Migration guide
Leaving LobbyGuard without losing your history
This is the guide we hand to a district that has decided to move. It is written for the business administrator and the front-office lead, not for IT alone. It applies whichever system you move to; the EduQueue-specific parts are marked.
1. Getting your visitor history out of LobbyGuard
Your visitor log is a record you may need to produce years later — for a custody dispute, a Title IX inquiry, an insurance claim, an OPRA request. It has to leave with you.
What is publicly documented. As of our last review we could not find a public, self-service “export all history” procedure for LobbyGuard in Raptor’s public documentation; LobbyGuard’s own site now redirects to raptortech.com/lobbyguard/.1 Reporting screens within the product have historically allowed date-ranged reports to be run and saved, which is a workable, if manual, export path. We will update this section if Raptor publishes a procedure.
What to do: ask your Raptor account representative, in writing, for a full CSV export of visitor, volunteer and student check-in records for every building, covering the entire period you have used the product. It is your data. Ask for it before you give notice, while you are still a customer in good standing, and ask for the field definitions to come with it.
What you want in the export, at minimum:
- Visitor name, date of birth (if captured), ID number type (not the number itself, unless your retention policy says otherwise), photo reference.
- Every check-in and check-out timestamp, the building, the destination or person visited, the reason, and the badge printed.
- Screening outcome per visit (cleared / flagged / overridden, and by whom).
- Your local watch list or banned list, with reasons and the staff member who added each entry.
- Volunteer approvals and expiry dates. Student tardy and early-dismissal records if you used those modules.
Keep the raw export unaltered in a district-controlled location (your Google Drive or SharePoint tenant, not a vendor’s). Import a copy into the new system. The original is the record.
2. Field mapping
Every visitor-management product stores roughly the same things under different names. The table below is the mapping we use when importing into EduQueue; for other products, use the left two columns and fill in the right one yourself.
| Concept | Typical LobbyGuard export label | EduQueue field | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visitor identity | First / Last Name, DOB | visitor.first_name, visitor.last_name, visitor.dob | DOB is the de-duplication key alongside name; keep it if you have it. |
| Contact | Phone, Email | visitor.phone, visitor.email | One phone field. Licence-scan records typically have no email; that is normal. |
| Photo | Image file / URL | visitor.photo | Ask for the image files, not just the file names. |
| Visit | Sign-in time, Sign-out time, Location | visit.checked_in_at, visit.checked_out_at, visit.building | Confirm the export’s time zone. Mixed UTC/local is the most common import error. |
| Purpose / host | Reason, Destination, Person visiting | visit.purpose, visit.host | Hosts become staff users; unmatched names are kept as free text. |
| Role | Visitor type (Visitor / Volunteer / Vendor / Parent) | visitor_role | Roles are per building in EduQueue; map once per building. |
| Screening result | Alert / Cleared / Override | visit.screening_status, visit.override_by | Historic screening results are imported as history, never re-run against people who are not present. |
| Watch list | Banned / custom alert list | local_ban | Import this first and verify it by hand. It is the list that matters on day one. |
| Students (if used) | Student ID, Tardy / Early dismissal | Synced from the SIS | In EduQueue the roster comes from PowerSchool; do not import a stale roster. |
3. A 30-day cutover calendar
Thirty days is comfortable for a district of up to a dozen buildings if the export arrives on time. The critical path is the export, not the software.
Days 1–7 · Secure the data
- Written export request to Raptor (section 1).
- Inventory kiosks and printers per building: model, OS, scanner, printer. Use this page.
- Confirm your notice period and renewal date from the contract (section 5).
- Name one front-office lead per building.
Days 8–14 · Stand up the new system
- Create the account, buildings, roles and badge template.
- Import the watch list by hand and verify every entry.
- Connect the SIS (EduQueue: PowerSchool sync) and check the roster count against the SIS.
- Test a licence scan, a badge print and an evacuation report on one real kiosk.
Days 15–21 · Pilot one building
- Run both systems in parallel in one building for a week.
- Train the desk: 30 minutes, on the actual kiosk, with the actual printer.
- Import the historical export once the parallel week confirms the field mapping.
- Send the parent notice (section 4).
Days 22–30 · Cut over the rest
- Two or three buildings a day; the pilot lead visits each on its first morning.
- Stop the old system per building only after its first full day on the new one.
- Confirm you hold the final export and the image files; then give formal notice.
- Day 30: run the evacuation report in every building. That is your acceptance test.
4. What to tell parents
Parents mostly notice two things: that they still need an ID at the door, and that the badge looks different. Keep the message short and put it out a week before the building changes.
Starting [date], [School] is changing the system we use to sign visitors in at the front office. You will still be asked for a photo ID the first time you visit, and you will still receive a printed badge to wear in the building. The new system checks the same public safety records as before and does not share your information with anyone outside the district. If you have a question about how your information is stored, contact [name, role, phone].
If you are moving to a system that scans licences and yours did not, add one sentence saying the scan reads the name and date of birth printed on the card and that the card is handed straight back. If your board has a data-retention policy for visitor records, cite it.
5. Twelve questions to ask before you sign the Raptor renewal
These are not gotchas. They are the questions any business administrator would ask about a multi-year software contract, and the answers belong in writing. Several are exactly the questions you should ask us, too.
- Auto-renewal. Does the agreement renew automatically, with what notice period, and is the notice date on your calendar? Ask for the clause by number.
- Price caps. Is the annual increase capped in the contract, or is it “then-current list price”? Ask for the renewal price for years two and three now.
- Kiosk support commitments. Will the LobbyGuard kiosks you already own be supported on the product you are renewing, for how long, and is that written into the agreement rather than a sales email?
- Data return. On termination, do you receive a complete export (visitors, visits, images, watch list) in a documented format, at no charge, within a stated number of days?
- Per-building or per-district pricing. Which is it, what happens when you open or close a building, and does a preschool annex or an administration building count?
- Screening data source. Which sex-offender registries are checked, how often are they refreshed, and is that coverage stated in the contract?
- SIS write-back. Does the product write tardies and early dismissals back into your SIS, or only read from it? If write-back exists, who owns the mapping?
- Uptime commitments. Is there a service-level commitment with a remedy, or only a “commercially reasonable efforts” statement?
- Training. How many hours are included, on-site or remote, and what does a refresher for new front-office staff cost next year?
- SmartPass bundling. Raptor acquired SmartPass in December 2024.2 If a bundle is offered, ask for the standalone price of each product, and whether declining one changes the price of the other.
- Exit terms. What does early termination cost, and does the data-return obligation (question 4) survive it?
- References in New Jersey. Ask for two districts of your size in-state that renewed in the last twelve months, and call them.
A note on tone. We publish this list because we are a competitor, and you should read it that way. But every question applies to any vendor, us included. If you ask us the same twelve, we will answer in writing.
Sources
- lobbyguard.com returns HTTP 301 to https://raptortech.com/lobbyguard/ (verified by HTTP request, 2026-09-04). ↩
- Raptor Technologies, “Raptor Technologies Acquires SmartPass”, raptortech.com; EdWeek Market Brief, “K-12 Dealmaking: Raptor Acquires SmartPass”, December 2024, marketbrief.edweek.org. ↩