The Smartalock system has 3 different locations where a locker policy can be applied by the administrator. The policy is checked and applied when a locker reservation is created. These are checked in the below order:
Group Level - policy that applies to a defined group of lockers which maybe either a subset of a single locker bank, or possible spans multiple locker banks. For example a group called “Visitor Lockers” may include 4 defined lockers on each of 3 different locker banks.
Controller Level - this policy applies to all the lockers belonging to a single locker bank. There are some exceptions where a controller policy may apply to multiple locker banks that have been grouped together so that they are under the control of a single touchscreen kiosk - in this case the Controller level policy applies to all the lockers under the administration of the single touchscreen kiosk.
Master Level - this policy applies to all the lockers in the entire system
The typical setup has the most restrictive policy at the Group level, and the most permissive at the Master level. For example a Group of lockers called “End of Trip” and the locker bank which hosts the End of Trip locker group has both a group and controller policy allowing 1 locker per user, but the Master Level policy allows 2 lockers. This would allow the user to reserve 1 End of Trip locker on a locker bank which has this group while still retaining their existing locker reservation on a different locker bank elsewhere.
Where any of these policies is in conflict, the default position is the more restrictive policy applies. For example a “Visitor” group policy may allow 2 lockers per user, whereas the controller and master policy only allow 1 locker per user. If a user that already has a locker on the system elsewhere on different locker bank attempts to create a reservation for a locker within the “Visitor” group of lockers, then while this would be acceptable to the group policy, and also the controller policy (as the users existing locker is not on this controller), the master policy would not be met so the reservation would fail with limit exceeded.
There is an alternative mode where the policy is checked in order of Group->Controller->Master and if the Group policy is met, then the reservation will be made without seeing if the new reservation will breach any other policy limits. This alternative mode can be set by Smartalock technicians by customer request.
The typical policy elements for lockers include
The number of lockers a single user can have
Whether the lockers can be dynamically reserved on demand (ie adhoc) vs the
Administrator performing the locker allocation to the user
If Adhoc reservations are allowed, what is the reservation length
Is there a grace period where the user can still open the locker one final time, even if
the reservation has expired
Should a locker reservation automatically be released if the user hasn’t used the locker for a long time (idle time)