What Plugboard is
Plugboard is a service desk for school and university ICT teams. It handles the work a school desk actually does: booking in a cracked screen, handing out a loan laptop, keeping track of who has which iPad, resetting an account, checking a card at the counter, running the start-of-year handout, and telling finance what all of it cost.
It is not a general-purpose ITSM with an education skin. The vocabulary is a school’s vocabulary (year levels, tutor groups, terms, parents), and the workflows assume the things school desks do that corporate desks do not, like issuing a loan device to a student whose own machine is in for repair and emailing their parents about it.
The one idea worth understanding
Section titled “The one idea worth understanding”Every integration is a connector. The application never depends on Jamf, or
on Synergetic, or on Zendesk. It depends on a capability, such as
device.lookupBySerial or sis.getRoster, and a connector declares which
capabilities it implements.
That indirection is the whole product design. It means:
- A school running Intune and one running Jamf use the same repairs screen.
- Swapping an MDM is a configuration change, not a migration.
- A feature can degrade rather than break. No MDM connected means device records still exist, they just have no live inventory data.
- New systems get added without touching the features that use them.
Twenty-six connectors ship in the box, covering device management, student information systems, directory and identity, email, SMS, ticketing, warranty lookup, repair vendors, print management, endpoint security, CRM and local AI. The full list is in connectors.
What it replaces
Section titled “What it replaces”Most schools arrive with some combination of a spreadsheet for loans, a shared mailbox for repairs, a whiteboard for what is on the bench, an MDM console for serials, a directory console for password resets, and a finance spreadsheet nobody trusts. Plugboard is one place for all of it, with the MDM and directory consoles reached through the same screen rather than replaced.
Three audiences
Section titled “Three audiences”| Audience | Where they go | What they do |
|---|---|---|
| ICT staff | /dashboard after signing in | Run the desk: repairs, tickets, loans, devices, people, reports, administration |
| Students and staff | /portal, /track/..., /help | Book a repair, track it, reset a password, buy a cable, read a guide |
| Parents | /parent | See their child’s devices, repairs, purchases and any charges |
Only the first group needs an account in Plugboard. Students, staff and parents are people, synced from your student information system and directory, and they reach the self-service surfaces by tapping a card or signing in with your identity provider.
Modular by design
Section titled “Modular by design”Every feature is a module that can be switched off for your institution. Turning one off hides its navigation and stops its API endpoints answering, so a primary school that never runs inductions or a printer fleet does not see either. Twenty-two modules ship; see modules for the list and what each one costs you in complexity.
Nothing is on by accident. A new install starts with a sensible set enabled and you add the rest as you need them.
Where it came from
Section titled “Where it came from”Plugboard is a ground-up rebuild of a single-tenant system that ran a real school service desk for years. The domain model survived the rebuild because it was right: the loan and repair lifecycle, the warranty against insurance cost split, the client self-service flow. Everything underneath it was replaced, because the original hard-coded its secrets, hashed passwords with unsalted SHA-256, kept sessions in memory and could only ever serve one school.
That history is why the product is opinionated in places where a generic tool would offer a setting. The parts that are configurable are configurable because schools genuinely differ there.
What it does not try to be
Section titled “What it does not try to be”- A replacement for your MDM. It reads from Jamf and Intune and sends commands to them. It does not manage profiles or build images.
- A replacement for your SIS. The roster is synced in, never edited here.
- A learning platform. No gradebooks, no course content.
- A mobile app. The web interface is responsive and the kiosk is designed for a touchscreen, but there is nothing to install on a phone.
- How it fits together for the moving parts.
- Choosing a deployment if you are deciding between hosting it yourself and having it hosted.
- Quick start if you would rather just run it.