Commands

Overview

A command is one or more predefined actions that can either be performed by an administrator or as a result of a trigger being activated.

Some use cases for commands include:

• Perform an action simultaneously on a set of doors, e.g. block all doors in a section of the building to achieve a "lockdown".
• Interact with an external system (e.g. arm or disarm an intrusion detection system or turn on the lights).
• Allow end users to perform an action normally only available to administrators (e.g. unlock a door or return it to schedule).

Origin dependency for commands and relevance for triggers

With origin is meant a door or a controller that forms the context for executing a command. Triggers of the type 'Remote action from overview’ do not provide one, and may therefore only execute commands that are origin independent.

All other types of triggers provide an origin and may thus execute both origin independent and origin dependent commands.

Origin independent commands

Origin independent commands always operate on the same door(s) / controller(s) / external target(s) regardless of how or from where the command is triggered. An example of an origin independent command could be to always unlock the same two doors.

Perform: On doors

Choose the command to be executed and the door(s) to operate on.

The available commands are:

• Grant access
• Override to blocked
• Override to double locked
• Override to locked
• Override to unlocked
• Release override

If All doors is selected the command will be performed on all of the doors in the organization.

Perform: On controllers

Choose the command to be executed and the controller(s) to operate on.

The available commands are the ones that have been defined for an Origin port output (see the section on Origin dependent commands below).

If All controllers is selected the command will be performed on all of the controllers in the organization.

Perform: Externally

Construct the API call to be performed by choosing the http method (GET/PUT/POST) and the body of the message.

Perform: Independent sequence

A list of origin independent commands to be executed in a given order. Note that if one command fails, the sequence will be terminated.

Origin dependent commands

For origin dependent commands, it matters from where the command is triggered. The door or controller on which the command operates is dependent on the origin of the trigger.

One example of an origin dependent command is to unlock a door by entering a special code on its associated reader.

An origin is either a door or a controller. Given a door origin, a command that requires a controller, when executed, will be applied on the controller of the door. Given a controller origin, a command that requires a door, when executed, will be applied on each of the doors of the controller.

Perform: Native door command

Door commands are "native", i.e. are already available in the system, so there is no need to define them before they can be invoked by a trigger or included in other commands.

The native door commands are:

• Grant access
• Override to blocked
• Override to double locked
• Override to locked
• Override to unlocked
• Release override

Perform: Origin port output

Select the target output port and the action that should be performed.

Note that not all controllers have all IO ports (e.g. Axis A1001 only has IO1 and IO2) so it is necessary to know which type of controller that will be used when specifying the output port of the command. It is also necessary to configure the IO ports of the controller.

The available actions are:

• Activate
• Deactivate
• Pulse

For Pulse, it is possible to set the pulse length in seconds.

Perform: Sequence applied on origin

A list of commands of any type to be executed in a given order. The origin will be used for any origin dependent commands in the list. Note that if one command fails, the sequence will be terminated.

Performing commands from the administrator GUI

In most cases, it is possible to perform (or "run") the command straight from its detail page:

The exception to this rule is ouput port commands, which need to be started from a controller detail page (see below).

Command(s) with target output port cannot be performed directly from the command detail page (as it has not been defined which controller(s) they should target). Instead, they can be performed from a controller detail page if the controller has a matching output port configured. The command button(s) will show up under the Actions section for the controller.