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What is Keystone?

Everyone

What is Keystone?

Section titled “What is Keystone?”

Keystone is the operations platform for UK multi-academy trusts. One sign-in, one design language, one set of tools for everyone — from the pupil reporting a broken laptop to the trust IT director planning the next refresh cycle.

What’s in the box

Section titled “What’s in the box”

Keystone is built as a set of products that share infrastructure but cover different domains:

  • Helpdesk — tickets, SLAs, knowledge base, automation. Replaces FreshService.
  • Estates — sites, buildings, rooms, compliance, contractor management
  • Assets — device register, software licences, assignments, lifecycle
  • SCR — Single Central Record, engagement checks, safer-recruitment compliance
  • Governance — risk register, policy management, KCSIE controls, governance actions
  • Identity — SSO, users, roles, departments, workspace switching

You’ll see the products as icons in the far-left rail of the screen. Each product is a separate area; the rail switches between them.

How it’s structured

Section titled “How it’s structured”

Within each product, there are typically three views:

  1. Portal — for end users (pupils, staff). Simple, mobile-friendly, designed for occasional use.
  2. Agent — for the team that runs the product (helpdesk team, estates team, governance officer). Optimised for daily heavy use.
  3. Admin — for whoever configures the product (IT director, trust manager). Configuration, not day-to-day work.

You’ll only see the views you have permission for.

Designed for trusts, not generic businesses

Section titled “Designed for trusts, not generic businesses”

The terminology, the workflows, and the integrations are deliberately school-shaped. Departments are Pastoral, IT, Estates, Finance, HR — not Sales, Marketing, Engineering. Categorisation knows about KS3, GCSE, INSET days, term boundaries. Compliance integrates with KCSIE, OFSTED frameworks. Asset categories know about smartboards, Chromebooks, AV racks — not just generic “hardware”.

This is also why we don’t try to be everything to every sector — Keystone is for trusts.

Where to find help

Section titled “Where to find help”
  • In-app: every screen has a ? button in the top-right that opens contextual help
  • Knowledge base: /help in any product, browseable by topic and audience
  • External docs: docs.alresford.test for the full handbook, API reference, and architecture

If you’re stuck and the docs don’t help, raise a ticket on the helpdesk — that’s the dogfood loop and the team reads them.