Help center › Set up
Getting started: your first afternoon
Create an organization
Go to app.beaconhelpdesk.com/signup. You choose a plan, give your name and work email, set a password or use Continue with Google Workspace, and name the organization. The short name you pick (the slug) becomes the sign-in address everyone in your district uses: app.beaconhelpdesk.com/login?org=yourslug.
- Starter is free for good: one site, up to three agents, up to 1,000 devices, unlimited requesters.
- District pilot is the full District plan for 90 days: every module, unlimited agents. No card, and nothing converts on its own; on day 90 you sign at the published price or export your data. The details are on the pricing page and in Billing and plans.
Not ready to create anything? The K-12 page gives you a login to a private demo district with made-up buildings, people, devices and tickets. It disappears after 14 days and nothing in it sends email.
What a new organization comes with
You start with working defaults rather than an empty database, so the first ticket can be opened before anything is configured.
- Teams: IT Support, Facilities, Device Repair.
- Categories with subcategories: Chromebook / Laptop, Accounts & Passwords, Wi-Fi & Network, Classroom Technology, Software & Apps, Printing, Phones & Intercom, Facilities, Other. Facilities requests route to the Facilities team; Chromebook repairs to Device Repair.
- SLA policies: Standard (counts business hours) as the default and Classroom Down (around the clock) to attach to the categories where instruction stops. See Tickets and SLAs.
- Asset types: Chromebook, Laptop, Desktop, Tablet, Projector / Display, Printer, Network Equipment, Charger / Accessory, Hotspot, each with its own fields (a Chromebook has a Google device ID and enrollment status, a projector has lamp hours).
- Two shared ticket views (Urgent & high, Waiting on requester) beside the built-in Inbox, My Tickets, Unassigned and Overdue.
- Three automations you can read and edit under Admin › Automations: route facilities requests, escalate urgent tickets, tag lost or stolen devices.
- A welcome article in the knowledge base.
Business hours default to Monday to Friday, 7:30 to 16:30, in the time zone you chose at sign-up. Both are under Admin › Settings.
The dashboard panel: Getting Beacon live
For the first 90 days, administrators see a panel at the top of the dashboard with one next step and five milestones. The milestones are computed from your own data, so the panel always points at the thing that matters next:
- People added. Anyone besides the person who signed up, or single sign-on switched on with “Auto-create users”.
- Devices have holders. At least one device of a type people hold is assigned to someone. Skipped entirely until you have devices.
- Staff requests come in. The first real request from a staff member, through the portal, by email, or in the app. Your own test tickets, tickets you open on someone's behalf, and imported history never count.
- First request resolved by a technician.
- Staff using Beacon this week. Three or more requesters active in the last seven days.
Sample data is one click away on the same panel: a dozen labelled tickets plus a few devices and people, so you can see the dashboard with something in it. Sample records are marked “[Sample]”, never count toward the steps, never receive email, and can be removed with one click. “Hide this” puts the panel away for your organization.
The first afternoon, in order
- Time zone and business hours. Admin › Settings. SLA clocks and the dashboard's days run on these.
- Sites. Admin › Sites: one per school or building, with a short code such as
LHS. Imports match sites by name or code. - Technicians. Admin › Users › Invite user, or turn on single sign-on. See Inviting technicians.
- People and devices. Admin › Import takes Incident IQ exports, any CSV, or rows pasted from a spreadsheet (see Importing). Instead, districts can connect their directory and their device consoles once, and each is read nightly: People from Google Workspace or Microsoft Entra, Chromebooks from Google Admin, Devices from Intune, Devices from Mosyle. Bring people in before devices so devices get their holders.
- Requests. Forward your existing help mailbox to your Beacon address and share the portal link. See Email to ticket and the portal link.
- Try a ticket. New Ticket in the top bar (or press c). With AI on, the category, priority and possible duplicates are suggested as you type; you accept or ignore each suggestion.
Single sign-on
Admin › Single Sign-On. Google Workspace needs no console work on your side: leave “Beacon's app (no setup)” selected, add your email domains, and turn it on. If your Workspace restricts third-party apps, a Workspace administrator allows Beacon's client ID once (the page shows it with a copy button). Microsoft Entra ID needs an app registration in your tenant; the page lists the exact values to paste. Clever, ClassLink and any OpenID Connect provider work the same way with their own client. With “Auto-create users” on, staff get an account the first time they sign in, as requesters; you make technicians agents afterwards.
On a phone
The web app works in any phone browser, for technicians and for staff submitting requests. The features page describes the iOS app for technicians, in testing on TestFlight.