Key Features
A busy summer of sales and more technology development has been made busier by new hires, bigger premises, and a decision to expand our presence at next February’s ISE 2019 – the world’s biggest trade show for digital signage. And we pause for thought amidst all this activity and ask: what exactly do we mean by the term “Smart Building”?
- Upgrade focuses on integration enhancements
- NU development for smarter work stations
- ISE 2019 here we come
- What IS a smart building?
- Calling all re-sellers
- We welcome three new joiners
- Follow us on social media
New software refinements focus on integration
News is imminent of a significant new release version of Door Tablet. In the meantime, our development focus over the last few months has been on integration and consolidation issues. Leading the way has been the integration of Door Tablet with Microsoft Graph, the developer platform designed by Microsoft to supersede its Exchange Web Services; and with Resource Scheduler, a full-service meeting room scheduling system produced by Asure Software.
Read more about
Microsoft Graph
Completing this work has enabled the Door Tablet team to update our entire suite of APIs, internal and external, and reflects a growing trend in the digital signage industry.
CTO Avi Tchiprout explains: “Nobody in our industry can stand still. We are seeing more investment in digital signage and related technologies across all our client sectors.
"What started as an exclusive focus on meeting rooms has evolved beyond the rooms themselves and into the wider workplace environment.
“As the market and the user demographics have changed,” Avi says, “so we have adapted. As workplace technology has become more collaborative, so Door Tablet has got smarter. This is in very large part through the integration of our software with the more useful APIs that aspire to address the markets that we serve.”
Another significant development has evolved as a feature of our growing success in the enterprise business sector, in which larger companies demand more robust and scalable functionality across any number of locations around the world. The Door Tablet Enterprise Edition enables system administrators to push configuration to end-point hardware everywhere, including Door Tablet AIOs (room display), the Door Tablet ABX (Wayfinding displays), and Door Tablet CIR (hot desk and open workspace displays).
In this most recent release, all devices report back on their existing configuration, facilitating follow-up troubleshooting of any devices reporting a configuration that is in any way not right. This might be a time zone problem resulting in incorrect timing, or a device that for some reason did not update its App.
Other features of this latest upgrade include:
- Multi-server capabilities, enabling companies to deploy and use multiple servers in supporting any number of end user resources globally, providing enhanced fail-over and load-balancing;
- Enhanced disaster recovery, in part because of the capabilities mentioned above;
- Database self-maintenance, involving the automation of database processes; and
- Enhancements to the Door Tablet floorplans, enabling much easier and quicker interactivity for users of the display screens.
Our new motion sensors are a big step up Now shipping as standard on all new orders – although our software remains compatible with old as well as new – the latest version of the Door Tablet motion sensor can be more precisely configured, enabling better targeted sensing over greater distances. The sensor dome contains LED lights, offering real-time feedback on the motion being sensed.
Have you seen the new Door Tablet CIR?
As announced in the spring issue of our newsletter, the Door Tablet CIR has since hit the market as the latest addition to the family of hardware devices designed to make workspace bookings easier. Like the Door Tablet AIO, it displays all the information necessary to track the duration of availability in the space where it is displayed. Unlike the AIO, and when used with meeting spaces, it is not interactive and is not a window on the wider world of meetings spaces across the breadth of the enterprise.
Door Tablet CIR software, when connected to a meeting space, is called
Door Tablet NU, integrates with motion sensors and exists strictly for the space it occupies. It is thus ideal for non-bookable rooms as well as for huddle spaces and phone booths.
Our hot desks solution,
Door Tablet DSK, continues to make progress and will offer employee directory so that people can easily find their colleagues.
Intel UNITE is on deck
Our more eagle-eyed newsletter readers may recall that the spring issue of our newsletter mentioned two new developments coming down the line. Door Tablet NU was one of them. The other was Intel UNITE and, although we are not quite ready to talk about it yet, we can say it has proceeded successfully through pre-launch testing and will be launched within the next few weeks.
Full details will be included in the winter issue of this newsletter.
