Administrator guide

Where to start

Overview

In one minute

As an administrator you decide how BmyGuest works for your company: which locations you have and how visitors check in at each of them, who your hosts are, who works the reception, and what BmyGuest is connected to.

Everything an administrator sets up is in the menu under Reception, in the Company settings group at the bottom. Hosts, the people your visitors come to see, have their own page in the same menu.

Who can do what

Every role in BmyGuest is given to someone who is already a host of your company, so add a person as a host first.

Locations

Setting up a location

Company settings, Locations shows every office with its address, receptionists, add-ons and visitor terms. Open one to change its settings, or press Setup guide to go through the essentials step by step.

To add an office, press Create location and give it a name. Create and set it up step by step opens the setup guide; Create and open settings goes straight to the settings page. Everything else is filled in afterwards.

The setup guide

The setup guide takes a location from nothing to its first visitor in nine short steps. Each step explains the idea behind it and asks only for what matters. You can leave at any time with Skip for now, and everything can be changed later on the settings page. A step you leave with unsaved changes is saved for you, and the list on the left ticks off what is done.

The reception desk also offers the setup guide (Get this location ready for visitors) at a location where nobody has checked in yet.

A location’s settings

Everything about one location is on its settings page: Company settings, Locations, then the location. Find a setting finds a setting by its name or its help text. Each section is saved on its own with Save changes, and the button says so when there are unsaved changes. If you go to another page before saving, BmyGuest asks first: Save and leave, Leave without saving or Stay on this page.

General: logos and receptionists

• Company logo is shown on the check-in pages and at the reception desk. Company logo (Light) is a version for dark backgrounds. Badge print logo is a black-and-white version for visitor badges: label printers print in one colour.
• Receptionists are chosen among your hosts. Receptionists can edit location lets them change this location’s settings as well.

Check-in experience

The QR code is what visitors scan at the entrance. Download poster and QR code gives you an A4 poster with your logo, ready to print, and the code on its own. Open check-in page shows the page your visitors see. For a tablet at the entrance, switch on the Kiosk mode add-on. BmyGuest can also supply a printed board in wood, metal or acrylic: ask at [email protected].

Further down you decide what visitors are asked:

• Enable simple check-in: visitors pick no host, and no host is told. For a building where people just sign in.
• Optional company name, Ask for visitor photo and Allow skip visitor photo.
• Enable marketing consent: a tick box with your own text, for visitors who want to hear from you.
• Custom check-in message and Custom check-out message: shown after a visitor checks in or out, for example where to wait, the Wi-Fi password, or where to leave the badge. Show a pop-up after check-in adds a message the visitor has to close. Preview as visitor under each of the three texts shows it on the visitor's page.

The check-in and check-out messages are optional: without one, visitors see BmyGuest’s standard message, which is ready in every language. Translations, under the marketing consent text and under each of the three messages, is optional too and gives the text in other languages. Visitors see it in the language they check in in, and a language left empty shows the text as written. For a message, pick the language on the tabs and write in the text box below them. A dot on a tab marks a language that has a text, and Preview as visitor under the box shows the page in that language.

Visitor terms

Safety rules, a confidentiality agreement or house rules that visitors accept before they check in. Press New term, give it a title, choose how often it must be accepted, and write the text. Preview as visitor opens the term beside the text (below it on a smaller screen) as a visitor sees it on a phone, and follows the text as you type. Larger shows it at a computer's width as well.

• How often must visitors accept it? Every check-in, once a week, month, half year or year, or a number of days you choose.
• Ask visitors to accept this before they arrive: a pre-registered visitor is e-mailed a link to the terms before the visit, so the check-in is quicker. It is not offered for a term accepted at every check-in, and nobody who has already accepted is e-mailed.
• Visitors must read to the end and accept: the term opens without a close button, and the visitor can only leave it by accepting it, which is possible once they have scrolled to the end of the text. It is not offered for a term signed with Scrive.
• With the Scrive add-on, a term can be signed electronically instead. A video from YouTube, Vimeo, SharePoint or Microsoft Stream can be embedded in the text.

Accept history lists who accepted which term, and when, for a period you choose. Accepts older than your company keeps details for are shown as Anonymized, without a name or e-mail address.

Check-in design

A location that already has its own styling (its own CSS or a background photo) keeps that look until you press Switch to the BmyGuest design. Your CSS is then kept and loaded on top, and the photo is toned down so the text stays readable.

