Electronic Tenant Directory: Keeping Your Listings Current

A lobby directory earns its place by being right.

When a tenant moves in, changes its name or splits a suite, the lobby listing has to reflect that change. An electronic tenant directory makes the listing easier to edit. Keeping it accurate also depends on who supplies the information and who is responsible for acting on it.

The goal is a clear process for every change and, where compatible systems allow it, less duplicate entry.

Four changes that put your directory out of date

Directory updates are usually treated as one task. They are four, with different sources and different delays.

A new lease. Leasing knows first, often months ahead. The information is accurate and early, and the gap is the handoff: someone in leasing has to tell someone in property management, and the message has to arrive with the suite number attached.

A suite split, combination or renumber. This is the one that breaks lists. One line becomes two, or two become one, and in the meantime the floor plan, elevator signage, fire plan and directory can each show a different version of the same floor. Construction knows first.

A tenant name change. A tenant may update its branding and door signage without notifying building management. Without a clear reporting process, the lobby directory can keep the previous name until a visitor points it out.

A departure. The lease end date is known well ahead, but the actual move out can slip, and a name removed too early is as awkward as one left too late.

The information often exists elsewhere in the building's processes. Delays arise when it is not checked and passed to the person responsible for the directory.

Why directory updates add up

Here is a worked example. The figures are assumptions rather than industry data, and the method is the point.

Take a 200,000 square foot multi-tenant office building. Assume an average suite of 5,000 square feet, which puts roughly 40 tenants in the building. Apply 15 percent annual tenant turnover, and six of those suites change hands in a year.

For this example, assume each turnover requires two separate directory edits: removing the departing tenant and adding the replacement. Six turnovers would therefore produce twelve edits, before any suite changes or tenant name changes are counted.

A dozen edits across twelve months does not sound like much, and on its own it is not. The more useful question is a different one:

How many people have to touch the same change before the lobby listing is correct?

A single new tenant can involve leasing, property management, the front desk and whoever physically updates the listing. Each handoff is a place the change can stall, arrive incomplete or get entered twice. That is what produces the visible symptoms: a visitor sent to the wrong floor, a front desk correcting the same name repeatedly, and two systems disagreeing about who occupies suite 410.

Run the count for your own building and look at the handoffs rather than the total. Pull the last two years of directory changes from the property management log and ask, for a typical one, how many people and systems it passed through.

Who is responsible for keeping it current

Ask three people in a building who maintains the tenant list and you can get three answers: property management, because they run the building; leasing, because they hold the lease; the front desk, because they are the ones correcting a visitor.

In practice the list often lives in a spreadsheet that is not in anyone's job description. It gets maintained by whoever notices, which works until that person is away during a busy leasing quarter.

Naming a responsible owner helps prevent missed updates. The version that works names a person, the source they work from, and a timeframe. For a new lease, that might look like this:

Leasing provides the approved tenant name, suite and intended occupancy date. The named directory owner confirms when the listing should appear and makes the change within the building's agreed timeframe.

Note the two separate moments in that sentence. Leasing may know months ahead, so the information can be prepared long before the listing should go live. Deciding when a name appears, and when a departing one comes down, is a judgment the building makes rather than something the lease date decides on its own.

What tenants should and should not be able to change

Tenants can help keep their listings current, but some details should stay under building management's control.

Reasonable to delegate: a display name or trading name within an agreed character limit, a department or division line, a logo within the design template.

Better held centrally: suite numbers, floor assignments, whether a tenant appears at all, and anything that feeds wayfinding. Those are building facts rather than tenant preferences, and a wayfinding route built on a suite number a tenant edited shows up as a lost visitor rather than as an error message.

A practical approach: tenants request, the building approves, the record updates once.

One question worth settling during any evaluation: what a connected system holds and what should actually appear in a public lobby are not the same list. An employee directory may contain far more detail than a visitor needs to see. Ask any supplier how display content is selected and approved, rather than assuming everything available is everything shown.

Which system knows about a change first

Clear ownership helps prevent missed updates. Connecting compatible systems is what then reduces the duplicate entry needed to keep the directory aligned with its source. The two work in that order, and the first one matters whether or not you ever automate anything.

So which source should the directory follow? Most people reach for the property management or lease administration platform, because that is where the lease lives.

Consider instead when each system finds out about a change. The lease record updates on the lease's schedule, which is accurate and often early, though it describes the document rather than the building. The front desk list updates when somebody remembers. The access control system, the platform that decides whose badge opens what, updates the moment a new tenant's people need to get through the turnstile, because a tenant who cannot get upstairs on day one calls immediately.

That can make the access control platform a useful source of current tenant and employee information, provided the relevant records are maintained accurately.

This is ITS's published position, and it shapes how Navigo® is set up:

"Your security system already manages the most current tenant and employee data so Navigo® simply auto-polls that source, such as we do with Kastle Systems, to populate the building directory."

In plain terms, the directory automatically checks the connected system for changes and updates itself from what it finds. Where a building runs a compatible platform and the connection is configured, a change entered once can appear in the lobby without a second entry elsewhere.

