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To support higher education leaders in creating safe plans for reopening and maintaining healthy, secure campuses, Transact Campus has launched a self-service capacity management app. The app enables institutions to help control the number of individuals that enter a building at one time, as well as reduce physical touchpoints and manage social distancing requirements.

Transact Capacity Management is a self-service app that's part of a larger effort to help higher education institutions adhere to social distancing requirements and keep their students and staff safe on campus.

“Our client campuses need new ways to control the flow of their students in dining halls, bookstores, libraries, and more,” said Erica Bass, vice president of product management at Transact. "Transact is delivering new capabilities with our mobile solutions to best serve students, faculty, and staff, and overcome unique challenges presented by social distancing and contactless interaction requirements."

Capacity management is just the latest service in Transact Campus mobile app portfolio.

“Contactless payments and authorized access? Check. Mobile Ordering? Check," says Bass. "And now, our capacity management solution is helping campuses manage reservations for dining halls, book pickup times, and set limits for crowds to help institutions plan for managing their on-campus students.”

With Transact Capacity Management, institutions can manage windows of time for arrivals and max capacity at dining halls, residence halls, and other locations. In addition, students can schedule reservations for dining halls, campus move-in, course material pickups, and appointments with healthcare providers, advisors, and student help desk assistants. Universities also benefit by having control over capacity limits at campus events, requiring registration to estimate attendance, and staggering arrival time slots.

Transact’s COVID-19 Response Information provides additional resources such as the Five Strategies to Support a Safe Return to Campus eBook and solutions for higher education leaders to support the safe reopening of campuses. To learn more, visit Transact's COVID-19 resource page.

Trusted identities, payments and data protection provider, Entrust, has announced its new cloud-based, direct-to-card solution for physical and remote ID card issuance. The next generation Entrust Sigma series card printer has been built with today’s cloud environments in mind, leveraging encryption, trusted HSM technology and secure boot to issue highly secure credentials.

The new Sigma series card printer looks to deliver a seamless user experience across the issuance process for both desktop and remote printing. It eliminates frustrations associated with printer set-up by employing a modular design and an out-of-the-box implementation that takes less than 30 minutes for users to begin issuing credentials.

Equipped with cloud-based APIs, Sigma series card printers bring issuance to the cloud without additional hardware, enabling instant printing for physical IDs, badges and payment cards. Sigma series printers are also trusted Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices that can help ensure organizations and data are safe behind an intelligent network and enterprise-level protection.

On the printing side, the Sigma series offers capabilities like tactile impressions, as well as holographic and luster panel printing, that make it highly difficult for counterfeiters to alter or recreate cards. Additionally, features like an inline magnetic stripe and smart card encoding secure your cards during the printing process.

“Entrust has been a pioneer in direct to card identity issuance technology for decades, and our Sigma system takes it to a whole new level," says Tony Ball, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Instant Issuance at Entrust. "With our Sigma platform, we’re proud to deliver a best-in-class desktop credential issuance solution that’s designed to work completely and securely within a cloud environment, allowing higher education institutions to meet high-volume issuance demands without sacrificing security or ease of use."

Sigma systems offer the most advanced security architecture that keeps data protected at each step of the issuance process:

With an increasing number of employees working remotely, Sigma systems has also been built as both a physical and digital issuance platform. The Sigma system’s “Printer Dashboard” is available on mobile devices, allowing organizations to manage the card printer from anywhere, without being tied to a desktop.

“Whether your requirements demand an integrated, secure on-premises solution or a system that can grow with a distributed workforce via a secure cloud-hosted Identity Management offering, the Entrust Sigma solutions can meet your needs,” says Joe Franco, Director of Sales at Capture Technologies, an Entrust channel partner.

“Sigma is browser based and mobile ready and able to be deployed without the need for a heavy client to be installed," adds Franco. "The certificate based integrated security features should put to rest any concerns about using the cloud for identity issuance, or your printing solution being vulnerable to network attack.”

Sigma systems enable card issuers to pivot to a contactless ID issuance experience by supporting online photo submission and photo validation, card production, and card delivery to the user. Furthermore, the on-premise instant ID solution features a mobile enrollment functionality for added flexibility to issue IDs at various locations across a campus.

In this episode of CR80News Chats, we catch up with ColorID's David Stallsmith to talk about how ColorID has been helping universities tackle contact tracing and other COVID-19 related challenges. Contact tracing, in particular, is an emerging conversation for universities of all sizes, so we talk through some of the options available to campuses as they try to implement a contact tracing system that best suits their needs.