The check-in pages use the BmyGuest design in your colours. Start from one of the looks (Warm, Slate or Mono), set your two brand colours, and add your logo and a background photo. Advanced styling has the rest: page and card colours, the backdrop, corners and shadows, fonts, and extra CSS. BmyGuest warns you when a colour makes text hard to read. The setup guide’s Make it yours step has the essentials.

Visitor e-mails

What a visitor is sent before and after a visit here. BmyGuest does not send an invitation: hosts invite their guests themselves.

• The reminder an hour before goes to every pre-registered guest, with a link to fill in their details and check in quickly (what the guest sees). Disable 1-hour reminder email turns it off.
• The reminder the day before goes out when the landing page is switched on: your own page with directions, parking and what to bring, which the reminder links to. Disable 24-hour reminder email for same-day meetings skips it for meetings booked the same day.
• Send a custom welcome email: your own e-mail to a visitor after their first check-in with your company.
• Send check-in confirmation to visitor: an e-mail telling the visitor that they are checked in, with the time and their host.
• Email – company display name replaces your company’s name in these e-mails, and Replace guest names in emails leaves visitors’ names out of them.

The welcome e-mail’s subject and content and the landing page have Translations too, which work as they do for the messages after check-in. The welcome e-mail goes out in the visitor’s own language if they have chosen one, and otherwise in the language your company’s e-mails are sent in. The landing page is shown in the language the visitor uses BmyGuest in.

Host notifications

When a visitor checks in, tell the host by chooses the channels: SMS, e-mail and, where your company has set it up, Microsoft Teams or Slack. Every channel you tick is used. SMS needs the host’s mobile number.

• Mail the host when a guest is pre-registered for them: a confirmation to the host, straight away or 24 hours before the meeting.
• Enable Check-out reminder: the host is reminded to check out visitors who are still checked in, a number of minutes after the meeting ends or after check-in. The link in the reminder opens Check out your guests, where each guest has a check-out button.
• Notify host when a visitor is checked out: an e-mail to the host when their visitor leaves, and a Microsoft Teams message where your company has set it up. Hosts can turn the e-mail off on their own profile.

A host who is away can have someone else receive their notifications: see Send notifications to under Hosts.

Reception

• Enable slim visitor list and Enable full-width visitor list change how the reception desk lists visitors.
• Don’t require last name: reception can register a guest with one name.
• Enable visitor badge printer and Default printer: badges are printed when visitors check in. See Badge printer.
• Ignore visitors with following domains: people from these domains are left out when meetings are imported from calendars. Add your own company’s domain, so colleagues on an invitation are not registered as guests. Reception and hosts can still register them by hand.

Add-ons

The add-ons a location can use are listed in three groups:

• In use: switched on here. Configure opens its settings.
• Ready to set up: included in your subscription. Set up opens its settings; saving them switches it on.
• More add-ons: not part of your subscription. Contact sales opens an e-mail to BmyGuest about it in your e-mail program.

Every add-on page has the same shape: its settings in cards, each with Save and switch on (or Save changes), and at the bottom Switch off this add-on, which keeps the settings for later. The parking and door integrations (Q-Park, Parkeringskompagniet and Vitani) are the exception: they save with Save and connect, and Remove this integration deletes their settings. PARQO parking starts with the PARQO account: Connect tries the e-mail address and password with PARQO and fetches the account's parking products, and once you have chosen the product cars are registered on, Save and switch on switches it on. With Allow 24-hour parking permit, visitors who register their own car choose between that product and the one you pick as the 24-hour permit; reception's registrations stay on the first. A PARQO parking starts when the car is registered and lasts as long as its product says; checking the guest out does not end it. Add-ons for the whole company, such as Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Entra ID, are on the Company profile instead. Mailroom, Lend & Lease, Hospitality and Meeting rooms have guides of their own.

Questions at check-in

To ask visitors more than their name, add questions. With the Visitor types add-on, each visitor type has its own, in the Custom check-in fields section of the visitor type. Without it, the Custom check-in fields add-on asks every visitor at the location the same ones. Add field adds a question, and the arrows change their order. The reception desk’s New guest asks a visitor type’s questions too. A question’s text cannot be changed once it is saved.

Answer decides how the visitor answers:

• Free text: the visitor types the answer.
• Dropdown list (pick one) or Radio buttons (pick one): the visitor picks one of your choices.
• Checkboxes (pick any): the visitor ticks every one that applies. If the question is required, at least one must be ticked.

