Overview

CardOffice is a multi-tenant platform for institutional ID card programmes. It holds the roster of people who need cards, collects and vets their photographs, designs the card, drives the printer, issues the digital equivalent to Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, and handles verification, revocation, reporting and billing.

How a card gets made

Card holder            Staff                    Print room
───────────            ─────                    ──────────
uploads a photo   →    reviews and approves  →  releases a run  →  printer prints
                             │                                          │
                       adds to an order                      card registered,
                                                             verifiable, revocable

An integration can take part at almost any step: create the people, supply their photographs, place the order, and be told when each stage finishes.

The pieces

Piece	What it is	Where it runs
Portal	The web application staff use, plus the REST API, SCIM and agent endpoints	app.cardoffice.nz, or your own servers if self-hosted
Workers	Background processing: photo checks, card rendering, imports, email, webhook delivery	Alongside the portal
Print agent	Drives the card printer	A Windows or Linux machine in the print room
Sync agent	Bridges a legacy on-premises database	The machine hosting that database

Design properties that matter to integrators

• Photo bytes never pass through the API. You request an upload URL, send the file straight to object storage, then tell CardOffice it has landed. See Photos.
• Everything is scoped to one organisation. An API key belongs to one organisation and cannot see another’s data, whatever IDs it sends.
• On-site agents connect outbound only. Nothing at a customer site accepts an inbound connection.
• Writes are safe to retry. Order creation accepts an idempotency key, photo finalisation is idempotent, and webhook deliveries carry a unique ID.

Where to go next

1. Quickstart: create a card holder with curl.
2. Concepts: the vocabulary used throughout.
3. Authentication: create a key and choose its scopes.