Following the arrival of COVID and its impact on the campus space, ColorID went back to its product portfolio to try and identify existing solutions that might have utility in this new normal. Among the products that stood out was JRNY, a cloud and mobile app-based identity platform. JRNY can be configured to function as a comprehensive COVID-19 campus management solution and support contact tracing efforts.

In addition to the information in this Chat, ColorID is hosting a FREE webinar with more details on the JRNY solution on Tuesday, Nov. 3 at 1:00 PM EST, and again on Tuesday, Nov. 10 at 1:00 PM EST.

Attendees will learn how JRNY employs real-time location services and analytics, as well as how JRNY ties in with existing campus infrastructure -- physical access control systems, transaction management and OneCard systems, Wi-Fi, dining, rec center, and housing -- to enable a university to build out an effective contact-tracing system.

A fleet of 20 Starship delivery robots began processing student orders at Oregon State University this week. The popular autonomous delivery robots are now serving OSU students, faculty and staff with contactless delivery across the university’s sprawling 500-acre campus.

According to an official university release, the arrival of Starship to Oregon State's Corvallis campus marks the first campus in the state to deploy autonomous delivery robots.

The decision to bring Starship to OSU long preceded the arrival of COVID-19, and was a service that Oregon State Housing & Dining Services and Memorial Union Retail Services was excited to add to its portfolio. The coronavirus did delay initial launch, but has also provided an added benefit to the service now as it helps to reduce contact between people during the ordering process.

“This was a long time coming,” says Kerry Paterson, director of residential dining and University Catering with UHDS. “We’d been considering contactless delivery for a while. This service is yet another way we can facilitate COVID protocols regulating restaurants.”

OSU is currently housing roughly 2,200 students in residence halls on the Corvallis campus, and the Starship robots are expected to slot in with OSU's other COVID guidelines in dining services. Other dining-specific safety measures at OSU include:

To help navigate new food service protocols as a result of COVID-19, Oregon State has expanded express and pick-up options, but the addition of robot delivery allows for even less density across OSU dining locations while still providing service to the campus community.

Starship robots have quickly become a recognizable presence on college campuses, with the roster of partnering institutions continuing to grow across the country. The robots have mapped the Corvallis campus using GPS and can deliver virtually anywhere on campus. Each robot can carry up to 20 pounds of food and use a combination of machine learning, artificial intelligence and on-board sensors to navigate on sidewalks and around obstacles.

When a customer places an order using the delivery app, they can select a location to meet their delivery robot. The customer will then receive a code in the app to unlock the robot when it arrives.

“You unlock it, get your food and then off it goes to get sanitized and prepare for another delivery,” says Paterson.

There is no cost to the university for the robots. Instead, a nominal delivery fee is added to each order.

“Delivery robots are an innovative way to help students with social distancing and they also make sense for a forward-thinking school like OSU,” says Ryan Tuohy, senior vice president of business development at Starship Technologies. “Our robots deliver day and night to get students what they need. We’re looking forward to becoming a part of campus life and helping to make daily life more convenient for everyone at OSU.”

The University of Georgia is now providing its online students with their own UGA OneCard complete with ID photo. The move will provide online students with the same credential as their on-campus peers, as well as provide digital learners with all of the benefits of the UGA OneCard.

According to an official university release, the UGA OneCard is the official identification card for students, faculty, staff, official campus visitors, and their dependents. In addition to featuring an ID photo, online students that apply for a UGA OneCard will have access to its accompanying student benefits, including access to professional conferences, discounts on shopping, events and programs. Many businesses also offer students discounts for services with a valid UGA student ID card.

"This is great news for our online students; the good part is that our students can now have a photo ID card instead of a non-photo ID Card. And, the process to obtain a card is the same,” says Sharon Shannon, Student Support Services & State Authorization Coordinator said.

Online students can order a UGA OneCard online at a cost of $30 for the first card. Students then navigate the online photo submission process by uploading a photo of a government-issued photo ID and capturing a passport-style headshot photo. Once approved, online students will receive an email with a payment link. After submitting payment, online students must provide a mailing address so that the university can ship the UGA OneCard.

"Having a photo ID card is important to our online students and makes them feel a part of the UGA community," says Shannon. "They’ve always had the same benefits, but it’s nice to have their photo on their UGA Card."

