Help center › Set up
Getting started for companies
This guide is for a company, a construction firm included, whose employees send IT, HR and facilities requests to the people who handle them. It follows a new organization through its first afternoon: what it starts with, sign-in for employees, requests by email, and the first report.
Create the organization
Go to app.beaconhelpdesk.com/signup?type=company. The form starts with Company as the organization type. Give the company name, your name, your work email and a password, or use Continue with Google Workspace. The short name made from the company name (the slug) is part of the sign-in address your employees use: app.beaconhelpdesk.com/login?org=yourslug.
- Want to look first? Look inside a company's help desk. We email you a login.
- Starter is free forever: up to 3 sites, up to 3 agents, up to 1,000 assets. For a company a site is an office.
- Organization pilot is 90 days with everything included and no card, for any number of offices.
What each plan includes is in Billing and plans.
What a company starts with
A new company comes with working defaults, so the first request can arrive before anything is configured. Rename or change any of it under Admin.
Categories, each a card on the portal, with the subcategories under it and the team it goes to:
| Category | Subcategories | Goes to |
|---|---|---|
| Accounts and access | New hire, Offboarding, Password reset, Permissions | IT Support |
| Hardware | Laptop, Monitor, Phone, Printer | IT Support |
| Software and apps | None | IT Support |
| Network and Wi-Fi | None | IT Support |
| HR requests | Time off question, Payroll question, Benefits question, Policy question | HR Requests |
| Facilities | HVAC, Plumbing, Electrical, Keys and doors, Cleaning | Facilities |
| Purchasing | Request a purchase, Vendor invoice | No team until a technician picks one |
| Other | None | No team until a technician picks one |
- Teams: IT Support, HR Requests and Facilities. You start on IT Support.
- Asset types: Laptop, Desktop, Monitor, Phone, Printer and Network gear. Laptops, desktops, monitors and phones can be checked out to an employee.
- Three automations you can read and edit under Admin › Automations: HR requests go to the HR Requests team, facilities requests go to the Facilities team, and every urgent request is announced to IT Support.
- SLA policies: Standard, which counts business hours, on every category. On the Organization pilot there is also Urgent Response, which runs around the clock, to attach to the categories where work stops. See Tickets and SLAs.
- Two shared ticket views (Urgent & high, Waiting on requester) beside the built-in Inbox, My Tickets, Unassigned and Overdue.
- A welcome article in the knowledge base.
Business hours start as Monday to Friday, 7:30 to 16:30, in the time zone you chose at sign-up. Both are under Admin › Settings.
HR requests can stay with HR. Make HR Requests a private team under Admin › Teams › Edit team, and its requests are read by its members and the owners, and by administrators unless you turn that off under Admin › Settings › Tickets. Nobody else sees them: not in the ticket list, search, the reports or the export. See Private teams.
The request form
On the portal a request starts with the categories as cards (“What is this about?”), then the subcategory, then the form: a title (“What do you need help with?”), the details (“What happened?”), the asset tag of the device it is about, and photos or files. The tag fills itself in when the employee has one device checked out to them, and is a list when they have several. A line under the form tells the employee which team gets it: “Your request goes to the HR team.”
Add questions to any category under Admin › Categories: a start date and the manager's name for New hire, say, or the item, the cost and a link for Request a purchase. A question can be required, or asked only after a certain answer. See Request forms and conditional questions.
Requests by email
Every organization has its own address: yourslug@tickets.beaconhelpdesk.com. It is shown with a copy button under Admin › Settings › Email to Ticket and on the dashboard's first-run panel. Forward your help mailbox (it@yourcompany.com) to it, and keep telling employees to use the address they know. Each email opens a request with the subject as its title and the body as its description, the sender becomes the requester, and replies thread back into the same request. To take requests by email from employees only, set Allowed sender domains to your company's domain.
HR and facilities can have addresses of their own. Give the HR requests category the email key hr under Admin › Categories, and mail to yourslug+hr@tickets.beaconhelpdesk.com opens an HR request in the HR Requests team; forward hr@yourcompany.com there. Facilities works the same way with the key facilities. Email to ticket and the portal link has the sender rules and the settings.