Add choice adds a choice under Choices, and the arrows change their order. You can change the answer type and the choices later; answers already given stay as they are. Ticked checkboxes are saved together, separated by commas.

Translations, under the question and under each choice, gives them in other languages. Visitors see them in the language they check in in, and a language left empty shows the text as written. Answers are always saved in your own wording, so they read the same at reception and in the visitor history. The switches under each question, such as Is required?, are explained at the bottom of the page.

People

Hosts

Hosts are the people your visitors come to see. Each has a primary location: where their calendar meetings are registered, and where they are listed for visitors to pick. Administrators and receptionists can add, change and remove hosts.

• Filter by location, or by status: not confirmed, synchronised, not synchronised, or hidden from the host list. Search by name, e-mail address, phone number, job title, office or location.
• The list shows 25 hosts a page. Choose 50 per page or 100 per page in the menu beside the filters to see more at once; the choice is remembered in that browser.
• Open a host’s menu for Edit host, Resend welcome email (for someone who has not confirmed their account yet) and Remove as host. Removing someone also takes away their administrator and receptionist roles, but keeps their BmyGuest profile.

Adding a host

Press New host and fill in the e-mail address, name and work mobile, and under Work the job title, office and primary location. The new host is e-mailed a link to set up their account, unless you tick Don’t send welcome email; you can send it later from the host list. Hide from host list keeps someone out of the lists visitors and reception pick a host from.

Importing a list

For many hosts at once, use a spreadsheet. The import is on the Hosts page (Import host list) and in the setup guide’s Hosts step (Import a file):

1. Press Download the template and open it in Excel. It has the columns BmyGuest reads and an example row.
2. Fill in one host per row. The e-mail address identifies a host: a row with an address you already have updates that host.
3. Save it as CSV, choose the file, and press Check the file. BmyGuest shows what each row will do: New, Update or Error, and why.
4. Correct any errors, then press Import. Send new hosts a welcome e-mail decides whether they are e-mailed. On the Hosts page, Location for new hosts the file gives none is the location a new host gets when their row names none; in the setup guide it is the location you are setting up.

The Import host list button on the Hosts page opens an older version of the same import, which reads the same file.

Changing a host

Open a host to change their details, their primary location and contact details, or to hide them from the host list.

Send notifications to at the bottom names people who get the notifications about the host’s visitors, each with their own schedule and channels, for example an assistant while the host is travelling. While someone on the list is active, they are notified instead of the host (Instead of me, the starting choice) or as well as the host (As well as me: the host keeps getting every notification, and the people on the list get a copy). When nobody on the list is active, the host is notified as usual. Press Save notification settings to keep the changes. Only the host can switch on Allow this person to act on your behalf?, from their own profile.

For a host synchronised from Microsoft Entra ID, the fields marked with * come from the directory and are locked, and the next synchronisation can overwrite the other details too. Change them in Entra ID instead. Such a host cannot be removed here either: remove them in the directory.

Administrators and receptionists

Administrators

Company profile, Administrators: choose the company’s administrators among its hosts and press Save changes. A person can be administrator of one company only. The administrator whose e-mail address is the company’s contact e-mail (under General) cannot be removed; change the contact first. A company always has at least one administrator.

Receptionists

Receptionists are chosen per location, among your hosts: on the location’s settings page under General, or in the setup guide’s Reception step. They see the reception desk for their locations, check visitors in and out, and can manage hosts. With Receptionists can edit location on, they can also change that location’s settings, and cancel a visit, a delivery or a loan that was registered by mistake.

Assistants

A host can let someone else receive their notifications (Send notifications to), instead of them or as well as them. With Allow this person to act on your behalf?, which only the host can switch on, from their own profile, that person can also work in BmyGuest as them: they then have Act on behalf of at the top of the page.

Company and IT

The company profile

Company settings, Company profile has the settings for the company as a whole, in five sections.

• General: the company’s name, address and VAT number, the contact person and e-mail, and the logo.
• Administrators: see above.
• Hosts: whether new hosts start with their e-mail and phone number hidden from guests (each host can change it on their profile), and Disable host emails for imported meetings, so hosts are not e-mailed about meetings that come in from a calendar.
• API keys: keys for BmyGuest’s Public API, for your own systems. A key is shown once, when it is created, and gives access to the whole company, so keep it as safe as a password. Delete a key that is no longer used.
• Add-ons: the add-ons for the whole company, in the same three groups as a location’s, with Microsoft Entra ID and Microsoft Teams among them.

