What Multifamily Residents Actually Want From Their Front Door

Ask a property manager what residents complain about most, and door access is near the top of the list more often than anyone expects. A fob that doesn't work. A visitor buzzed in by a neighbour who wasn't supposed to. A lost key card that takes two days to replace. The front door is the first and last interaction most residents have with a building's security every single day, and it's often not the most eye-catching feature.

## That's where Akuvox comes in

Akuvox terminals sit at that front door as an intercom, a keypad and a facial recognition reader in one device. Getting through your front door is now as easy as showing your face – no more lost and stolen credentials. And with our new Protege GX integration, installers and property managers can now administer those terminals from a powerful centralized system.

Akuvox makes a broad range of door phones and access terminals, and ICT has validated three of them so far: the E16C supports facial recognition alongside PIN entry, the X912K is a vandal-resistant unit built for exposed exterior mounting, and the A02 is a compact access terminal that this integration supports for PIN entry. A single vendor can still cover a leasing office entrance, a parking garage gate and a side stairwell without asking the integrator to learn three different systems.

## Recognised at the door. Approved at the panel.

What's new is how these terminals connect to Protege GX, through the Protege GX Connect Service. A site administrator uploads a tenant's photo in Protege GX, the same way they already do for photo ID, and the Connect Service pushes it to every Akuvox terminal that resident has access to within 30 seconds. There's no separate enrolment station and no extra software for the leasing office to learn.

When a resident walks up and the terminal recognizes their face, it sends their credential to the Protege GX controller over Wiegand, the same way a card reader would. Protege GX checks the same access levels and schedules it always has, then makes the access decision. Face, PIN and card can all run on the same door, so a property can support residents who prefer face-first entry, tenants who want a code and technicians who still carry a card.

Photos stay on-premises by default, and communication between Protege GX and the terminals is encrypted. If a property's policy requires consent before a resident's photo is used for facial recognition, Protege GX can hold that photo back from the terminal until consent is recorded. A web dashboard shows sync status, device health and a 90-day audit trail of Connect Service activity. When a resident asks why the terminal won't recognise their face, the help desk doesn't have to guess: the Connect Service's dashboard shows exactly what the issue is.

## One system across the whole portfolio

Property management companies rarely run one building. Because the Connect Service supports multiple Protege GX sites, a regional operator can manage facial recognition across an entire portfolio from the same dashboard instead of logging into a separate app per property. Paired with the ICT Data Sync Service, the same pipeline can also pull in photos from a visitor management system, so a guest visiting a tenant can be recognised at a resident entrance without a second enrolment step.

## Fewer callbacks, more renewals

For a property manager, the payoff shows up in the leasing office, not the server room: fewer calls about lost key fobs, fewer replacement cards to reissue and one less thing residents complain about on a renewal survey. For the integrator, the payoff is what doesn't change: no separate biometric platform to install, license or support, and no new help desk process to train a team on. Akuvox rides on the same Protege GX license, the same access decision logic and the same support relationship already covering the rest of the property, so adding facial recognition at the front door doesn't mean adding a new job to manage.