Single sign-on for employees
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). If you signed up with Continue with Google Workspace, Google sign-in is already set up for your domain. Microsoft Entra ID needs an app registration in your tenant; the page lists the exact values to paste. With “Auto-create users” on, employees get an account the first time they sign in, as requesters, and you make technicians agents afterwards. Okta and any other OpenID Connect provider work the same way with their own client, on the Organization pilot and on Pro; Starter signs in with Google or Microsoft.
The dashboard panel: Getting Beacon live
For the first 90 days, administrators see a panel at the top of the dashboard with three steps, each checked against your own data:
- Bring your employees in. Connect Google Workspace or Microsoft Entra under Admin › Import, or upload your list of people as a CSV. Starter and Pro do not include the Google Workspace people sync, so on those plans upload the CSV or connect Microsoft Entra. Employees who sign in on their own with single sign-on count too.
- Put the portal link in front of employees. The launch kit has an announcement to send and a poster to put up, both with your portal link.
- Get your first employee request. Done when an employee asks for help through the portal, by email or in the app. Your own test tickets, tickets you open for someone else, and imported history never count.
Sample data is one click away on the same panel, so you can see the dashboard with something in it. Sample records are marked “[Sample]”, never count toward the steps, never receive email, and come out with one click. “Hide this” puts the panel away for your organization.
The first afternoon, in order
- Time zone and business hours. Admin › Settings. The Standard SLA clock and the dashboard's days run on these.
- Offices. Admin › Sites: one site per office, with a short code such as
HQ. Each site's Locations button holds its rooms, closets and private offices. - Technicians. Admin › Users › Invite user for each IT, HR and facilities person who works requests, then put each one on their team under Admin › Teams. Starter allows three people who work requests, you included; employees who only ask are never counted. See Inviting technicians.
- Employees. Single sign-on with “Auto-create users” on, or the panel's first step.
- Devices. Admin › Import takes a spreadsheet of laptops, monitors and phones with each holder's email, or add them one at a time on Assets. Bring employees in first, so devices get their holders. On the Organization pilot, Devices from Intune reads every device managed in Microsoft Intune instead, on your Microsoft Entra connection, and refreshes them each night; Starter and Pro do not include device sync.
- Requests. Forward your help mailbox, and put the portal link where employees look: the intranet, the Google or Microsoft app launcher, a bookmark on every laptop.
- Try a ticket. New Ticket in the top bar (or press c), pick Accounts and access and Password reset, and see it land with IT Support.
The first report
After a week, open Reports (g r) and pick 7D. Pick a team to see one queue: IT Support, HR Requests or Facilities. By Category shows whether the week went to passwords, laptops or new hires. Agent Performance shows each technician's assigned and resolved tickets, their average first response and resolution times, and their SLA compliance. SLA Compliance shows the targets met per priority. A private team's requests count only for the people who can read them. Export CSV writes the tickets in the range and team you picked. On the Organization pilot and on Pro, Ask Beacon in the top bar answers a question the page does not show, such as how many laptop requests came in this month. See Reports and the dashboard.
What Beacon does, and what it does not do
Beacon takes IT, HR and facilities requests from the portal, email and the app, routes each to its team with a service-level clock, and tracks laptops, phones and the rest from purchase to retirement with their requests. It does not do these today:
- Approvals. A purchase request is a ticket like any other, with no approval chain or purchase order behind it.
- HR records. HR requests are questions for your HR team. Pay, benefits and time off stay in your HR and payroll systems.
- Device management. Beacon reads Intune and never writes to it, so it installs no software, pushes no settings and has no remote control.
- Facilities upkeep. No preventive maintenance schedules and no vendor dispatch. A facilities request comes from a person, and work for a contractor is arranged outside Beacon.
- Text messages. Employees hear back by email, on the portal and in the app, never by SMS.
Keep the tool that does those.
On a phone
Technicians work the queue from the iOS app or from the mobile web app on any phone. Employees send requests from the portal in any phone browser. The iPhone and iPad app, for technicians and for requesters, is on the App Store; the app guide covers signing in and its settings.