Carlos Almansa on Nov 2, 2014

Hacking Impact Hub King's Cross

Door panel, electric locker, card reader, battery, rj45, and wireless. These are some of the items you need to integrate door access systems. On top of that, these types of systems may as well be used to empower the connections between the community members of your coworking space. When people move into a community as new member, meeting people can be challenging. We at Nexudus have been working for a while on tools and software to help members know each other, link social networks and publish skills and experiences.

When you run a coworking space, it is important not only to know who is coming into the space but also how your members are spending their allowances, free-time, and access to the different resources. Some spaces have a reception desk where the host can always see and check people into the space. In other cases, space managers give some members an access key or there may be permanent members who are in charge of opening and closing the space.

Although there is a usual sense of trust in the community of these spaces, it is also important to keep the space secure as long as it is open to people outside the community. It is difficult to avoid all the risks, especially in larger spaces. Still, there are different reasons for coworking spaces to use a door access control system. Some of them are:

Limit when or for how long members can access the space: if you offer price plans which limit the number of hours or days members can use the space, linking an access control system to Nexudus Spaces can help you keep on top of these times. When a member runs out of time, we automatically revoke access and cancel any cards they may have been given.
Detailed Reporting: once your access control system is linked to Nexudus Spaces, you will be able to produce detailed reports with accurate statistics on how and when your space is being used.
Connect your community: People at the reception desk will be able to see who goes in and out of the space, their picture and current state, for example if they owe any money. The check-in system is also linked to the member directory so that people in your space can see on real-time who is in the space and their profiles.
To give the members more freedom: Members can have 24/7 access in some spaces. To do that, you may want to provide them with access cards and let them into the space at times when there are no hosts or members of staff.

These are some of the reasons to introduce an access control system in your space and link it to your Nexudus Spaces account. You may be concerned about the cost of these solutions; however, there are a wide range of providers which offer many different pricing scales. Just drop us a line and we’ll be more than happy to send you some detailed information about the different suppliers we work with.

One of the most recent installations we have done, sits minutes away from the well-known train station King’s Cross St. Pancras in central London, at Impact Hub King’s Cross. During the last few months, we have been working very closely with their team to introduce many new processes and try to improve existing ones. It has been a journey where every party has learned a lot and we feel incredibly proud of how things are turning out.

The latest addition to this journey, has been linking their main swipe card access system, used to access and leave the building, to their Nexudus Spaces account.

Front desk staff can program new cards and assign them to members using an USB reader which talks directly to Nexudus Spaces. For those members in a price plan, the system understands when and for how long they can be in the space, so access is granted and revoked automatically based on the time left in each member account.

There is a reminder system which notifies members when they are about to run of time or if, by any chance, they left the building without checking out. Members are also able to buy additional credit online, directly from the members’ portal.

All in all, it has been a great experience for us, working with existing systems and legacy infrastructure is always challenging but, in this case, we had the help of an amazing team of people at Impact Hub King's Cross, who know their business inside out and made things pretty smooth for us!