Resources hub
Resources: IT Guides & Knowledge Base for Schools
From connecting an interactive screen to handling a compromised account, this is the same step-by-step help our 75-strong team gives schools and trusts across the UK every day — written down, searchable, and free to use. It sits alongside our IT support service, not instead of it: if a guide doesn’t get you there, log a ticket or call us on 0115 9170 197 and a real engineer picks it up.
Our knowledge base is continuously updated to provide you with additional support. Whether its knowing how to connect an interactive board, or how to record a new voicemail on your handset, our super team of experts have collated easy to follow steps to guide you!
What can we help you with?
The team behind every article.
Every guide here was written by the same UK-wide team that answers your tickets — support, installs and connectivity first, self-serve when it’s quicker for you.
Browse by category
Seven topics, one answer away. Every article below is maintained by our helpdesk team — when the way we fix something changes, the article changes with it.
Connectivity & remote access
Getting online and staying online — remote access, broadband checks and proxy settings.
- AIT VPN Guide
- Testing your broadband speed
- Proxy Settings
- Turning the Proxy on/off
4 ARTICLES
Accounts & sign-in security
Keeping accounts safe — two-factor authentication, compromised accounts and reporting suspicious messages.
- Microsoft Authenticator App
- Handling your compromised account
- How to Report Spam and Phishing Messages
3 ARTICLES
Email & browsers
Everyday Outlook and browser tasks — mailboxes, calendars, bookmarks, notifications and defaults.
- Reducing Mailbox Size (Outlook 2019)
- Accessing a Shared Microsoft Outlook Calendar (Outlook 2019)
- Changing Spell Check Language in Browsers
- Turn Off Chrome Notifications
- Exporting Bookmarks from Chrome
- Change Default Browser
6 ARTICLES
Devices, printing & Sign In App
Identifying your device, fixing fiddly printers, PaperCut cards and the visitor sign-in system.
- Accessing your Device Name
- Printing - Basic Troubleshooting
- PaperCut - Associating an ID Card with a Printer
- How to connect your Sign-in App Printer
- Sign In App - Evacuation
5 ARTICLES
Classroom screens & AV
Interactive boards and screen sharing — SMART, Promethean, BenQ and AirServer, step by step.
- How to connect to AirServer Connect2
- BenQ Interactive Board User Guides
- How to connect your laptop to a SMART Board
- How to connect your laptop to a Promethean Board
4 ARTICLES
Telephony
Handsets and softphones — user guides for the phones on desks across our schools.
- Yealink T53 User Guide
- AIT SoftPhone Guide
- Cisco SPA504G Guide
3 ARTICLES
Helpdesk & this knowledge base
How to get help when a guide isn't enough — and how this knowledge base works.
- Submitting a Helpdesk Ticket
- About AIT Knowledge Base
2 ARTICLES
Rolling out new handsets? Our VoIP for Schools service includes setup, training and these guides as standard.
Useful Guides
Our user guides provide helpful step-by-step instructions on some of the most popular IT issues. To log a ticket please do so via our helpdesk.
VPN Guide
Yealink T53 Headset Guide
Microsoft Authenticator App
Softphone Guide
Yealink Telephone
Cisco SPA504G Guide
Airserver Guide
3D Printer Guide
Exporting Bookmarks
Cisco 7811 Guide
These printable guides now live alongside the knowledge base, so there’s one place to search rather than two. Anything bookmarked at the old Guides page redirects straight here.
Fresh off the helpdesk
The knowledge base moves with the school year — these are the articles our engineers have added or reworked most recently.
Recently Updated Articles
Featured Articles
Every article read is a ticket you never had to raise
Most IT providers can’t tell you whether their knowledge base actually helps. Ours can — because self-serve is wired into Helpdesk Reporting, the live service dashboard included with our support contracts (not sold on top).
Your Executive overview shows tickets logged alongside articles read, so leadership can see deflection in plain numbers: a typical school might find that around a third of its most common queries — password resets, printer hiccups, “the board won’t connect” — get resolved from this page without a ticket ever being opened.* KPI Insights break that down by category, so if Classroom Devices articles spike every September, you’ll see it — and so will we, which is how these guides get improved.
Training insights goes a step further: where the same how-to keeps being searched by the same school, that’s not a fault to fix, it’s a ten-minute training session waiting to happen — and we’ll flag it before you ask. Multi-academy trusts get per-trust filters, so a central IT lead can compare self-serve uptake across every school in the trust from one screen. And the built-in AI Assistant lets you ask questions of your own support data in plain English — “which of our schools logged the fewest printing tickets last term?” — without waiting for a report.
How we prioritise what you log → Ticket Priorities
*Figures shown are illustrative examples, not live performance data.
See how transparent support worksAlready with AIT? Your platforms live in one place
The Customer Portal is the single front door to every platform included with our service: AIT Horizon for leadership dashboards, Helpdesk Reporting for live service transparency, AIT Atlas for the projects and visits we’re delivering for you, and AIT Ordering for quotes, purchase orders and delivery tracking. One login, four platforms, no extra licences — they’re part of being an AIT school, not products we sell on top.
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER
Got something you'd like us to add?
Our knowledge base is developed based on your feedback, and we want to make sure you find it helpful! If you have a topic you think we should add, let us know and our team of experts will get straight on it!
Resources hub — common questions
Anyone. The knowledge base and downloadable guides are free to browse for every school in the UK, whether you’re an AIT customer or not. Schools we support also get the Customer Portal — the login hub for AIT Horizon, Helpdesk Reporting, AIT Atlas and AIT Ordering — plus a helpdesk that already knows your site, your kit and your setup.
That’s exactly what the helpdesk is for. Submit a ticket (there’s a step-by-step article for that too), or call us on 0115 9170 197. Every ticket is triaged against our published Ticket Priorities, so you know how quickly to expect a response — and self-serve is always a shortcut, never a barrier, to reaching a real engineer.
Continuously. Articles are written and revised by the engineers on our helpdesk, so when a fix changes in the real world, the article changes with it. The “Fresh off the helpdesk” section above shows the newest and most recently updated articles, and the suggestion form on this page feeds our writing queue directly — if you ask for a topic, our team of experts will get straight on it.
The old /guides/ downloads merged into this Resources hub, and the knowledge base still lives at its own address — /knowledge-base/ — with every article at its original URL. Old bookmarks and links shared around your staffroom won’t break, and this page stays the one place to browse everything together.
Yes — that's a deliberate part of how we run support. Helpdesk Reporting's KPI Insights and Training insights show article usage next to ticket volumes, and trusts can compare schools with per-trust filters. Any figures we publish on this page are illustrative examples; your own numbers live in your dashboard, behind your login.
Prefer a person to a page?
Self-serve is there when it’s quicker — but it’s the wrapper around our support, not a replacement for it. If your school or trust wants IT support where the answers are written down, the SLAs are visible and the platforms are included, let’s talk.
Or call 0115 9170 197.