Maryville University has launched Transact Mobile Credential for its campus community, moving the Saints ID onto student mobile devices. Students, faculty, and staff can now add their Saints ID card to Apple Wallet or Google Pay to use their iPhone, Apple Watch, or Android device to access buildings on campus, purchase meals, and more.

According to an official university release, members of the Maryville community can now leave their physical wallets behind and access campus with just their mobile devices. The mobile Saints ID can now be used anywhere on the Maryville campus that the plastic ID card was previously accepted.

Students simply hold their smartphone or Apple Watch near a reader where physical student ID cards are accepted to access residence halls, libraries, and fitness center, as well as buy meals at campus dining locations, make purchases at the university store, and print documents.

“The Saints ID is part of our comprehensive digital transformation plan that will enhance the Maryville student experience,” says Mark Lombardi, Maryville University President. “Our students have grown up in a digital age, and the level of convenience and security the Saints ID brings is in line with what they expect.”

In addition increased convenience and a contactless transaction process, the mobile Saints ID is also more secure. Students don’t have to worry about losing a plastic ID card and all Mobile Credentials are protected by two-factor authentication.

The Transact Mobile Credential at Maryville University works with iPhone 6 models and later, Android version 6.0 or later and Apple Watch Series 1 and later.

Boise State Dining Services has been working with card system vendor, CBORD, to implement the GET app and to update health policies surrounding campus food services. The efforts have seen the addition of the GET app to bolster contactless transactions for students and faculty.

According to a report from The Arbiter, the university worked with card system vendor CBORD to implement the GET app at the beginning of August to support contactless transactions for students and faculty, to pre-order food, view account balances, and more.

“It’s really helpful for students to budget their meal plans and flex dollars in live time,” says Meaghan Compton, assistant director for Campus Services. “Historically, that’s been really cumbersome for students to get access to, so this provides instant transparency on their part and accessibility to their account.”

The GET app also brings mobile food ordering to Boise State, enabling students to skip the line for pickup. Mobile ordering is another way that Boise State is attempting to add more touchless transaction experiences and keep in line with social distancing requirements.

“The app is there to help students understand the scope of their meal plan and know where their meal plans can be used outside of the traditional dining hall," says Compton. "It provides a safer alternative, especially when it comes to eating at all the retail locations."

Students don't need a meal plan to use the GET app. The university wanted to ensure GET was available to all students on campus, and can log in to GET using their Boise State credentials to link a personal credit or debit card for payments.

Boise State has future plans for the GET app that include meal donations, where students can donate meal swipes to fellow students in need. Boise State is also looking to include the ability to purchase meal plans through the app, instead of through the university website. Future rollouts will also enables students to add and update their meal plan funds, and implement a rewards program for students.

According to Compton, dining services have implemented contactless credit and debit card transactions through Apple Pay and Google Pay, and Boise State dining services is encouraging students to use digital currency as much as possible.

Other safety precautions taken by Boise State dining, beyond the GET app, include social distancing in lines with floor markers six feet apart. Dining Services has also limited the number of guests inside certain locations, limited the amount of seating available and has been offering more pre-packaged food. And introduced cleaning protocols for disinfecting high-touch areas like cash registers, door handles, and counter tops.

As for personnel, all Boise State dining employees are required to wear face masks, take part in COVID-19 safety training before working, and have their temperatures taken prior to each shift.

The University of New Mexico has launched a new initiative that will, in part, use LoboCard student ID scanning to keep track of individuals, including vendors, contractors and visitors, that enter the most highly trafficked buildings on campus.

According to an official university release, the "Shared Location Entry Tracking" program will capture the identification of all individuals and employees entering select buildings and will eliminate, in most instances, the need for the manual collection of contact information to share with the New Mexico Department of Health's contact tracing team.

The official roll out of the program began Friday, October 16, at the first of the buildings to be included in the program: UNM's Student Union Building, and two campus libraries. The Shared Location Entry Tracking program is intended to act as a safety protocol that helps improve screening and contact tracing processes -- both of which the university deems essential in mitigating the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

For those individuals without a LoboCard or scannable driver's license, an attendant at the building entrance will fill out a manual entry form on "Lobo Check-in" to collect relevant contact information. Data will not be permanently retained.

