Supercharge visitor management: Integrations with apps you already love

What strikes you first when you walk up to the front desk of any business? You’re getting your first taste of what the business is like. A tech-forward company should have a sleek and efficient visitor management system that signs you in and connects you to your contact effortlessly. That on-brand experience presents a company in its finest light—right when it counts the most. And that’s where having a powerful sign-in app makes the difference.

The days of signing visitors in with a logbook and a 'hello my name is' badge are over. Efficiency is the new hospitality. But the challenge front-desk professionals face is it’s neither fast nor particularly efficient to track down employees and keep their workplace safe anymore.

Thanks to mobile technology and apps that make working anywhere a breeze, employees could be literally anywhere when a guest arrives. So meeting that need for speed is now about reaching employees wherever they are, and even more importantly, whatever they’re doing.

Integrations with the technology employees already use

Chances are, employees are busy with meetings, collaborative sessions, or working heads-down away from their desks. So how can the front desk staff find them quickly and efficiently and still project a flawless image of the brand? Envoy’s integrations with the most popular office apps reach employees instantly. Let’s take a look.

Notifications: A sign-in app that truly delivers

Companies have come to rely on apps like Slack, Google Hangouts, and Workplace by Facebook to host internal chats, so Envoy offers integrations with all of them and more. When a guest signs in, Envoy automatically pings the host with the chat app of choice. At MailChimp, for example, Operations Admin Manager Sharon Teng has high praise for Envoy’s integration with HipChat. “We use HipChat to stay in touch internally, so to get visitor notifications through the same channel keeps communication simple,” Sharon said. “We love that Envoy integrates with our favorite tools, making it easy for us to incorporate it into the systems we already rely on every day.”

Envoy also integrates with:

• Cisco WebEx Teams
• Microsoft Teams
• Office 365 
• Salesforce Chatter
• Skype

Directory services: Integrations to manage the changing faces of organizations

Tracking employees can be a full-time job, especially in enterprise environments. Thousands of employees onboard and offboard, change offices, go on leave, and get promoted every day. Envoy’s directory services integrations keep tabs on all these changes and automatically updates employee records to keep visitor management running smoothly.

Envoy has integrations for:

• Active Directory
• Centrify
• Google
• Microsoft Azure AZ
• Okta
• OneLogin
• SAML

File storage: Store NDAs and other key documents when guests use the sign-in app

Keeping intellectual property secure is as much the responsibility of lobby staff as it is IT’s. It’s everyone’s job to stay vigilant, so privileged information stays that way. Envoy’s integrations with file storage apps provide the first defense by incorporating NDAs and other legal documents into the sign-in process. With every visitor tied to their records and every document readily accessible through Envoy, companies can streamline signing a visitor in, handling paperwork and storing documents in a couple of minutes.

The California-based company Headspace, whose meditation app keeps customers centered, discovered Envoy when looking for a visitor management system that would scale with their monumental growth. Remaining calm and collected is essential to their branding, so there could be no sense of anxiety as visitors checked in. Francis Aquino, Workplace Experience Manager at Headspace, enthused, “It beats keeping stacks of NDAs at the front desk and trying to keep track of all the physical copies.” Pure Zen.

Envoy file storage integrations:

• Box
• Dropbox
• Egnyte
• Google Drive
• One Drive

Sales and Marketing: Going big with visitor management

Things get exciting around the front desk when companies host live events. You might host a user group meeting, sales conference, or maybe an on-site trade show. In any case, the front desk staff is charged with checking in a lot of people, fast. Fortunately, Envoy handles large-scale visitor management with integrations the sales and marketing teams already use to invite and track the guests.

Is Eventbrite managing your invitations and RSVPs? Envoy Visitors is ready. This integration allows employees to download guest data directly into Envoy before the event, so every guest is ready for a seamless sign-in and a warm welcome.

Working together with email services like MailChimp, employees can add visitors to any email list and keep in touch with follow-up emails. That way leads move further down the funnel, sales and marketing can easily connect to members of the media, and the company can create customized and targeted conversations.

If your company manages leads in SalesForce, Envoy integrates with that, too. As in-person visitors sign-in, Envoy turns their information into a new object. Salespeople can flag individuals for further contact without any need to enter data manually into SalesForce: it’s already captured when each person signed in.

Wi-Fi: Nothing says hospitality like an internet connection

When visitors enter your environment, first requests are usually some water and the Wi-Fi password. Of course, visitor management personnel are happy to offer up both, but the truth is, handing out the Wi-Fi password to everyone who comes in can be a security risk.

Network connectivity company Aruba wanted to integrate with Envoy to provide guest Wi-Fi they could track. With the Envoy integration, more in-depth information was accessible with no additional effort. “Every guest has a unique code, so we know who they are and what kinds of things they’re doing on our network," explained Rick Reid, Office of Customer and Employee Experience at Aruba. "So, if a visitor does something nefarious, we have an audit trail for that. It doesn’t matter whether we get 1 or 500 visitors per day.”

Envoy has integrations for all the major connectivity provisioners your company may use, including:

• Aerohive Hive Manager
• Cisco ISE
• Cisco Meraki
• Mist
• Ruckus Wireless
• Ubiquity Unify

Building security: Visitor Management is on the front line

More than anything else, the IT and Security teams help to ensure that everyone on the premises is safe and in compliance with various laws and regulations. Have you ever considered the vital role a sign-in app plays in making this happen? App integrations like Avigilon, Everbridge, S2, and C-Cure 9000 make sure that every visitor is cataloged into event logs. Companies can automate assigning the right security credentials and clearances with every sign-in.

Envoy also integrates with Visual Compliance, which automatically screens visitors against dozens of watchlists - from state to international watchlists, financial and medical watchlists and more.

With the Openpath integration, you can even control visitors’ physical and online access from within Envoy.

Which integrations do you need?

Checking a few boxes, taking a picture, and signing a name on an iPad is such a common activity. But when you have Envoy and some favorite integrations onboard, visitor management becomes a powerful tool to reach employees, assign Wi-Fi credentials, track guest activity, keep them in compliance, secure your IP and even build custom email lists—all with just a few taps. That’s visitor hospitality—on brand.