A Lock Is Offline
An offline lock isn’t reachable by GuestsKey, which means new codes can’t be written to it and existing scheduled changes won’t land. Codes already programmed on the lock keep working — guests currently mid-stay aren’t locked out by this.
Why the alert arrived later than the problem
Locks drop and reconnect constantly for reasons that don’t matter. GuestsKey waits an hour before telling you a lock is offline, and cancels the alert entirely if the lock comes back in the meantime. So an alert means a genuinely sustained outage, not a blip.
The dashboard doesn’t wait — the property’s health panel shows a lock as offline as soon as it’s reported. That’s why the dashboard can show offline before any email arrives, or show it briefly and clear with no email at all. That’s working as intended.
You’ll get at most one alert per lock per hour, and there’s no follow-up email when it recovers. Check the dashboard for the current state.
What actually brings it back
Offline recovery happens between the lock and its manufacturer’s service — there’s no button in GuestsKey that forces a reconnect. The usual causes, roughly in order:
- Batteries. A lock low enough to drop off Wi-Fi often still shows a usable battery percentage. Replacing them is the cheapest thing to rule out.
- Wi-Fi. Locks are usually at the edge of coverage. Router reboots, ISP changes, and a new router with the same name but different band behavior all show up as a lock going offline.
- Hub, for Z-Wave locks. If the SmartThings hub is offline, every lock behind it goes with it. Check the hub before the locks.
- Firmware. A lock mid-update can be unreachable for a stretch and returns on its own.
Once it’s back
When the lock reconnects, GuestsKey automatically retries any codes that failed while it was down. Check upcoming bookings for that property to confirm their codes are in place — particularly anyone arriving within the next day, since those are the ones that would have been written during the outage.