Archives: December 27, 2013

Security in Apartment Complexes – Concerns

Security is one of the main reasons why people prefer to buy (or rent) a flat in Apartment Complexes and Gated Communities. By design, Apartments are expected to offer better security as Apartment Associations can afford to hire security agencies to provide round the clock security in the property. There are many aspects to the security in Apartment Complexes – the key one being tracking entry and exit of Visitors into the Apartment premises.

Most apartments employ a “visitor’s register” – a log book where a visitor is expected to make an entry to record details of the flat she is visiting, and the purpose of the visit etc. This is surely one of the dispensable processes as it practically makes no difference if an entry is made or not. The entry does not validate anything from the visitor. Even worse, the log maintained is never audited for any accuracy – any attempts to do that will generally prove futile as data is illegible, incomplete and mostly inaccurate in almost all the societies. The security staff just ensures that the entry is made as a routine with out really validating its accuracy. Also, due to the paper-based nature of the log, its not possible to analyse the data. For example, things like identifying frequent visitors, list of visitors to a given flat in last 6 months is almost impossible for committee members.

Gatekeeper by ApnaComplex – Introduction

Gatekeeper is an innovative solution which addresses the challenges mentioned above regarding visitors tracking. Gatekeeper offers the following functionality:

• Easy interface that can be operated by security staff (for example, the access to the android app is controlled by PIN number instead of typing complex passwords every time)
• Ability to record visitors – automatically pre-populate details of frequent visitors based on the mobile number
• Take picture of visitor’s vehicle or visitor
• Send a verification code to the visitor’s phone number to ensure the phone number is valid
• Quickly look up residents of the flat the visitor is meeting – this helps in validation – also SMS can be sent to the residents with details of visitors
• Generate visitors pass and record exits

The most important aspect of Gatekeeper is its ability to run stand alone without internet connection and sync up with master database as and when internet connection is made available. Most societies have difficulty in getting internet connection at the security gate for various reasons. While one of the reason is surely cost related to providing an internet connection, the other reason for not enabling internet access to security is a potential misuse of the internet facility.

This is where Gatekeeper’s unique advantage comes in. Gatekeeper can work with out internet connection most of the time. Gatekeeper needs internet connection at the time of installation to populate the client side application with master data as a part of setup. The master data for a given community is picked up from the ApnaComplex server. Once setup, Gatekeeper need not have access to internet. Gatekeeper can store all visitor’s details on the tablet / mobile device – when internet is not available. Once internet is made available (for example, by bringing the tablet in vicinity of the society office’s wifi) Gatekeeper will automatically initiate sync up of all visitors passed to the server.

Gatekeeper is exciting. How do I get one for my society?

Please contact our team with your interest. Please do not forget to mention if you are an existing customer of ApnaComplex! We will get back to you on the costing and how you can get started.

Yet another instance of true innovation from ApnaComplex.com – be it bringing real-time balance sheet, or having bio-metric devices for staff attendance, or making society software accessible on mobile phones – we continue to raise the bar in this space!