Two things worth being clear about. This does not remove the need for someone to own the tenant record; the source still has to be accurate, and someone is still responsible for that. And it depends on the building running a system the directory can connect to. What a supported connection reduces is the duplicate entry, and with it the delay that comes from waiting on a second person to make the same change.

Navigo® connects to access platforms including Kastle Systems, Genetec and C•CURE 9000, and can pull employee names from Active Directory in corporate buildings. The full list of supported systems is published on the ITS site, and the practical question for any building is whether the platform it already runs appears on it.

What about the property management system

This comes up early in most conversations, so it is worth being precise.

The property management platform remains the authority on the lease itself: the term, the premises, the rentable area, the legal entity on the contract. What it does not always hold is what a visitor in the lobby actually needs, which is the name a tenant trades under and the suite their people occupy. Those can differ from the lease record, and they change on their own schedule.

So the sensible approach is not to pick one system and call it authoritative for everything. It is to be clear about which system is authoritative for which piece of information, and to work out which of those the directory can read from directly.

In practice that usually means the lease record governs the formal details while the access platform or employee directory holds the current tenant and employee information. Which of them the directory connects to depends on what the building runs and what is supported. Any supplier should be able to map that out for your building before you buy.

If your building's systems are not supported

Not every building runs a platform with a supported connection, and that does not rule out a digital directory.

Where there is no supported connection, the directory is maintained directly through its own web-based content manager, which for Navigo® is Navigo®Cloud™, reachable from any browser. The listing can be edited directly, without ordering a replacement insert, and content for one screen or a whole portfolio is managed in the same place. Your team still confirms the information and decides when the change should appear.

What changes is where the discipline has to come from. Without a connection doing the work, the named owner, the agreed source and the committed timeframe from earlier in this article carry the whole load, which makes them more important rather than less. It is also worth asking a supplier what a connection would involve later, so a manual start now does not foreclose a connected setup when the building changes platforms.

For buildings moving from a printed board for the first time, transitioning to a digital directory covers the practical steps.

Three questions to ask a directory supplier

Worth adding to any directory specification or request for proposal. None of them is about the screen.

Which system supplies each field? Where the directory takes each piece of information from, and what happens to anything no connected system holds.

How quickly is a manual change reflected? Agree who confirms the effective date, who makes the edit and when the revised listing must appear. "We will keep it updated" is not something anyone can be held to.

Who can edit what? Which roles have content access, and whether any editing happens outside the source system, because that would recreate the second list a connection exists to avoid.

Clear answers to all three suggest a system that has been run in a building like yours, which is a more useful signal than a feature list.

Where Navigo® fits

Navigo® supports both approaches described above: reading from a connected building system where one is supported, and direct management through Navigo®Cloud™ where it is not. Training and support are part of the system rather than an extra. ITS has been based in Maryland since 1999.

Make directory updates easier to manage

Tell ITS how you handle tenant listings today and which building systems you run. We will talk through whether a supported connection could reduce duplicate entry, and what your team would still manage either way.

Not sure which systems your building uses? Start by describing how directory changes are handled today. Talk to ITS about your directory.

FAQs

How often does a building directory need updating?

Update the directory when an approved tenant name, suite assignment or occupancy change takes effect. Assign a responsible owner and an agreed timeframe so changes do not wait for someone to notice an outdated listing.

What is an electronic tenant directory?

A digital display of a building's tenant list, usually in the lobby, updated as a record rather than as a printed insert. Additional features can include wayfinding, building information and emergency messaging.

Who should be responsible for updating the tenant list?

Name one responsible owner, an agreed source for each piece of information, and a timeframe for updates. A workable version is that leasing supplies the approved name, suite and intended occupancy date, and a named directory owner confirms when the listing should appear and makes the change within the building's agreed window. The common failure is not the wrong owner, it is no named owner.

Can a digital directory update automatically from another system?

Where the building runs a compatible platform and the connection is configured, yes. Navigo® can check a system the building already maintains, such as its access control platform, and update the directory from what it finds, so a change entered once can appear in the lobby without a second entry. Someone still owns and maintains that source record.

What if our building's access or property system is not supported?

The directory is maintained directly through its web-based content manager instead. The listing can be edited directly without ordering a replacement insert, and your team still confirms the information and decides when it should appear. The named owner, agreed source and committed timeframe matter more in that setup. It is worth asking what a connection would involve later, so a manual start does not rule one out.

Which system should the directory take tenant information from?

Use the agreed source for each piece of information, then confirm which sources the directory can read directly. The access control system is updated as soon as a new tenant's people need their badges to work, which can make it a current source of tenant and employee information. The lease record remains the authority on the lease itself.

What happens when a tenant splits or combines suites?

Suite changes can affect the tenant list, floor plan and wayfinding. Use the construction update to prepare the change, then publish the confirmed suite information when it takes effect, following the building's agreed process.

Should tenants be able to edit their own listing?

Within limits. Trading names, division lines and logos within the template are reasonable to delegate. Suite numbers, floor assignments and anything feeding wayfinding are building facts and are better held centrally, usually as a request and approve step.

What should a directory specification say about updates?

Three things: which system supplies each field, the committed window for any change made by hand, and which roles can edit what.

Ready to look at your own setup? Talk to ITS about your directory to discuss how your tenant information is managed today and which update approach fits your building.