Help center › Set up
People from ClassLink
Districts that roster through ClassLink can bring their students into Beacon from it, with their school, grade level and student ID. On Admin › Import, the card People from ClassLink reads OneRoster, the standard ClassLink Roster Server speaks, from your roster server or from an export you upload. Students exist in Beacon so a Chromebook can be checked out to them and a ticket can name them: to start, they cannot sign in and get no email. Staff are left out to start, since most districts bring staff in from Google Workspace or Microsoft Entra. Beacon only reads; nothing is written back.
Two ways in
- The roster server. Once your district shares its rosters with Beacon in ClassLink Roster Server, ClassLink shows the server address and a client ID and secret for Beacon. Email hello@beaconhelpdesk.com and we set it up with you. A student information system that speaks OneRoster lets you create a key for Beacon yourself: paste the address, the key and the secret on the card and choose OAuth 1.0 (OneRoster 1.1) or OAuth 2.0 with its token address (OneRoster 1.2). Beacon checks them with your server before saving anything, and stores the secret encrypted; it is never shown again. With the server connected, Sync nightly keeps the roster current after 02:00 in your time zone.
- An export. Upload a OneRoster package: the .zip with
users.csvandorgs.csv, orusers.csvalone. Upload a new one whenever the roster changes.
Either way, Preview first: it reads the roster, counts what a sync would do (added, changed, not in Beacon, without an email address) and changes nobody.
What students get
- Each active student with an email address becomes a requester in Beacon with their school's site, grade level and student ID. Technicians see "Student · Grade 7" next to the name in every people picker, and a scan of a student ID card finds the student.
- Students can sign in is off to start. A student the sync adds cannot sign in by any route (password, Google, Microsoft, ClassLink sign-in, Apple, a reset link), gets no email or app notification, and cannot email in a ticket. A student already in Beacon who has never signed in is turned the same way the first time the roster names them; anyone who has signed in keeps their access. An admin can turn one person on under Admin › Users, and the sync leaves that choice alone. Turn the switch on if your students submit their own tickets.
- The address: the roster's email wins. When a student has none, Beacon builds one from their username or student ID at the domain you enter, such as
jsmith@students.yourdistrict.org. Use the same address students sign in to Google with, and Chromebooks from Google Admin attach to the right student. - Sites: each student lands at the site of their school. A school spelled like a site needs no choice; pick the rest under Schools and sites.
What a sync never does
- It never deletes anyone, never merges two people, and never changes a role or whether an account is disabled.
- A student the roster marks inactive or to be deleted is never added; on someone already in Beacon the record is marked inactive.
- A person erased in Beacon is never added back.
Students on tickets
When a teacher reports a student's broken Chromebook, add the student under Affected beside the ticket (or on New Ticket). Their devices show right there, and one click links the right one. The student can't see the ticket and gets no email from it; All tickets about them lists every ticket that names them. See Tickets and SLAs.