The best of 2024: Envoy's year in review

As we wrap up 2024, it’s a great time to reflect on one of the defining trends of this year: the need for clearer, more accurate workplace data. Businesses everywhere are looking for ways to not only make their physical spaces a safer place to be in but also a place where employees (visiting, temporary, or full-time) can do their best work.

At Envoy, we’re dedicated to delivering solutions that meet these needs. Our mission is simple: to secure the physical workplace and create a positive, productive experience for everyone who walks through your doors. We’re excited to share some of the top features we launched this year that will do just that.

Greater visibility and control for admins

This year, we focused on giving admins more oversight and control to help them run their workplaces smoothly. To help you stay on top of your access control integrations and ensure up-to-date data, we introduced data inactivity alerts. Now, if badge events aren’t received within 10 business hours, admins get automatic notifications in Envoy and via email. We also made it easier to manage employee information—at both location-specific and global levels—by enabling you to view and filter by more fields when viewing employee directories.

Additionally, we launched the Access Event log, which gives admins a clear view of badge events, complete with employee names, timestamps, and integration details. And for those using Google Workspace, syncing employee directories just got more powerful, with attributes like job title, manager, and remote status now updated every 24 hours.

Smarter decisions with actionable, contextual workplace data

Leveraging workplace data became even easier this year. With the ability to import employee data via CSV, admins can include fields like primary location, manager, and remote status for richer analytics and targeted communication. To help you better understand how your workplace is being used, we added the ability to see space usage data for specific rooms and desks. We also introduced a global attendance overview, offering aggregated data across all your locations so you can track weekly attendance trends and onsite policy compliance. Finally, our new Attendance Dashboard makes it easy to visualize trends over time, monitor visiting employees, and compare data against headcounts—all in one place.

Cost-effective front desk coverage

This year, we introduced Envoy's Virtual Front Desk (VFD) to help you offset limited resources, remotely staff lean offices, and supplement security and compliance needs. When visitors or employees need assistance at an unstaffed lobby or secondary entrance, they can use VFD to connect with a real person for prompt support. Throughout the year, we worked on improving this new solution to provide better experiences for callers and receptionists.

With virtual call status in Slack and Microsoft Teams, calls routed to either channel now show real-time statuses like "Incoming," "In Progress," or "Missed." To make sure you always have coverage at your front desk, you can also set hours of operation for your Virtual Front Desk kiosks. This will allow you to align call availability with shift changes, lunch breaks, or after-hours coverage. And for a limited time, you can try out Virtual Front Desk for free through the end of January.

Efficient emergency response

Keeping your teams safe during emergencies became even more of a necessity with the introduction of new legislation, like California Senate Bill 553 (SB 553). With targeted emergency notifications, admins can select SCIM groups based on departments, teams, or shifts to send more precise alerts. We also expanded emergency management to the web with desktop emergency tools, making it possible to create, send, and track notifications right from the Envoy dashboard. And to make sure that everyone is accounted for during a critical situation, employees and visitors can mark themselves safe in real time.

More options for visitor emails

We made the visitor experience more customizable. Now, you can upload legal documents as PDFs for sign-in flows. This saves everyone time and makes it easier to maintain consistency with all company requirements. To help you create a guest experience that's more aligned with your brand, we added more options to customize visitor emails, including layouts, fonts, and content blocks. We also made coordinating with larger groups simpler by allowing multiple hosts on group invites.

Employee empowerment

This year, another one of our primary focuses was developing better tools for managing your schedules and attendance. The Envoy mobile app now shows weekly attendance averages, making it easy for employees to track how often they’re onsite. They also can see where and when they’re scheduled to come to the office.

Android users also benefit from an updated schedule view, allowing them to see past check-ins and future reservations at a glance. These updates make it simpler for employees to plan their workdays and stay connected to the workplace.

Looking ahead to 2025

We built these features with you—and your feedback—in mind. Your needs have been our north star as we continue to build a platform that helps you design safer, more efficient, and more adaptable workplaces. From streamlining space management to enhancing admin controls, everything we shipped aimed to make that a reality. Here’s to another year of growth, innovation, and thriving workplaces!

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Try Envoy for free and see how our platform can benefit your workplace. You can also visit our changelog to stay up-to-date with the latest features and updates. Want to dive deeper? Check out Envoy Academy for over 30 video courses designed for global, location, and front desk admins.