We have been using the Hubitat Interface... works great for us... rarely if ever do we have an issue... having said that there are a number of things we would like to see enhanced to make it even better...
1. Notification when batteries are getting low. This data is available on the lock integration screen but it is a few clicks to get there...sending a system notification that the battery is low would keep us from those unfortunate instances when a guest shows up and the lock won't work and we have to let them in via a keybox. (We are currently limping along with this and a Twilio texting function but it is not easy to setup and of course requires a confirmed twilio account to make it work.)
2. Logs...we would like to have OR capture the logs from the lock and have them available on the lock page... similar to perhaps what you do with the credit card authorization stuff... in particular we are looking for every time the lock is unlocked or autolocked. This is a security thing for us. Needing to know who is going in and out and when.
3. Notification if the door lock is used when there is no booking. IE someone has entered the property and there is no block or booking. This would extend to not only code entries but also someone doing the manual unlock (we use Yale locks so that particular activity is recorded) Had a situation where access was obtained without using the keypad and we would have loved to have seen that manual entry.
4. Notification of first time code use. (We had this with other lock code integrations.) We would like to capture this as a system notification but we would also like to have the system update a property custom field indicating that the property is now DIRTY and then on the Booking a custom field that the guest has checked in. (Other values for these fields would be CLEAN and CHECKED-OUT respectively.) We could then use that information for additional messaging ie. first impression emails, and housekeeping and upsell opportunities like early check in and late check-out.
5. Ability to create staff codes in OwnerRez. Currently we use the Hubitat lock code manager to do this as a manual process and as we add or reduce or change properties for staff we would like to keep the codes in sync not relying on updating manually the 17+ hubs. We also want to require them to change their access codes periodically but the logistics of this make it very difficult to manage.
6. Owner Blocks - these seem to be time driven as bookings are and consequently we end up with situations where on the day of the block our contractors are not able to get in because checkin time is 11am or they are working into the evening and it removes their access... I think this might be a bug... have talked about this one before... when we do a block we want it to be from 00:00 to 11:59
Thanks... we love the integration... have it on all 41 of our properties now...
@PacViewLodging
I stumbled upon this and have some thoughts from my own experience. Would be great to connect and talk about implementation as I think we both have utilized this heavily. I was in the BETA for hubitat and had made some custom modifications to better serve my use case, such as prefixing guest codes with a G: so they are easy to identify.
I will say I think many of your asks are possible, but likely not in scope for OwnerRez. I have made many of my own automation and I have considered offering them out to others or consulting for others to help benefit from my own findings.
Send me a message if you want to talk more on this privately.
Thanks for the response Chris...our point on most of these requests is that OwnerRez is our system of record and is the system that we use to communicate with guests and where we go if we need to find information about a property or booking or guests or whatever...
If we look at them one at a time...
1. Notification on Battery Level. We too have setup Hubitat to do this and it tells us when we are at the percentage that we set one time per day until we fix it. Since OR has this information on the door lock in OR already it would be nice to have OR notify instead of relying on the hub and the twilio service I have installed to send us a notification.
2. Logs. I do not want an email for every lock open and close. We are 42 properties and what would be hundreds of emails each day. I believe for nearly every integration that is done there are detailed logs kept on OR. Hubitat is limited on what it stores and what can be filtered, etc... and having to search through thousands of emails to find a specific event would be problematic as well. If the logs lived in a database somewhere that could be filtered by property, lock, date, time, type of event, etc.... then we could narrow down particular things. This for us is more of a security thing so we can track when staff/contractors enter the property and for guest issues and claims. We do this with our camera system as well. Lets just say we have had instances where guests make claims that ultimately turn out to be unfounded but finding the details is a time consuming process. We also use it to confirm no shows.
3. Notification when not booked... this is also a security thing... we have had situations where someone would "bump" the lock to gain access to the property. The event of the door opening was logged, no booking or block. It really a notification specific to an event that has occurred in the logs that have been collected.
4. Notification of first use... we had this with other lock providers. Not sure how they accomplished it... again probably back to collecting log information and then processing it. We would like this in OR so that we can then trigger a communication to the guest... in particular a welcome to the property, give it a quick look is there something not right? Thing first impression survey. We would also like to have a status on the property set so that we can visually see it on the ribbon view that the property is occupied. When in the busy season it is sometimes necessary to do last minute things that while they could wait until the next guest... if the current guest has not checked in yet let me quickly drop off a throw that needed laundering, refill the laundry soap or dishwasher pods, etc... things that if we knew the guest wasnt there yet we could just do without having to call the guest to ask if we can drop something off, etc...
5. Staff Codes - These would be no different than any other code except they do not have a start and end time. OR now has a staff component for access to OR and in the case of the staff we would just want to have it generate a code that lives in the lock all the time. We do this now manually using the lock code manager. We deliberately set our staff codes to be 5 digits with a starting digit different for each geographic area and our owner codes are also 5 digits starting with a 9. This keeps them from conflicting with guest codes which are 4 digits and being added by OR. The ability to add codes OR already has. The Team Access section they already have. We would just like to have a property select list so we can determine which properties to add the staff person to and a field for the code they have been assigned. OR would then just put that code onto each of the property hubs.
6. Owner Blocks - we also use these for contractors. Generally speaking we notify them of when they can get into the property but for some reason a block seems to also follow the standard checkin and checkout times of the property even though a block has no time fields associated with it. On a booking we can adjust the times to reflect property defaults or change them to whatever we want. In a block this is not possible so we usually have to manually go into the lock code manager to give the contractors a time that is outside of the typical property times. We would really like blocks to be like bookings where we can set the time for them to be active.
While Hubitat can likely do much of this, as I said I like to try to have one source of truth. Most of these things we have addressed with manual solutions or with an integration we created with Twilio and I know we could go further with Twilio -> Zapier -> OR but ultimately we would like to see this stuff in OR so we didn't have to develop that type of solution.
I would be interested to hear how you accomplished some of what you described it is interesting. I understand the desire for OwnerRez to be the source of truth, I think we all have a wishlist that would help us get there. I do wonder though how many of their customers use hubitat though as I feel like most or many property owners end up with another subscription that they pay for instead of the more DIY of ownerrez.
My email approach for lock logging is rudimentary but I have them filter to folders and I don't see them unless I need to go look. I too have had to utilize lock logs and camera recordings to refute the lies that guests inevitability tell.
I found your direct booking website. I am going to shoot you an email to talk shop more. I wonder sometimes how many others have needs like you have described and I have as well that could benefit from an enhanced integration.