Imagine you manage a facility where different companies rent office spaces. The typical challenge is arming the entire facility or common areas while ensuring no one is still in the rest of the offices. If one of the employees is in the office, this can lead to false alarms or situations where the facility is accidentally left unarmed. Therefore, we have developed the Followed groups feature to simplify the arming process for such sites.
To better understand the new feature, let’s take an example of a facility with one common area, where three offices with different owners are located. Two are armed, while the third office is still open, and its employees can use the common corridor. The Followed groups feature aims to automatically arm the common corridor after the third office is armed and no one is in it. The feature also works in the opposite case: it disarms common areas when one of the offices is disarmed.
In an Ajax system, each office and common area within the facility can be considered a group. The number of these groups and their interdependencies can vary and are configured in the space settings.
Group types
When applying the Followed groups feature at your facility, you can divide existing groups into three types:
Initiating group
- It changes its state.
- It changes the state of its following groups.
- It can have several following groups.
The group cannot follow its own following groups.
Following group
- It changes its state.
- It changes its state according to its initiating group.
- It can have several initiating groups.
The group cannot initiate its own initiating group.
Initiating & following group
- It changes its state.
- It changes its state according to its initiating group.
- It changes the state of its following groups.
- It can have several initiating and following groups.
The group cannot follow its own following group and initiate its own initiating group.
How to configure the feature
Let’s configure the Followed group feature according to this example. A user has a safe in one of the offices. It is important not to arm the office if the safe is not armed. However, the common area will be armed only when all offices are armed.
Type of groups according to the example above:
- Open space is the following group. It follows Office 1 and Office 2.
- Office 2 is the initiating & following group. It follows Safe and is the initiator for Open space.
- Safe is the initiating group for Office 2.
Configuring group settings
Only a space admin or a PRO / installation company with rights to configure the system can manage group settings.
- Open an Ajax app and select the space if you have more than one.
- Go to the Control
tab. - Tap on the gear
icon to go to the space settings. - Create groups and add devices to them according to their location.
- Activate Group mode. To learn more about Group mode, read this article.
- Select the group that should follow the initiating group and tap Edit in the upper right corner.
- Tap the Followed groups setting and select groups affecting arming mode of the current group. Tap Back to save the settings.
In our example, we need to edit settings of Open space and select Office 1 and Office 2 for the Followed groups setting. We also need to configure the settings of Office 2 and select Safe as the followed group.
- Enable the Arm with all followed groups toggle to automatically arm the current group after all its initiating groups are armed.
- If necessary, set Exit delay from 1 to 30 min. Tap Save.
The group will be armed automatically after the set time has elapsed. If the current group or its initiating groups contain devices with exit delays, the group will be armed only after all delays have expired.
- If necessary, enable the Disarm with one followed group toggle. When this option is enabled, the current group will be automatically disarmed if at least one of its initiating groups is disarmed.
- Tap Save.
- Repeat steps 6 –11 for all groups for which you need to define initiators.
Configuring hub settings
If your system has a hub, check its System integrity check settings:
Devices 
→ Hub → Settings → Service → System integrity check.
If the Followed groups state toggle is enabled, a user will be informed after an attempt to arm the following group when its initiating group is still disarmed. Disable the toggle if necessary.
If the Arming permission toggle is disabled, system users cannot arm the following group if its initiating group is still disarmed or its devices are malfunctioning. Enable the toggle if necessary.
Security management
Following groups can be armed/disarmed depending on their settings and their initiators’ states. Users can manage the security states via the Control tab in Ajax apps or using Ajax SpaceControl Jeweller or keypads assigned to specific groups.
All system users and the central monitoring station (CMS) receive notifications of successful/unsuccessful attempts to arm the entire facility or its groups.
