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Getting started for facilities teams

Updated October 29, 2026

This guide is for a facilities or maintenance team that takes work requests from the people in its buildings. It follows a new organization through its first afternoon: what it starts with, the work request form, requests by email, and the first report.

Create the organization

Go to app.beaconhelpdesk.com/signup?type=facilities. The form starts with Facilities or maintenance team as the organization type. Name the organization, then give your name, your email and a password, or use Continue with Google Workspace. The short name made from the organization's name (the slug) is part of the sign-in address your staff and occupants use: app.beaconhelpdesk.com/login?org=yourslug.

• Starter is free forever: up to 3 sites, up to 3 agents, up to 1,000 assets. For a facilities team a site is a building.
• Organization pilot is 90 days with everything included and no card, for any number of buildings.

What each plan includes is in Billing and plans.

What a facilities organization starts with

A new facilities organization 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:

• Teams: Facilities, Custodial and Grounds. You start on Facilities.
• Asset types for your equipment: HVAC unit, Boiler or water heater, Fire extinguisher, AED, Vehicle, Kitchen equipment and Key. Vehicles and keys can be checked out to a person.
• Three automations you can read and edit under Admin › Automations: a Yes to “Is this an emergency?” makes the request Urgent and tags it emergency, every urgent request is announced to the Facilities team, and custodial requests go to the Custodial team.
• 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 that cannot wait. 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.

The work request form

On the portal a request starts with the categories as cards (“What is this about?”), then the subcategory, then the form. Every facilities category asks the same questions:

Above the questions the form asks for a short title and, if the equipment has one, its asset tag. Below them it takes photos. Beacon writes the request's description from the answers, one per line, so the technician reads the whole request on the ticket and on a phone. A line under the form tells the person which team gets it: “Your request goes to the Custodial team.”

A Yes to the emergency question makes the request Urgent the moment it arrives, and the Facilities team is told about it whichever team the request goes to. A tag typed on the request shows on the ticket, and a technician links that piece of equipment from the ticket, after which the equipment's page lists its requests, open and past.

The questions are yours to change under Admin › Categories: add one, make one required, or ask one 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 the mailbox people already write to (maintenance@yourorg.org) to it, and keep telling them 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.

A team can have an address of its own. Give the Custodial category the email key custodial under Admin › Categories, and mail to yourslug+custodial@tickets.beaconhelpdesk.com opens a Custodial request. Email to ticket and the portal link has the sender rules and the settings.

An email answers none of the form's questions, so the emergency rule never sees it. Ask people to use the portal for anything urgent, and keep the phone number they call when something cannot wait.

The portal link

Staff and occupants send requests at app.beaconhelpdesk.com/login?org=yourslug, and the dashboard's panel shows the link with a copy button. Good places for it: an email to everyone in your buildings, the intranet, the notice board by the elevator, the front desk. The portal helps only people who can sign in: single sign-on with “Auto-create users” on, or accounts you invited or imported. Occupants without an account can email your request address instead (see Requests by email above).

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:

1. Bring your staff and occupants 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. People who sign in on their own with single sign-on count too.
2. Put the portal link in front of staff and occupants. Done once people have found it: a request has come in, or someone has used Beacon in the last 7 days.
3. Get your first request. Done when a person in your buildings 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

1. Time zone and business hours. Admin › Settings. The Standard SLA clock and the dashboard's days run on these.
2. Buildings. Admin › Sites: one site per building, with a short code such as MAIN. Each site's Locations button holds its rooms and areas, where equipment is kept. See Assigning devices to locations.
3. Technicians. Admin › Users › Invite user for each technician, custodian and groundskeeper who works requests, then put each one on their team under Admin › Teams. Starter allows three people who work requests, you included; requesters are never counted. See Inviting technicians.
4. Staff and occupants. As in the panel's first step. With single sign-on and “Auto-create users” on, nobody needs importing: each person gets an account the first time they sign in.
5. Equipment. Admin › Import takes a spreadsheet of equipment with its tag, type, building and room, or add pieces one at a time on Assets. Then print a label for each, with a QR code: Printing asset labels.
6. Requests. Forward your maintenance mailbox and put the portal link in front of people, as above.
7. Try a request. New Ticket in the top bar (or press c), pick HVAC and No heat, answer Yes to “Is this an emergency?”, and watch it arrive as Urgent.

The first report

After a week of requests, open Reports (g r) and pick 7D. The tiles count what was created and resolved, what is open now and overdue, and the average first response and resolution times. By Category shows where the work went, By Site which building asks most (a request counts at its requester's own building, from the site column of a people import, or at the building a technician picks), and By Priority how many requests were urgent. Pick a team to see one crew's week, and read SLA Compliance for the targets met per priority. Export CSV writes the requests in the range, site and team you picked, for a spreadsheet or a monthly report. See Reports and the dashboard.

What Beacon does, and what it does not do

Beacon takes work requests from the portal, email and the app, routes them to the right crew with a service-level clock, and keeps your equipment with its location, its labels and its requests. It does not do these today:

• Preventive maintenance. No maintenance schedules and no recurring work orders: every request comes from a person, never from a calendar. “Inspection due” and “Service due” are requests someone sends.
• Parts and costs. No parts inventory, and no labor or cost recorded on a work order.
• Vendors. No vendor dispatch and no vendor portal. Work for an outside contractor is arranged outside Beacon, and the request can wait On hold in the meantime.
• Text messages. People hear back by email, on the portal and in the app, never by SMS.
• Room booking. Event setup takes a request for tables, chairs or AV, not a reservation of the room.

Keep the tool that does those.

On a phone

Technicians and custodians work the queue from the iOS app or from the mobile web app on any phone: photos, building, status, notes. Staff and occupants 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.