Announcing Helix: Verkada’s powerful enterprise video search and integration engine

We are excited to announce the launch of Helix, Verkada’s powerful enterprise video search and integration engine. By allowing customers to provide context to their video security footage, Helix expands and accelerates the business value of Verkada’s Command platform beyond physical security.

Leveraging Verkada’s flexible APIs, customers can pull transaction data from a variety of on-premise or cloud-based systems into Verkada Command.  Helix then uses that data to index video footage by whatever attributes the customer needs. Finally, Helix provides flexible search tools to find just the right video.

For example, an auto manufacturer with many assembly lines and video cameras covering each manufacturing station on the line could use Helix to integrate its production systems into Command.  Helix indexes video footage to the time-series production data about the work done at each station on a particular vehicle (by VIN) by a given operator.  If defects are identified with a particular vehicle, the manufacturer’s quality team can use Helix to root cause the issue.  A simple search by VIN would return video from every manufacturing step for that vehicle.  A similar search could be performed for every action taken at a certain station or taken by a certain employee.

Here’s a real-world example from one of our beta customers.

Customer Example: Mike’s Bikes 

Mike's Bikes operates retail bike stores throughout California and Colorado.  They wanted to understand their customers’ test-ride experience better, and decided to integrate Lightspeed, their point of sale system, into Verkada Command. From Lightspeed they brought in the transactions they do every day in the store, such as sales, returns, and test rides, into Command.  

Mike’s was then able to unlock new insights.  For example, they could visually verify that each customer going on a test ride was given a loaner helmet.  By searching across their custom events, they were also able to identify various areas for improvement in their customer checkout procedures, driving a better in-store customer experience.

“Helix is a great feature addition for any retailer using Verkada. For a minimal development investment we were able to add sales transaction data to Command, which let us more easily make sure our customers were receiving the best experience at the point of sale. To offer a specific example, being able to search for transactions matching certain criteria allowed us to conduct a quick audit of our bicycle test-ride procedure.”  - Chris O’Dell, CTO of Mike’s Bikes

Helix data integration 

Through Verkada's Public API, users can integrate their transaction data with Command.  To begin, they define their own custom event schema. For example, a retail customer setting up a Point-of-Sale integration can create attributes such as “item ID”, "transaction price", "number of items purchased", “terminal ID,” and "transaction type,” as well as the Verkada camera the event is associated with.  

Users can then write some basic scripts to pull information out of their existing systems and write those transactions into Command.  Since many of our customers have hundreds or thousands of sites, we’ve designed Helix to be able to ingest and search for events on a large scale.  And as you would expect, data coming into Command is encrypted in transit.  For more information, please refer to our API Documentation.

Helix video search

Users can then search camera footage using their data on the Alerts Page under “Custom Events.”  Helix provides a range of search options, including exact matches (e.g. "Price" = $10) or inequalities (e.g. "Price" > $10), allowing flexible filtering and searching.  

At Verkada HQ, we have integrated our coffee barista’s point of sale system with Helix, making it easy to search for coffee orders, transaction types, and prices. 

Driving business value

Helix offers a powerful way for customers to bring additional business context to their video security systems.  With flexible data integration options and powerful video search capabilities, Helix expands the value and reach of video security to new users in the enterprise.