Verkada Introduces AI-Powered Search to Make Investigations Even More Efficient, Enhances Access Control Functionalities

In this quarter’s What’s New Webinar, we announced new hardware and software features across all of our products. In particular, this quarter’s launches are marked by the announcement of AI-powered search, which enables our users to search for camera footage in a revolutionary way — by simply typing in everyday phrases a description of exactly what they are looking for. See below for some highlights of this quarter’s releases, and be sure to check out our product blog and verkada.com/updates for the full set of releases and details. 

AI-Powered Search: Search in Everyday Language

The ability for our users to easily search for and quickly find what they are looking for has always been a core differentiator of our video security offering; but our capabilities have evolved considerably over time. What began as motion search grew into the ability to quickly find people and vehicles by filtering footage by common attributes, like the color of a shirt, the presence of a backpack, or the type of car. While this functionality is powerful, it can also be limited. Users could only search by a predefined set of characteristics that they checkmarked from a dropdown menu. 

But with recent advances in AI and natural language processing, we are able to take search on Command to a whole new level. Now, with AI-powered search, customers can use freeform text to search for people and vehicles —- effectively making it possible to search for any characteristic or behavior. Within the search bar in Command, users can simply type using everyday language exactly what they are looking for and the search will return the relevant results. The applications across industries are endless. For example, a retailer may want to search for someone holding a high-value item that was shoplifted (“person holding Louis Vuitton bag”), or residential building security may want to investigate the presence of a specific car in the garage on a certain day (“blue BMW leaving the garage last Friday”).  

We are excited for this future of search and can’t wait to see the many use cases our customers come up with in the coming months. To learn more, read the full announcement. 

Bringing Verkada Access Control to Even More Doors Via New ASSA ABLOY Integrations

This past February, we released a number of features aimed at providing access control to enterprise-scale organizations with hundreds or even thousands of doors. Building on this, we are excited to announce an integration with ASSA ABLOY WiFi locks. WiFi locks are a great option for many organizations with large numbers of internal doors, including higher education residential locations, apartment complexes, and long-term care facilities. With this integration, organizations will now be able to control these doors and manage settings directly in Command. 

In addition to the integration with WiFi locks, we are also excited to announce an integration with ASSA ABLOY’s PoE lock series, further expanding the set of doors that can be controlled via Command. 

Integrating Verkada Access Control Into Everyday Building Systems

Over the years, many of our customers have expressed a desire to incorporate access control functionality into the existing, third-party systems they use everyday. For example, a multi-unit residential building may want to give tenants the ability to unlock doors to common areas directly via their tenant management application. From healthcare, to manufacturing, to higher education, nearly every industry has a need to integrate access control into an existing application or system. 

In order to facilitate this integration, we are excited to release the new Door Unlock API, which enables customers to easily connect existing applications and securely send requests to Command to unlock a specific door for which the user has permission to access. The Door Unlock API represents a significant step in our goal of making Verkada the most easy-to-integrate platform on the market. Learn more here about the API endpoints included in the Door Unlock API, as well as details on how to set it up. 

Expansion of Government-Grade Camera Portfolio

In February, we announced our initial investment in government-grade solutions; that is, Verkada Command hosted in AWS GovCloud supporting both our Video Security and Guest products. As a part of this, we released four FIPS-validated Dome cameras and expressed a commitment to further build out our camera portfolio to meet the needs of government organizations. Today we are excited to announce the availability of four additional FIPS-validated Bullet cameras,  the CB52-E-F, CB62-E-F, CB52-TE-F and CB62-TE-F. 

The release of these FIPS-validated Bullets will allow customers using Command on AWS GovCloud to leverage advanced capabilities like License Plate Recognition, and other features of our Bullet cameras like 4K resolution, 3x optical zoom, up to 50m of IR range for enhanced nighttime viewing. 

Improving Intercom Performance One Call at a Time

Our engineers are constantly working behind the scenes to improve our Intercom product in even the smallest of ways in order to deliver the best possible call quality and management experience. This quarter we are bringing several enhancements to our Intercom customers. These include more accurate call transcriptions, improved person detection from the camera, and LPR unlock capability on the access controller when paired with a CB52 or CB62 Bullet camera. In addition, we incorporated feedback from customers to make a few UX/UI and call management improvements like moving the location of context cameras on the desk station. 

What’s Next

In addition to the announcements above, we also expanded functionality in our Guest product (with an emphasis on functionality for schools and healthcare organizations) as well as made improvements to analytics functionality in our Air Quality Sensors. 

All of the software features described above — and many more — will go live for existing customers on May 23rd, while the hardware ship dates for the FIPS Bullet cameras will come shortly after. For a comprehensive list of all features that will be made available, check out our product blog as well as verkada.com/updates, and be sure to watch our What’s New Webinar.