Reception is a visitor's first contact with your organization, and it is also where control over access is won or lost. Hamilton Visitor keeps a complete register of arrivals, smooths the arrival itself through pre-registration, and gives both reception and security an immediate answer to everyday questions.
What you can do every day
Everything starts before the visit. As a host, you pre-register your guest with the arrival date, the company and the purpose of the visit: on the day, reception only has to confirm the arrival. You then follow your visits, your packages and the delegations you have granted from your own space, without calling reception.
At the front desk, expected visitors appear in a list where you simply find the person to check them in, print their badge and notify their host. Unannounced visitors are registered directly. The exit is recorded in the same way, with the badge handed back, and a waiting list makes busy periods manageable without losing anyone.
Around this journey, reception handles everything that comes with it: vehicles and parking spaces, the reception and then the delivery of parcels and mail against signature, the booking and tracking of taxis, and the records of visitors and companies that come back regularly. External contractors present over long periods are tracked specifically, as are the mandatory documents whose expiry dates and renewals must be watched.
On sites with regulated access, visits and access requests go through a validation circuit, and restricted zone access relies on exceptional passes granted case by case. Resident badges and their link with access control are managed in the same place.
Finally, several screens answer the most frequent questions in seconds: who is currently on site, is this person still present, who owns this badge or this vehicle. Dashboards, statistics and visit history complete the picture for reporting and traceability needs.
What the administrator sets up
The groundwork is the description of places: sites, buildings, floors, counters and parkings, then the locations and restricted zones that condition access. Types then describe your real situations, whether visit types, accepted identity documents, vehicles, messages or carriers.
Templates matter a great deal, because they are what your visitors see. Badge, label and invitation templates are designed directly in the application, as are email templates and signatures. Validation rules and validator groups define who arbitrates what before arrival.
The setup also covers people and their rights: residents, companies, departments and services, the delegations granted to residents, the companies hosted on your site and their staff, and users with their rights groups. Everyday objects have their configuration too: parcels, lockers, keys, lone-worker devices, taxi companies and ride statuses. Bulk imports and duplicate cleanup finally make it possible to start quickly and to keep reliable data.
What connects to your environment
Hamilton Visitor interfaces with Microsoft Graph and your mail server for invitations and alerts, and with your other applications through the Hamilton API. The access control integration, with its authorization profiles, gives the visitor's badge exactly the rights intended, for the duration intended.
The reception desk is equipped to your needs: workstations, tablets and self-service kiosks on one side, identity document scanners, cameras, biometric readers and signature pads on the other. These peripherals are declared and tested by the administrator before going live. Portal menus can also be adapted per site group, so that each establishment only sees what concerns it.
Where to start
If you receive visitors, see "Pre-register a visit as a host" then "Follow your visits, packages and delegations as a host". If you work at the front desk, see "Check in and register visitors at the front desk" then "Check out visitors and manage the waiting list" and "Search the directory and identify who is on site".
If you are preparing the rollout, start with "Set up sites, buildings, floors, counters and parkings" then "Design badge, label and invitation templates" in the Hamilton Visitor administrator guides.