“The impetus behind Shared Location Entry Tracking is to strengthen our ability to do contact tracing should an individual in our community test positive for COVID-19,” says Senior Vice President for Finance and Administration Teresa Costantinidis. “We have a good sense of where individuals might be on campus based on our daily 'Lobo Check-In' data and what we know about student enrollment for in-person courses. But we do not know if someone had been in a shared space like Zimmerman Library or the student union building, and if someone who was in those spaces tests positive, we want to be able to reach out to others who were there.”

Other benefits and objectives include simplifying the entry process, minimizing clusters of people at entrances, and protecting the safety of staff at entrances. Additional high-traffic areas on the UNM campus, as well as other buildings across campus are being considered for future expansions of the system.

Wake Forest University is leveraging ASSA ABLOY Aperio locks and a software-based scheduling solution to help coordinate busy day-to-day life on campus. Scheduling solutions have quickly jumped to the forefront as a vital campus service – not just for normal times, but even more so now in response to new regulations surrounding COVID-19.

The typical college campus houses a labyrinth of classrooms, workspaces, study rooms, and special use spaces all made available to students. But the trick for many institutions is how best to utilize these spaces so that students get the most out of the facilities available to them, and the campus doesn’t have underutilized square footage on its hands.

“Four years ago, Wake’s provost wanted to purchase software that would allow faculty and students to schedule and reserve classroom spaces to provide more efficient use of the facilities we have,” says James Byrd, Director, Physical Security Technology and Deacon OneCard, Wake Forest University. “As a part of that we wanted to install card readers on those classroom doors. That was the driver; how do we get people into classrooms in an organized fashion,” Byrd adds.

So Wake began the process of identifying a scheduling solution in December 2016, followed by a beta test in a limited number of rooms in spring 2017. They went fully live in 2018 with a third-party event management system called EMS.

"We wanted to purchase software that would allow faculty and students to schedule and reserve classroom spaces to provide more efficient use of our facilities."

Things progressed well, but it became clear that without some form of automation, the system wouldn’t reach peak efficiency.

“With our prior use of EMS our office managed schedules manually, which strained us with at least 15 hours per week spent overseeing the scheduling process,” says Byrd.

Scheduling software

The solution to the software side of Wake’s challenge came in the form of DAX.

The DAX software, by Detrios, is designed specifically for door unlock and temporary access scheduling challenges in higher education.

On the room scheduling side, DAX talks to a university’s existing event and academic scheduling system – EMS, 25Live, AdAstra, etc. – and uses that data to automate the reader unlock schedules in the campus access control system – Lenel, S2, CCURE, etc. – in an automated and configurable way. DAX's housing module does the same, linking with platforms like StarRez or Adirondack to automate the management of housing-driven access.

The value of DAX is that it helps eliminate the manual creation of room schedule reports, making special building and room unlock requests, and enabling more secure open hours by managing the readers after hours and on weekends.

“Luckily DAX is easily manageable. Particularly now, the university doesn’t want anything unlocked due to COVID-19,” says David Cowan, Access System Administrator, Wake Forest University. “Within the Event Management System (EMS) program at Wake, we have not only been able to control the event spaces that can be reserved, but we’ve also been able to consolidate the number of space managers – the people who approve requests – down to a single committee of individuals.”

The pathway for a room request starts from Wake’s Event Management System (EMS), where everything related to students, faculty and staff resides. “Once confirmed, DAX pulls the reservation from our EMS,” Cowan explains. “DAX then holds the reservation until about 15 minutes prior to the start time at which point it will assign the access privileges with an appropriate start and stop time.”

Prior to COVID-19, the system was averaging about 100 reservations per day.

Locking it down with ASSA ABLOY Aperio

To solve for the hardware side of the scheduling challenge, Wake turned to its longtime partner, ASSA ABLOY.

“Just about every one of our 1,600 electronic locks on campus is an ASSA ABLOY lock, and roughly 180 of them are Aperio,” Byrd explains. “As we were looking at the EMS and DAX integration with our access software Lenel OnGuard, it was just the most intuitive choice to go with the Aperio lock.”

"We wanted to maintain structural integrity and historical value while adding wireless locks, and Aperio was really the one brand that enabled us to do that without tearing down walls."

In addition to a strong relationship with ASSA ABLOY, the Aperio lock in particular made sense from a structural standpoint.

“It’s more about the design of the lock than anything else. The Wake campus was built in the 1950s; so lots of concrete in walls, door frames, floors and ceilings. And if it wasn’t concrete, it was 18-inches of plaster,” Byrd explains. “We wanted to maintain structural integrity and historical value while adding wireless locks, and Aperio was really the one brand that enabled us to do that without tearing down walls. It became a way of preserving our space but also to keep our costs down.”