The integration focuses on the interaction of people in the room with UNITE and the room schedule. The image below provides a taste for the features included in the system.
Read more about
Intel UNITE
We will have our own stand at ISE 2019
After two years of enjoying the hospitality of
Qbic Technology, our chief technology supplier on their stand at the industry’s biggest trade show, Door Tablet is now spreading its wings and will take up its own stand at Integrated Systems Europe
(ISE) 2019 in Amsterdam. Taking place over four days in February, ISE is the largest trade show of its kind in the world, expecting this year to feature 1,300+ exhibitors while welcoming more than 80,000 visitors.
Visitors to the city’s RAI Exhibition Centre will be able to meet and talk to the Door Tablet team on
Stand S255 in Hall 15, and are encouraged to contact us ahead of the event if anyone would like to arrange a meeting or a demonstration. Simply email
sinta@door-tablet.com. All visitors are welcome, especially potential resellers and sales agents.
. . . and when it comes to Smart Buildings . . .
In addition to joining his colleagues on Stand
15-S255 for the four days of the show, Door Tablet marketing director Tam McDonald is looking forward to the one-day conference that immediately precedes the trade show.
The Smart Building Conference takes place on Monday 4 February and, as Tam describes it: “was one of the highlights of last year’s ISE. I am really looking forward to the event as a showcase for best practice and clever thinking about what the smart workplaces of the future are going to contribute to the intelligence of our species.”
Key themes of the 2019 conference will include Wayfinding and Smart Applications, Artificial Intelligence for Smart Buildings, Next-generation IoT Ecosystems for the Built Environment, and how IoT Enables Smart Building Technology for the Other 85%. Tam looks forward to finding out what is meant by the “Other 85%”.
Register as an
Attendee at ISE 2019
Whatever do we mean by “smart” buildings?
Like so many definitions, that of a “smart building” is no fixed thing but rather is subject to the usual forces of usage and wishful thinking. Whatever it may be, it is neither what it was a generation ago, nor what it will be a generation hence. And it is not necessarily what a marketing person says it is. It might be a smart thing for you to do to buy Door Tablet for your building, but that doesn’t make the building smart, or even smarter. Yet.
These thoughts are offered in the spirit of the scientific method: we can test various definitions and examine the assumptions that drive those definitions; we can look at various examples of buildings that are generally regarded as smart – or at least smarter than most other buildings – and identify the common factors that feature in reviews of whatever makes those building seem smart. And we may be able to reverse engineer a definition by looking at “smart” out there in the world, away from all those buildings, and see how all that might be applied to the present and the future of our built environment.
It is probably easiest to capture examples of innovative practice in modern design and architecture. In our spring issue of this newsletter, in reporting on February’s Smart Buildings conference, we came up with these inspiring examples just in Europe:
The Edge in Amsterdam,
22 Bishopsgate in London, the
Agnelli Foundation HQ in Milan, and Accenture’s
Dock in Dublin.
In all these examples, imagination combines with empathy, experience with expertise and, critically, forethought with feedback loops to create liveable and sustainable, comfortable and secure environments that can only improve through the reflections of the people living and working in them. The Dock in Dublin is certainly leading the wave of innovation in building design (
See photo, below).
“Smart” in the world of Artificial Intelligence
Research into machine learning and the processes by which “artificial intelligences” can acquire data and learn via multi-iterative feedback loops sifted by algorithms should certainly prove portable into the worlds of architecture and construction. The building equivalent would see the data consolidation and enhancement engine – the brain of the building – augment and extrapolate, foresee and adapt ahead of future need: in short, to learn and to improve the building’s function without the entire necessity of automation programmed by humans. As a child learns more without having to be explicitly taught, so the building works out for itself how to accrue and apply intelligence: it becomes smart.
We don’t have buildings like that for the time being, but we are rapidly evolving the capabilities that will enable them. And when we get together in collaborative groups to create this exciting new world, let’s hope we have Door Tablet for all those meeting spaces.
