Overview
Our blocklist can prevent unwanted guests from visiting by adding their contact information to Envoy. If a person on your blocklist tries to sign in or a teammate inadvertently invites them, admins are notified and can quickly approve or deny their visit.
How the blocklist works
Blocking people
You can block individual people, or if you want to block anyone who works at a specific company, you can block keywords.
Locations
Envoy's block list allows you to block individuals globally or by location. Global admins can add entries to all locations, while location admins can only add to locations they manage. If you need to grant location admins the ability to add global blocks without giving complete global permissions, you can create a custom admin role.
Screening visitors
Whenever a visitor is invited or signs in, Envoy automatically checks if they are on your blocklist. Only exact matches will trigger an alert to your team. This includes punctuation and the order of words; however, matching is not case sensitive.
Matching works slightly differently by field.
Full name and aliases. A visitor’s full name will be checked against the full names and aliases of people on your blocklist. Be sure to list nicknames or common misspellings of the blocked person’s name in the “Aliases” field.
Email address and phone. A visitor’s email address and phone number will be checked against the email addresses and phone numbers, respectively, of people on your blocklist.
Keywords. All information visitors provide will be checked against the keywords listed for people on your blocklist.
Alerts
When a visitor matches someone on your blocklist, your team is alerted in a few ways.
Visitor log
All administrators will see alerts in the Invites and Visitor logs when an invited or signed in visitor matches to your blocklist, respectively. Global and Location Admin will see buttons to approve or deny entry to visitors, whereas all other administrators will see that the visitor is under review.
Invites log
If a visitor has filled out their registration email and an answer matches something on your blocklist you will be prompted to approve or deny the invite. You can click on View details and see what matches the blocklist specifically.
Approvals log
Pending blocklist visitors or invites will also appear in the Approvals log! Once it is denied or approved, the entry will clear from the approvals queue.
Email, SMS, Slack, and Teams
Administrators subscribed to blocklist alerts will receive alerts via email by default, and can also receive alerts through Slack, SMS, and Teams. Each administrator can set their preferred notification methods under Profile > Notification settings. To receive alerts via Slack, the Slack integration must be enabled for your company. To receive alerts via SMS, administrators must have a phone number listed within their Profile, not just in the Employee Directory.
Approving via Slack and Teams
For admins who have Slack or Teams, approvals and denials can occur within the app. Approvals via Slack or Teams will only be valid up to 24 hours after the sign-in/invitation attempt. After that period, they must be approved via the Envoy dashboard.
Approving and denying visitors
Administrators can see more information on the visitor and the person on your block who they matched by clicking View details.
Here, you can see why the person was blocked and the exact information that matched, highlighted in yellow.
Who can approve and deny visitors
By default, a Global Admin can approve or deny visitors at any location, and a Location Admin can approve or deny matching visitors at their location. These administrators will not receive blocklist alerts outside of the dashboard unless they subscribe to blocklist alerts.
Approving and denying invited visitors
If you approve an invited visitor, they will receive an invitation email, if enabled, and sign in normally on the kiosk when they arrive.
If you deny an invited visitor, they will not receive an invitation email, if enabled. Their host will be notified that the invitation was canceled and that they can contact the administrator who denied the invite if they have questions
Approving and denying signed-in visitors
If you approve a signed-in visitor, Envoy prints the visitor’s badge and notifies the visitor’s host of their arrival.
If you deny a signed-in visitor, Envoy will not print a visitor badge or notify the visitor’s host of their arrival. We also recommend that you initiate security procedures to ensure the visitor does not enter.
Logging blocklist approvals and denials
You can see whether a visitor matched to your blocklist and if they were approved or denied by adding the blocklist column to your visitor log.
Each visitor will have one of the following statuses.
✔️Access approved: An administrator manually approved the visitor’s entry
❌Access denied: An administrator manually denied the visitor’s entry
✔️No match: Visitor didn’t match someone on your blocklist.
− Not enabled: The blocklist was not enabled at the time of the sign-in, or not applicable. Employee registration does not use the blocklist feature.
Once an administrator approves or denies entry to a visitor, that administrator’s name will be listed within the invite details or visitor details, stating that they approved or denied access to the visitor.
Multiple Approvals
There are a few settings and integrations that will initiate an approval process: Invitation approval, ID Scanning, Blocklist, and more.
If multiple features catch an entry attempt, a visitor will require multiple approvals.