Microsoft 365 and your IT department

This chapter is for whoever looks after Microsoft 365 at your company. It covers keeping the host list in step with Microsoft Entra ID, meetings from Outlook, Microsoft Teams notifications and single sign-on.

Hosts from Microsoft Entra ID

BmyGuest can read your hosts from Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD), every night, so people who join or leave the company join or leave BmyGuest by themselves. BmyGuest reads your directory through an app registration you create in your own tenant.

In the Microsoft Entra admin center

1. Under App registrations, create a new registration, for example called “BmyGuest host sync”.
2. Under API permissions, add the Microsoft Graph application permission User.Read.All and grant admin consent. To sync the members of one group only, add GroupMember.Read.All too (or Group.Read.All if you name the group rather than give its id). If some people’s e-mail addresses are on a different domain from the name they sign in with, add Organization.Read.All as well, so BmyGuest can read the domains your tenant has verified.
3. Under Certificates & secrets, create a client secret and copy its value (not its id). It is shown only once. Note when it expires.
4. From the registration’s overview page, copy the Application (client) ID and the Directory (tenant) ID.

In BmyGuest

Company settings, Company profile, Add-ons, Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD). Only a company administrator can open it. Fill in the two ids and the secret, and choose:

• Who is imported: everyone in the directory, or only the members of one group (its object id, or its name).
• Default mobile country code: put in front of mobile numbers stored without one in Entra ID, for example +45.
• Set host location as: the primary location every imported host gets. With more locations, A group per location gives members of a location’s group that location instead. Hosts may pick their own location lets a host change it on their profile.
• Import profile photos: each host’s Microsoft 365 photo becomes their profile photo, and follows it when it is changed or removed. A photo a host has chosen in BmyGuest is never replaced.

Press Save and connect. The hosts are imported the following night, or at once with Sync now, which runs in the background. The page shows when the last synchronisation ran and how it went.

What the synchronisation does:

• It creates or updates a host for each user with an e-mail address: name, e-mail, mobile number, job title and office, and the primary location. Those hosts are marked Synchronised, and their names are locked in BmyGuest.
• Where BmyGuest can confirm that an address belongs to your tenant, the host can also sign in with their Microsoft account, and receive Microsoft Teams messages. Where it cannot, the person is imported without Microsoft sign-in, or not at all when the address already has a BmyGuest account. After each synchronisation, the page says how many people this applies to and names the first few.
• With Import profile photos on, each host’s Microsoft 365 photo becomes their profile photo.
• Hosts you added by hand or from a file are left alone, unless their e-mail address is in your directory too and BmyGuest can confirm it is yours: then the synchronisation takes them over.

Disconnecting Microsoft Entra ID

To stop BmyGuest importing hosts from your directory, open the Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) page, press Delete settings at the bottom, and confirm. The button is there in the new design while the synchronisation is connected.

• Every setting on the page is deleted, the secret included, and BmyGuest no longer reads your directory.
• The hosts already imported stay, and so does their sign-in with Microsoft. They are no longer marked Synchronised, so you can change and remove them like any other host. If Google Workspace or an SFTP file also synchronises your hosts, they keep the mark.
• If a synchronisation is running, wait until it has finished.

To connect again later, fill in the settings anew. The app registration in the Entra admin center is not touched: delete it there if you no longer need it.

Meetings from Outlook

A host can register the guests of a meeting they book in Outlook by adding [email protected] to the invitation. Nothing has to be set up in your tenant for this:

• The invitation must be sent from the host’s contact e-mail address in BmyGuest.
• The external attendees are registered for the host’s primary location. Colleagues who are hosts in BmyGuest are left out, and so is anyone from a domain the location ignores (Reception, Ignore visitors with following domains).
• A meeting cancelled in Outlook is cancelled in BmyGuest too.

With the Meeting rooms add-on, meetings booked in your meeting rooms with external guests come in by themselves, through an app registration of your own. It has its own guide. BmyGuest can also provide a description of the data it reads from Microsoft 365 and how it is protected, for your security review.