Visit the
Smart Building Conference at ISE
Door Tablet’s resellers community is taking shape
Are you interested in becoming a Door Tablet re-seller? Will you be attending February’s ISE 2019 in Amsterdam? Answer yes to both these questions and join us for a chat:
Stand 15-S255. If our last two ISE trade shows are anything to go by, we will find plenty to discuss.
The process of joining our resellers community is not automatic but there are some common first steps, such as a close review of our website to include a look at a short video we have compiled on the
Steps for Becoming a Reseller. Understanding the benefits entails your registration on the website, enabling access to all the content, videos, and the Door Tablet Quotation Tool with our prices and the discounts that are available to you as a reseller.
At this point, your continuing interest will see you contacting us with a weblink or corporate brochure – something telling us about yourself and your interest in working with Door Tablet. We send you a copy of Resellers Terms; you sign them, and we get down to a serious – but short! – discussion. Your status will approved when we have completed a first sale and agreed a plan for promoting Door Tablet, along with you as a reseller, in your territory.
If you are interested in becoming a reseller for Door Tablet but would like to know more before proceeding, please contact
sales@door-tablet.com.
Three new hires bring global flair to the DT team
A new period of growth for the Door Tablet team is marking additions in both the sales & marketing and the technology sides of the business. And as might be expected in a global technology company, the growing workforce reflects both diversity of background and culture.
Elan Neiger was the first to come aboard, joining us as sales director by way of Indiana University in the USA, where he graduated with honours with degrees in Political Science and International Relations. After a stint in the army, he began working in various sales roles in the telecommunications and high-tech industries.
A long-time and enthusiastic traveller, Elan has attended many technology conferences and enjoys meeting new people and establishing connections that lead to healthy business relationships and meaningful friendships. Motivational drivers include his love of family, his hunger for personal and business growth, and the pursuit of improvement in the sales and business development arenas. Elan enjoys playing American Football, meeting with friends on the beach, and exploring the vegan culinary options that big city life has to offer.
Sinta van der Kraan joins the Door Tablet team as a Sales Co-ordinator. Sinta has lived and worked in different countries, mainly around South East Asia, Southern Africa and Northern Europe. She attended university in The Netherlands, where she graduated with a degree in English Language and Literature and a Minor in International Relations & International Organisations. She is fluent in Dutch and English.
Sinta has over ten years of experience in sales, marketing, and copywriting. When not working, she enjoys mountain climbing, swimming, tennis, creative writing, and spending time with her family.
Jack Higgins is 100% London born and bred, having recently graduated from the University of Westminster with a BSC degree with honours in computer science. Jack is excited to be joining the Door Tablet team in his position as software developer. A keen learner, he is always learning about new technologies and is particularly looking forward to gaining experience in a fast-paced technology company.
Motivational drivers include his love of family as well as the pursuit of improvement in his technical skills. When not working, he enjoys going out, meeting with friends, and exploring the rich city of London.
Follow us on Social Media
Readers can now follow Door Tablet on LinkedIn – useful for creating an archive of longer think pieces such as our featured OpEd piece in this issue of our newsletter, on the definition of Smart Buildings.
Meanwhile, and after a busy few months on Twitter, Door Tablet took something of a summer Twitter break and spent some time canvassing reactions to our first few dozen tweets.
Among those topics we have covered about the wider world of facilities management and smart buildings, the most popular subjects proved to be questions about how meetings are changing and what can be done to make them as effective as possible.
Two particular articles stood out in the last six months, each in its own way illuminating the way out of the Dark Ages of those useless meetings from days gone by: the zozz-fests that served nothing as much as a masochistic yearning for new definitions of tedium and eternity.
Check out
this piece in Canada’s Globe and Mail, entitled “The good, the bad, and the boring of workplace meetings”. Also useful is
this more sober “How To . . .” article in the Harvard Business Review, with tips on reacting when you are put on the spot in a meeting. As with so many things in life, there’s a lot to be said for self-composure and focused preparation.
Follow us on
Twitter here; and on
LinkedIn here.