About the Emergency Plans
Everyone aims to avoid emergency situations but the reality is that they can occur. If disaster were to strike, physical access to your property will likely be at the forefront of your mind. Genea enables creating your own emergency plans and operate them within your admin web dashboard or through mobile apps.
What is an Emergency Lockdown?
An Emergency Lockdown is a function that can be utilized to lockdown the access points at your property simultaneously. During an emergency lockdown, all doors within a plan being lock downed will be inaccessible, and all active credentials will cease to grant access until the lockdown is lifted. Specific credentials can be exempted to work during emergency lockdown, if needed.
What is an Emergency Hold Open?
An Emergency Hold Open is a function that can be utilized to unlock the access points at your property simultaneously. During an emergency hold open, free ingress and egress will be available to everyone, and users will not need to scan valid credentials in order to gain access to any given door(s) or gate(s).
How to create an Emergency Plan?
1) Navigate to the "Emergency Plans" from your Genea's location view or from Global Overview. Click "+Add".
2) Enter the details. Name of the plan, select the location and add a description. Click "Save".
Adding doors to the emergency plan:
1) Click "+Add", under the doors section.
2) Select door and the trigger state. Click Save.
Trigger States for doors:
Lockdown without REX (No Access, REX active) : This trigger state ensures no access is allowed during the lockdown but the door can be used from the inside, using a request-to-exit button.
Lockdown with REX (No Access, No REX) : In this state, the access to the door is disabled, and the door remains locked with no request-to-exit capability.
Hold Open : This trigger state provides unlimited access mode and the door remains unlocked.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
The state of the doors will get back to normal access mode when the plan is reverted. To know the door’s normal access mode, please navigate to the door detail page and check for Access mode under the “Door Access” section.
Adding control points to the emergency plan:
You can also add control points aka outputs to your emergency plans to make them operate when they are triggered. For example, let say you have a strobe light that you would like to operate when the plan is triggered, then the corresponding strobe light needs to be configured under control point section of the plan. To do so,
1) Click "+Add", under the Control Points section.
2) Select the control point and the trigger state and click Save.
Trigger States for control points:
ON : The control point will stay in its ON state when the plan is triggered. The control point will automatically be reverted to OFF, when the plan is reverted.
OFF : The control point will stay in its OFF state when the plan is triggered. The control point will automatically be reverted to ON, when the plan is reverted.
Single Pulse : The control point will go in its ON state when the plan is triggered, will remain ON for the duration configured as "Pulse ON Time" and will turn OFF after the pulse ON duration is over or plan is reverted, whichever is early.
Repeating Pulse : This trigger state is defined by the pulse on-time and the pulse off-time, and the repeat count.
Adding a physical trigger to the emergency plan:
Configuring physical triggers is a method to initiate an emergency plan through activating a hardwired device. The hardwired device intended to trigger a plan can be configured as monitor point in your Genea dashboard. To add a physical trigger to the emergency plan, follow the steps below:
1) Navigate to "Physical Trigger" tab from your plan. Click "+Add".
2) Select the monitor point, trigger state and click Save.
Scheduling an emergency plan
You can set up an emergency plan to activate and deactivate at designated intervals. Within the scheduled time period, any doors included in the plan will switch to an triggered state and then return to their previous state according to the specified schedule.
1) To schedule an emergency plan, navigate to "Schedule" tab from your plan. Click "+Add".
2) Enter a title for the schedule, provide an optional description, specify the date range, and set the time interval. After that, click the "Save" button.
Invocating the emergency plan:
An emergency plan can be invoked in two different ways:
1. Via the cloud button from Genea admin dashboard
2. Via the physical trigger, if configured within the plan.
Invocating the plan with Genea cloud button:
1) Global Admins, location admins, or security personnel can invocate the emergency plans from Genea admin dashboard or Genea mobile apps. Security roles can only trigger or revert a plan and view the plan. They will not have the right to manage the plans.
2) To trigger a plan, simply click on the "Blue button" against the emergency plan, that you wish to trigger.
3) Once all preferences added to the plan are triggered, the Blue button will turn Red.
4) A plan can be reverted in a similar way by clicking on the Red "Revert" button.
Exempting users' card access during the lockdown
There may be fire drill personnel or doctors or VIPs in your organization, that you would like to exclude and would want their credentials to work on the doors during the lockdown. Let's say, you have an access group for whom you want the access credentials to work during the lockdown, ensure that those employees are in an access group and those groups can be added under Lockdown exemption. Credentials of the members from exempted access group will work on doors during the lockdown. However, the user credentials should have enough rights to locked down doors and should be within the schedule for the cards to work.
Follow the steps below to exclude access groups from the Lockdown:
1) Navigate to Emergency Plans > Exemptions in your admin dashboard.
2) Under "Exempt Access", add the access groups that you want to exclude from lockdown.
IMPORTANT NOTES:
1. Exempted cards will work only if the doors are locked down with "Lockdown without REX (No Access, REX active)" mode.
2. It is highly recommended to assign an access group with "all doors" and "24x7" schedules to members to be exempted during the lockdown so that their credentials can work at any door and any time during an emergency.
3. If doors are configured to different plans and multiple plans are triggered together, then the door will operate as per the latest command received. It is recommended to create and operate your custom plans wisely to avoid conflicts.
4. The old Mercury controllers may require a reset to enable exemptions. If you face any issues in getting the exempted cards to work on the controllers, please contact Genea support. We will help you in resetting your controller and get the feature to work.
If you would like to learn more about this feature, please send inquiries to acsupport@getgenea.com.