Geofencing

Geofencing restricts unlocking to people who are physically near the facility. When enabled, the mobile app must report a location inside the configured circle before an unlock is allowed — preventing someone from opening a door from home. Configure the facility geofence under Settings → Geofencing; scopes and individual doors can override it.

Figure 1: The facility geofence editor

How the check works

When a user taps unlock, their phone sends its current location and GPS accuracy. The server (not the phone) decides:

1. No location reported → denied — the user is asked to enable location services. (Reason: location unavailable)
2. GPS too imprecise — the reading's accuracy is worse than the Require GPS accuracy better than threshold → denied. This blocks unreliable readings (e.g. indoors with poor signal) from being trusted. (Reason: GPS too imprecise)
3. Distance check — the user's distance from the geofence centre must be within: radius + reported GPS accuracy + accuracy buffer. Outside that → denied, and the app suggests moving closer. (Reason: outside geofence)
4. Inside → the geofence check passes and the rest of the access decision continues.

Because GPS accuracy is added to the allowance, a user standing at the boundary with ±15 m accuracy still passes — the check is designed to avoid false denials from normal GPS noise while keeping remote unlocks out. The decision is made server-side, so a tampered app or spoofed location is still rejected.

If geofencing is enabled but the pin/centre is missing, unlocks are denied (the system fails closed) — always confirm the pin is placed.

Settings

Placing the pin

• Drag the pin to the centre of your facility, or use Search address ("Start typing a street address…") to drop it on an address.
• Reset to facility location snaps the pin back to the facility's saved street-address coordinates. A Pin manually placed chip shows when the pin has been moved off the saved location.
• Warnings appear if the facility has no street address on file (with a link to Facility & System Configuration) or if the pin is more than 500 m from the facility's saved location — both usually mean the facility address needs updating.

Testing the geofence

Figure 2: Test mode with the draggable T pin

Click Test Geofence to enter test mode: a purple T pin appears on the map. Drag it to any spot to simulate a user unlocking from there — the editor immediately shows Would pass or Would be denied with the reason and distance. Click Stop testing to exit. Use this to sanity-check your radius before saving, e.g. confirming the carpark is inside but the café across the street is not.

Override hierarchy

The facility geofence applies to every door by default. Two levels can override it; the most specific wins:

Per-door overrides win over scope overrides, which win over the facility default. Disabling the geofence for a single door is useful for back-of-house or service entrances where staff often unlock while still off-site. Each door card on the Doors tab shows its effective geofence (radius or Off, with · Override when door-specific).

What members see

When a geofence denial happens, the app explains it rather than failing silently:

All geofence denials are recorded in the Access Logs with the reason and (when available) the distance — useful when investigating "it won't let me in" reports.

Related pages

• How access decisions work
• Doors — per-door geofence tab
• Access Scopes — scope-level override
• Troubleshooting — geofence denial walkthroughs