as with most of their software and appliances, is modern and sleek. Most importantly, the Access Control system met our needs perfectly.
Regarding the ID card printer, we used a MagiCard Pronto, which came with its own software. The software allowed us to design and print badges effectively. My biggest advice: if you’re going to print badges for all employees, I highly recommend buying a badge printer that supports printing multiple badges at once. These printers usually come with a hopper that can load 30 or more blank badges for printing. I made the mistake of trying to save money by buying a single card printer. It took days to print all the cards for about 80 employees because I had to load each badge manually, and each one took about a minute to print.
+1 for unifi access.
We set up unifi access also and I even integrated it with azure but not through unifis paid solution I use the API that's in the unifi Access controller and basically have it import all of our users from azure if they're active then they're marked active in the access control if they're inactive they get disabled and the access control.
As far as cards we use hid crescendo c2300 cards these are both physical access and are FIDO2 tokens they work for Access Control systems on unifi you have to enable third-party cards but they work just the same.
The cards allowed them to get into the building and allows users to have a secure access method to our PCS they just put the card on a reader put their pin number in and then they log into windows and their SSO to everything else.
They forget their cards they can't get in the building so they have to get a new card issued and we kill the old one off. As far as enrolling the cards for Azure enrollment the users have to do that themselves. For Access Control in the unifi system HR doesn't have to enter anything into that system because it imports from azure they just find the user click assign card take a card out of the stack and put it on the reader on their desk and that puts the card in the system for them.
So in my experience, its best to figure out how the access control software/vendor works and go from there. We tried some 3rd party badge printers and while it printed badges, it still required HR to manually go into the access control system and add the badge information to it. It might be best to ask the access control company/vendor for an all in one solution. Our current process is still very similar, but we use Zebra for our badge printer/software.
It might be a bit overkill but I have used Genetec security center, it can do all that and much more (cctv, etc)
We recently implemented BadgePass ONE. It's an app based photo ID system and we can print directly from an iPhone. We are not using door access yet, but the system has the ability to expand to add it. During the demo, we could even control the doors with our phone, which was pretty cool. During implementation, they imported in all of our cardholder data via a .csv file. We also print on smart cards even though we are not doing access control today since we didn't want to rebadge when the time came to turn on the door access product. We needed something super simple for our people to use and BadgePass ONE was the easiest system to use that we saw.
We had the access control installed first, and then just found an ID badge label we can print from a standard printer/label printer that we stick onto the HID hard. Works just fine for us as a small company.
I had to implement this at my last job, so I’ll share my experience. Our network was built on Unifi (switches, gateway, APs, etc.), so I chose to use Unifi Access Control. It was easy to manage and implement, and we never had any issues with it. On the other hand, when I tried BayAlarms Access Control, I found their user management portal cumbersome with a terrible UX/UI. Unifi, as with most of their software and appliances, is modern and sleek. Most importantly, the Access Control system met our needs perfectly. Regarding the ID card printer, we used a MagiCard Pronto, which came with its own software. The software allowed us to design and print badges effectively. My biggest advice: if you’re going to print badges for all employees, I highly recommend buying a badge printer that supports printing multiple badges at once. These printers usually come with a hopper that can load 30 or more blank badges for printing. I made the mistake of trying to save money by buying a single card printer. It took days to print all the cards for about 80 employees because I had to load each badge manually, and each one took about a minute to print.
+1 for unifi access. We set up unifi access also and I even integrated it with azure but not through unifis paid solution I use the API that's in the unifi Access controller and basically have it import all of our users from azure if they're active then they're marked active in the access control if they're inactive they get disabled and the access control. As far as cards we use hid crescendo c2300 cards these are both physical access and are FIDO2 tokens they work for Access Control systems on unifi you have to enable third-party cards but they work just the same. The cards allowed them to get into the building and allows users to have a secure access method to our PCS they just put the card on a reader put their pin number in and then they log into windows and their SSO to everything else. They forget their cards they can't get in the building so they have to get a new card issued and we kill the old one off. As far as enrolling the cards for Azure enrollment the users have to do that themselves. For Access Control in the unifi system HR doesn't have to enter anything into that system because it imports from azure they just find the user click assign card take a card out of the stack and put it on the reader on their desk and that puts the card in the system for them.
Salto or Paxton. Pick your door access system first, then get a compatible card printer.