Collect a visitor's vehicle plate

A guest who drives in has a plate somebody at the barrier needs to recognise. Offision records it on the visit, prints it on what the guest receives, and shows it to the reception desk — but none of that exists until an administrator turns it on for the location, and the field is simply absent everywhere until they do.

1. Turn vehicle registration on

Open Visiting policy, pick the policy that governs the building where guests park, and open Vehicle registration — the second entry in the list down the left of the dialog.

Two switches sit there, and they are independent:

Turning a switch off does more than hide a field on new visits: plates already recorded stop appearing too — in the emails, at the reception desk, everywhere. Nothing is deleted, and switching it back on brings them back. That is deliberate, so withdrawing the setting actually withdraws it rather than leaving every visit booked last month still showing a car.

2. Invite a guest with their car

In the user app, start an invitation as usual and choose the location. Once you pick a location whose policy allows it, Visitor Vehicles appears with the other optional rows below the visitors.

Add Vehicle asks for two things: the Registration Plate and the Vehicle Type — Car, Motorcycle, Bus, Minibus, Truck or Other. Add it again for a second car; a guest bringing a van as well as their own is two entries on one visit.

Type the plate however it is painted on the car. Spaces, dashes and dots are removed and the rest is upper-cased, so ab-1234, AB 1234 and AB1234 are all the same plate — which is what lets someone at the barrier find it however they type it back.

3. A guest who registers their own

With the second switch on, a visitor arriving without an appointment enters their own plate — on the lobby screen’s walk-in form, or in the visitor app on their phone. The fields are the same two, and the result is the same record: reception sees the plate whichever way it was entered.

Registering a plate is not a parking booking. It records which car a guest is in; it does not reserve them a space. Parking spaces are booked as resources, in Booking.

4. What the guest receives

The plate appears on every message the visit sends them:

Two people who are not the guest also see it: the host gets it on their own confirmation, and where the visiting purpose needs approving, whoever approves the visit sees the car before they decide.

A visit with no vehicle gains no vehicle line — the row is absent, not blank.

5. At the reception desk

Open Reception from the app home menu. A visitor who registered a car carries their plate on their row, so the person at the desk can match the car in front of them to the visit without asking.

The search box takes a plate as well as a name, an email, a phone number, a visitor code or the host’s name — and it accepts the plate however it is typed, so reading AB 1234 off a windscreen finds a visit stored as AB1234.

When the receptionist checks that visitor in, the vehicle step opens with the registered plate already filled in, to confirm or correct. It is a confirmation, not a fresh entry — re-typing a plate that is already on file is what creates a duplicate record of the same car.

6. Look a plate up

Visiting vehicles in the admin console lists every plate on file, with the plate as the first column and a search on it. It is the place to answer “whose car is this” from a plate alone, rather than from a visit.

This page needs the Visitor manager permission, which a receptionist does not normally have. Somebody working a barrier gets the plate from the reception desk in step 5; this page is for the administrator answering after the fact.

7. Check it worked

Invite yourself, with a plate typed with a space in it. Three things should follow, and each covers a different half of the setup:

1. The invitation in your inbox names the vehicle, with the space removed.
2. The visit’s own panel in the user app shows the plate under the visitors.
3. The reception list finds you when you type the plate back with the space.

If the first two work and the third does not, the visit is at a building whose reception you are not looking at — the desk lists one building at a time.

What this does not control

• Whether the guest has anywhere to park. A plate is a record of the car, not a reserved space. Book a parking space as a resource if you need one.
• Opening the barrier. Offision does not talk to a car-park barrier; the plate is for a person to read.
• Timing a car in and out. The visit is checked in and out, the car is not.
• What reception asks a walk-in for. That comes from the visiting purpose — see Register a visitor who arrives without an appointment.