Each approval will have a separate Approval history.
Enable your Blocklist
Navigate to Visitors > Settings > Security.
Find Blocklist and click Enable.
Alert Admins
Under Alerts, input which admins to alert when a visitor matches your blocklist. Start typing the administrator’s name, and select it when it appears.
Note: Only Global, Location, and Front Desk Admin can receive blocklist alerts. Adding a Front Desk Admin will give them permission to approve and deny visitors who match to your blocklist. Learn more about admin roles and permissions.
Click Save contacts.
Adding blocklist entries
You can add block entries individually or via a CSV upload.
Add individual blocklist entries
Navigate to Visitors > Settings > Security. Click Edit next to Block list.
Click Add records then select Add a single record.
Fill out the form with key information about the person you do not want allowed to visit your workplace.
You can upload a photo of the person you want to block. Photos can be up to 10MB, and can be jpg, png, or animated gif. Photos uploaded to the block list are not used as a reference for facial recognition. These photos are used for internal reference only.
Visitors will be checked against any information you include under Matching fields: Full name, Aliases, Emails, Phone numbers, and keywords.
The information you include under Details will not be checked, but can help provide more information to your internal team.
Enter the reason you’re adding this person to the blocklist.
Set an Expiry date. By default, this field is set to Never.
Click Save. The entry will be added to your blocklist. For global admins, the entry will be added to All locations. For location admins, the entry will be added to your current location.
Repeat the above steps to add more people.
To edit someone you block, click the pencil icon to open.
Changing active block locations
To change the locations this entry is blocked at, click the Locations column.
Select the locations you want this block to apply to.
All locations: The record applies company-wide. Anyone matching this record is screened at every location.
Specific location(s): The record applies only to the location(s) you select. A visitor matching this entry is screened at those sites, and only those sites.
Click Save changes.
Tip: You can also create custom admin roles to allow users with lesser permissions to approve/deny visitors. ✨
Adding via the Visitor log
You can add people to your blocklist directly from the visitor log.
Navigate to Visitors > Visitor log.
Locate the entry of the person you want to block, then click the ellipses on the right-hand side.
Select ⛔ Add to Blocklist. This automatically pulls information from their visit to create the record.
Add any additional information, then click Save.
Add blocklist entries via CSV
Navigate to Visitors > Settings > Security.
Click Edit (or Enable, if Blocklist is currently disabled) next to Blocklist.
Click on Add records.
Select Import from CSV. (If you do not have a CSV file created already, please see steps below on how to format your CSV.)
Drag and drop a CSV file or click on or select a file from your computer.
Upload the list and click Import X records.
Formatting your CSV
The CSV needs the first row to match the record details.
Example CSV:
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You can name the rows yourself in a CSV and fill in the rows underneath with the Block List records needed.
Exporting your Blocklist
Navigate to Visitors > Settings > Security.
Click Edit on Blocklist.
Click on Export at the top of the list of blocked people.
Note: The CSV will have all fields plus the ID of the block list entry. If you want to edit the export to include new people and re-upload, simply delete the “ID” column and continue to edit.
Searching Blocklist
If you have more than 20 entries on your blocklist, you can utilize our search function
You can search via any field collected. If you search for a portion of a word or phone number, anything that matches will be filtered.
Creating a global block list admin role
If you need location admins to manage the global block list, you can do so by adding a custom admin role. Since users can have both a location-level admin role and a company-level admin role, the easiest way to grant this permission is to create a lightweight company-level admin role with only this block list permission. Location admins already have the other permissions required to manage their location(s)'s security settings.
Only global admins can create company-level admin roles.
Navigate to Manage > Roles from the left-hand side menu of the Envoy dashboard.
You will be brought to our roles matrix page. Click New role in the upper right corner.
The new admin role window will appear. Select Company role, then Blank role with no permissions.
Click Next.
Give your new admin role a name and description. Other admins can see and assign these roles.
In the Permissions section, scroll down to Blocklist management, and click Edit blocklist. The View blocklist permission will automatically be included in this, since Edit depends on being able to view the blocklist.
Scroll back up to the top and click Create.
Important notes
Block list must be turned on at a location level, to do this go to Visitors > Settings > Security and click Enable on Blocklist.
You must set Blocklist admin notifications on a location level. You can have the same admin listed at each location, but you have to set that manually at each location. There is no currently a "Bulk" setup for who to alert.