About federated entities - Security Center 5.12

Federated entities don’t belong to your local system but you can view and manipulate them in the Federation host system. You can also change the native settings of federated entities using the Remote configuration task.

If you delete your Security Center Federation role, you can retain the following entity types locally on your Federation host system:

Cardholders
Cardholder groups
Credentials
Visitors

If a Federation role is recreated, the entities that were transferred to the Federation host system can be returned to the new Federation role. For more information, see About releasing or reclaiming ownership of entities from a role.

In Config Tool, federated entities have a yellow arrow on their entity icon (). In Security Desk, the yellow arrow isn’t displayed on federated entities.

Entity types that are federated in Security Center

When you create the Security Center Federation role, you select the entity types that you want to monitor from the federated system. After creating the role, you can change the entities that you want to monitor in the Properties page of the role.

The following entity types and their related events can be federated from a remote system:

Component	Entities
Video	Cameras Camera sequences
Access control	Access control units Cardholders Cardholder groups Credentials Doors Elevators Visitors
Intrusion detection	Intrusion detection areas Intrusion detection units Output behavior
ALPR	ALPR units Genetec Patroller™ units Hotlists Overtime rule Permits Permit restrictions
General	Alarms Areas Assets Cash registers Maps Networks Output behaviors Tile plugins Zones

Managing federated entities in Security Desk

You can perform the following operations on federated entities in Security Desk:

View live or playback video from federated cameras.
Add bookmarks, start and stop recording, and export video from federated cameras.
Control federated PTZ cameras. Take into account the user level of the local users on the Federation host, as conflicts may arise between federating users.
Send specific commands to federated cameras, such as arm and disarm a camera for video analytics.
View, start, and stop cycling; pack and unpack federated camera sequences.
Restrict users from viewing a segment or entire video capture by blocking the camera.
Receive, acknowledge, snooze, forward, start and stop cycling, pack and unpack federated alarms.
View and control federated tile plugins.
Unlock federated doors of an area.
Temporarily override the schedule of a federated door.
Set a federated door in maintenance mode.
Shunt the reader and inputs of a federated door.
Change the minimum security clearance of a federated area on threat level.
Forgive the antipassback violations of a federated cardholder.
Sound and silence reader buzzers.
Monitor federated input and output states on maps. Fast-changing output states, such as blinking, might not be displayed properly.
Monitor federated devices in the System status task.
Monitor the people count in federated areas. For more information, see About people counting through Federation™.
Send federated output behaviors to federated outputs, if both belong to the same system.
Arm and disarm federated intrusion detection areas.
Arm and disarm federated zones.
View federated records and record types in the Unified report task.
View the creation date of federated cardholders, visitors, and credentials in various reporting tasks.

What you can configure with federated entities

You can make the following changes to federated entities on the Federation host:

Assign logical IDs to federated entities. The logical ID is a local attribute associated with the federated entity to identify it uniquely within the Federation.
Assign local entity names to federated entities. The original entity names remain visible in Config Tool for troubleshooting purposes.
Update the custom fields associated to federated entities. Custom fields are local to the Federation host.
Choose what events that you want to receive from the federated system. Based on these events, you can define event-to-actions for federated entities. The actions can be either run on the Federation host or on the federated system.
View the activity and audit trail reports of federated entities in the report pane.
Control the visibility of the federated entities to your local users using partitions.
Configure visual tracking for federated cameras.
Use federated entities to configure local entities. This includes attaching federated cameras to local entities, or using them to define local alarms and camera sequences.
Assign local cameras to federated doors to display camera feeds in Security Desk. This relationship remains local; the camera isn’t shared with the federated system.

Limitations of federated entities

Federated entities have the following limitations:

You can't view the custom fields defined on the remote system. Custom fields aren’t federated.
You can't view actions performed on federated entities, such as arming a zone or adding a bookmark to a camera. These actions aren’t logged in the activity trails of the federated system.
NOTE: There’s one exception to this limitation. Export video actions are logged in both activity trails. On the Federation host, the user who performed the activity is logged as the initiator. On the federated system, the initiator is the Federation user, and the user who performed the activity on the Federation host is logged as the original initiator.
You can't add records to federated record types on maps.
Visitors are only federated so that people counting can work for federated areas. In the Visitor management task, federated visitors can’t be checked in, checked out, deleted, or modified, except for adding credentials. Visitors on systems earlier than 5.10.2.0 can’t be federated.
NOTE: To avoid seeing all federated visitors in the Visitor management task, you can move visitors to partitions that aren’t synchronized through Federation.
The Mobile Credential Manager role isn’t designed to work with Security Center Federation.
After you change the Minimum PIN length setting in the Access control task on the Federation host, you must restart the Federation role for credentials to be resynchronized.
When invalid PIN credentials are created on a federated system, the following warning is displayed on the Federation host: Some credentials could not be synchronized. Check the logs in the Windows Event Viewer for more details.
The warning only disappears after you delete the invalid credentials, and then restart the Federation role.

Exceptions for federated alarms

Not all alarm properties are federated. Most properties pertaining to the alarm display in Security Desk must be configured locally on the Federation host.

Federated alarms have the following exceptions:

The alarm schedule follows the original configuration of the remote system. Because schedule entities aren’t federated, the default schedule Always is shown instead.
Alarm priority can’t be modified.
The reactivation threshold is an inherent property of the alarm and can’t be modified.
Entity cycling is a local property to the Federation host. You can change its setting without affecting the federated system.
Automatic acknowledgment is an inherent property of the alarm and can’t be modified.
Create an incident on acknowledgment is a local property to the Federation host. You can change its setting without affecting the federated system.
Automatic video recording is an inherent property of the alarm and can’t be modified.
Protect recorded video is an inherent property of the alarm and can’t be modified.
Video display is a local property to the Federation host. You can change its setting without affecting the federated system.
Alarm procedures (URL) on a federated system can’t be modified.
Entities that are associated to the federated alarm (cameras, doors, and so on) are inherent properties of the alarm and can’t be modified.
Alarm recipients must always be configured locally for the Federation host.

Caution about federated record types

The Federation host creates a privilege for each federated record type, just as it does for local record types. The privilege is named after the record type. If a federated record type has the same name as a local record type, it’s impossible to differentiate which privilege is for which record type.