Wake started with older reader models but after solid reader hardware performance is looking to upgrade to the newest Aperio IN100 or IN120 readers soon, Byrd adds.

Adjusting to the times

The arrival of COVID-19 last spring impacted every facet of campus life, and Wake’s scheduling solution was no different. But the system’s versatility has been a valuable asset.

“DAX saves us tremendous amount of headache. We were able to turn off all reservations when COVID-19 hit and do so in just 15 minutes,” says Cowan. “We can also turn off the integration within 30 seconds to not allow any reservations to go thru if we needed to.”

"DAX saves us tremendous amount of headache. We were able to turn off all reservations when COVID-19 hit and do so in just 15 minutes."

Wake’s initial implementation of DAX only unlocked exterior doors during the reservation time window. “Now with new measures in place with COVID we only grant access privileges to two or three people per room request who are then responsible for letting any other members of the group into the room,” says Cowan.

The initial set up also had no real limitations on reservation timeframes, with durations running anywhere from 15 minutes to days at a time. “We do have some limits on hours now so students can’t be in a space 24/7 during COVID-19,” he adds.

Other COVID-19 related changes include a break between reservations to clean the spaces before the next reservation begins. Currently, there is a mandatory 30 minute turnaround time to clean rooms between reservations.

Added benefits of a scheduling solution

One of the unintended benefits of Wake’s scheduling and card access system has come in the form of energy savings. In fact, it’s been significant.

“Our energy managers reached out and wanted to know how the software was being used so they could get reports to help them see when spaces weren’t being used and set temperatures back and lights turned off,” explains Byrd. “We’re going to pilot with a full building next year that integrates with Lenel access to tell our HVAC and lighting systems which rooms aren’t in use and can be powered down. Then when the scheduling software says a room is to be used, these systems kick back on one-hour prior.”

Then there’s reporting. Wake is benefitting from a robust audit trail from not only its own EMS, but from DAX as well.

“EMS has its own reporting system. We get a nightly report from them to give us the next seven days’ worth of reservations that effect the Lenel system,” says Cowan. “We can audit those and manually do checks and balances in case someone can’t access a room.”

The DAX automated reporting system is also helping Wake’s auditing efforts, looking at which doors have been unlocked or not, who has access, and so on.

The versatility of the system is also leading to new scheduling avenues for the university.

“The initial project that drove this was just classrooms. But right now with the pandemic, there’s been a forced expansion for our graduate schools,” says Byrd. “There’s anticipation that we’ll go back and add card readers to all large meeting room spaces and auditoriums as well.”'

"With the way the system has worked, the goal of the university president to maximize the use of our facilities has been fulfilled."

“From a scheduling aspect the provost and facilities team have said that every room should have a card reader,” says Byrd. “The silver lining is that the pandemic has magnified this need.”

Whether before or after this new normal, however, the scheduling solution at Wake Forest has been an objective success.

“It’s all been governed back a bit as a result of COVID, but prior to that we saw a tremendous uptick in the use of our campus spaces,” says Byrd. “With the way the system has worked, I believe the goal of the president to maximize the use of our facilities has been fulfilled."

HID Global has announced the launch of its new FARGO INK1000 inkjet card printer and encoder. HID states that the FARGO INK1000 is the first thermal inkjet solution in the desktop card printer market that enables cost effective, high-quality credentials, while eliminating the need for specialized card media.

“Until now, small and medium-sized organizations have had very limited options for personalized credential issuance due to high costs and complex maintenance requirements,” says Craig Sandness, Vice President and Managing Director of Secure Issuance with HID Global. “Our HID FARGO INK1000 solution resolves those challenges, creates an unmatched industry benchmark for affordability and ease-of-use, and extends the simplicity of inkjet printing popularized for home use to retail counters and office environments.”

HID FARGO INK1000 eliminates the print ribbons and specialized card media required by alternative direct-to-card (DTC) desktop solutions that use dye sublimation technology. The printer uses easy-to-install, snap-in cartridges that deliver the simplicity and reliability of inkjet printers and that also contain specially formulated inks for creating fade-resistant images and text. A single ink cartridge in the FARGO INK1000 has the potential to produce hundreds more cards than printers that use ribbons and potentially creates less waste in the issuance process.

Other unique features of the HID FARGO INK1000 printer include:

Click here for more information about the HID FARGO INK1000.

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