BmyGuest for Outlook

With BmyGuest for Outlook, hosts add the visitors of a meeting from the meeting itself, in Outlook on the web, the new and classic Outlook for Windows, and Outlook for Mac, with or without the visitor’s e-mail address. Company settings, Company profile, Add-ons, BmyGuest for Outlook. The page walks you through it, and steps 2 and 3 are done by someone who administers your company’s Microsoft 365:

1. Switch Activate on.
2. Under step 2, press Approve in Microsoft Entra, or Copy the link and send it to your Microsoft 365 administrator. A Global Administrator, Application Administrator or Cloud Application Administrator signs in and accepts. The add-in only asks to sign the user in and read their profile: no mail, no calendars, no files.
3. Under step 3, press Download the add-in file. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, under Settings, Integrated apps, choose Upload custom apps, Office Add-in, and upload the file. Choose who gets it: start with a few hosts.

Outlook shows the add-in within 24 hours, and the button can take up to 72 hours to appear. Your hosts install nothing. Under What your hosts do there is a short note to send them, and How it is going shows how many hosts have used it.

Microsoft Teams

Hosts can be told in Microsoft Teams when their visitor arrives, a delivery is waiting and more. Company settings, Company profile, Add-ons, Microsoft Teams Bot:

1. Press Download Teams app package.
2. In the Microsoft Teams admin center, under Teams apps, Manage apps, press Upload new app and choose the package. An app setup policy can pin or pre-install it for your hosts.
3. Switch Activate on. Under Messages you choose which of the nine messages hosts get, and change their wording per language.
4. On each location’s settings page, under Host notifications, tick Microsoft Teams.

Slack

Hosts can be told in Slack when their visitor arrives, a delivery is waiting and more, with the same messages as in Microsoft Teams. Company settings, Company profile, Add-ons, Slack Bot:

1. Press Add to Slack, pick the Slack workspace your hosts use, and allow the app. Your Slack administrator may have to approve it.
2. Switch Activate on. Under Messages you choose which messages hosts get, as for Teams: the two apps share them.
3. On each location’s settings page, under Host notifications, check that Slack is ticked. It is, unless someone has unticked it.

The first two steps can be taken in either order. That is the whole setup: BmyGuest finds your hosts in the workspace by their work e-mail address, and their notifications arrive as direct messages from the BmyGuest app. Your hosts do not have to do anything. The page shows how many of your hosts BmyGuest reaches in Slack. BmyGuest looks again every hour, and Match hosts now looks straight away.

Single sign-on

Everyone can sign in to BmyGuest with a link or code sent to their e-mail address, or with the Microsoft or Google button on the sign-in page. Signing in with Microsoft works for hosts synchronised from Microsoft Entra ID whose address BmyGuest could confirm (see What the synchronisation does); signing in with Google works for anyone whose e-mail address is a Google account.

BmyGuest can also require your hosts, administrators and receptionists to sign in with single sign-on only. Ask BmyGuest support to switch it on. Hosts can then no longer be added by hand or from a file: they come from your directory. The link in the message a host gets when their visitor arrives then opens a sign-in page with only the Microsoft and Google buttons, and takes the host to their own page once they have signed in.

Badge printer

Visitor badges are printed on a Zebra label printer at reception. BmyGuest support sets the printer up and connects it to your locations; what you set yourself:

• Enable visitor badge printer and Default printer in the location’s Reception section. A badge is then printed when a visitor checks in.
• Badge print logo in the General section: a plain black-and-white logo prints best.
• Label print text on a meeting replaces the host’s name on its badges, and Don’t print labels when guests check in skips them for that meeting. A visitor type can skip badges as well.

Reception can print or reprint badges from the reception desk, which also shows whether the printer is connected. A meeting’s badges can also be printed from the meeting itself, under Name tags.

When the printer does not print

• Check that the printer is switched on, that its light is green, and that it has labels.
• Check the network cable or Wi-Fi, and that nothing else changed at reception, such as a new router.
• Switch the printer off and on again, and print a badge from the reception desk.

Rollout and data

Telling your employees

Before you start, let your colleagues know what changes for them. Here is an e-mail to adapt: replace the text in square brackets.

Visitor data

• Every check-in is kept in the visitor history, which reception and administrators open from the reception desk. Export there downloads the visits in a period as a CSV file for Excel.
• How long visitor details are kept, before they are anonymised, is agreed with BmyGuest. Anonymised visits stay in the history, but without the person’s details. Ask BmyGuest support to change the period.
• The terms visitors accepted are kept with the date; see Accept history.

Help

Troubleshooting

Button and screen names are given in English, as they appear in the screenshots. If you use BmyGuest in another language, the wording differs, but every screen and button is in the same place. The screenshots show a fictional company, Northgate Group.