ACTpro 4.0: the badge moves to the phone, and access follows Active Directory

Physical badges cost money to print, hand over, track and replace. Access records kept by hand drift out of step with who actually works for you. ACTpro 4.0 addresses both.

The release adds two things to ACTpro, Acre’s on-premises access control software for up to 4,000 doors and 50PC clients: mobile credentials, through Acre Wallet and Acre One Bluetooth, and Active Directory synchronization. Both are available on ACTpro and on ACTpro Lite, the free edition for single-site systems of up to 100 doors.

Here is what changed, and what it means for the security, facilities and IT teams who run it.

Employee badges in Apple Wallet and Google Wallet

With ACTpro 4.0, the employee badge lives in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. Staff tap an iPhone, Apple Watch or Android phone at the reader for buildings, elevators, parking and more.There is no card to print or carry.

Credentials are issued through ACT Manage and sent straight to the user’s device, so onboarding at another site does not need a visit. When someone leaves, the credential is revoked from ACTpro and the linked AAC instance. There is no badge to recover.

Wallet credentials are encrypted and cannot be cloned the way a physical card can. Each one is tied to the person who holds it, and the phone’s own device settings add multi-factor authentication at the door.

What it needs:

• ‍Phones and watches: iPhone models with Face IDor Touch ID (except iPhone 5s), Apple Watch Series 1 and later, and Android 9.0or higher with NFC and HCE support.
• ‍Readers: Acre Multi-Tech Gen1 and Gen2.Installed Multi-Tech readers can be updated to support mobile credentials.
• ‍Capacity: up to 60,000 credentials per system.
• ‍Licensing: per credential, annual, availableglobally.

Bluetooth credentials through the Acre One app

Wallet credentials are not theright fit for every site. For those, ACTpro 4.0 also supports Acre One Bluetooth Low Energy credentials. The Acre One app turns the smartphone into the credential, read over BLE by the same Acre Multi-Tech Gen1 and Gen2 readers.

Issue and revoke work exactly asthey do for Acre Wallet: remotely, through ACTpro and the AAC instance. No additional license is needed in ACTpro, because licensing is handled on the AAC instance.

Sites already using the legacy ACTpro-BT license and the VCredential.com portal keep that support in 4.0.

Access that follows IT status, not paperwork

ACTpro Active Directory Integration keeps cardholders and access rights in step with Active Directory. A small AD Sync service runs alongside ACTpro and synchronizes over LDAP, on the intervals and frequencies the administrator sets.

• ‍Onboarding: new hires created in ActiveDirectory are provisioned in ACTpro automatically.
• ‍Offboarding: users disabled in AD have their access credentials disabled. Records reactivated in AD come back at the next sync.
• ‍Rule-driven access: access is assigned from AD values such as department, role and location, so the same rule applies at everysite.
• ‍Richer records: employee IDs, training information and buildings sync into ACTpro’s user defined fields, with no duplicate entry.

The integration also extends toAD-based systems, including HR and payroll. There is no third-party middleware to buy or build.

It works with on-premises Microsoft Active Directory. Microsoft Entra ID is not supported. Licensing is per system, in tiers from 1,000 to 60,000 record holders.

Built on what ACTpro already does

The new credentials and AD sync sit on top of an established platform. ACTpro is certified to EN 60839-11-1grade 2, uses TLS 1.2, and supports OSDP readers with 128-bit AES encryption. It integrates with video from Avigilon, Milestone, Hanwha, Hikvision and others, Assa Aperio wireless locks, Kone elevators and ACT entry.

The two editions compare like this:

ACTpro runs on Windows 10 or 11 Pro at minimum, with Microsoft Server and SQL Server for larger systems. For 250 doors or more, Acre recommends running SQL Server on separate hardware from the ACTpro server.

Getting started

Acre Wallet, Acre One BLE credentials and Active Directory Integration all require ACTpro 4.0 or later. Mobile credentials need Acre Multi-Tech Gen1 or Gen2 readers. AD sync needs the ACTpro Data Synchronization license at the tier that matches your record holders.

To see ACTpro 4.0 in action, reach out to your regional sales manager or book a demo.

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