Customer portal

Enterprise feature (new in 1.19.1, helpdesk). See the Helpdesk overview.

The helpdesk was built for colleagues, who ask in Get help. The customer portal opens a separate, branded front door for people outside your organisation: clients, suppliers, the public. They raise requests and follow them at /support, your agents answer in the desk as usual, and customers never get a CompassDocs account or see anything of your workspace.

Turning it on

Desk settings → Customer portal (desk capability Helpdesk settings, Admins out of the box). The portal is off until you turn it on. From 1.19.4 the section has three pages: Settings (below), Help centre (see Customer portal help centre) and Customers (see Blocking a customer).

1. Turn on Portal is on. Open portal opens /support in a new tab.
2. Under What customers can ask for, choose Add request types and pick the types customers may raise. Each goes to its own team (“Its own team (IT)”) or to another team you choose.
3. Choose Who can use it (see Who can sign in).
4. Set the Brand: the Portal name (such as “Acme Support”; your workspace’s name when left empty) and a logo (PNG, JPEG, GIF or WebP, up to 1 MB; without one the portal shows the name’s initials).
5. Check the Protection limits.
6. Save portal settings.

Set your domain first

The portal’s address is fixed: /support on your workspace’s domain. Set the domain under Settings → Domain & HTTPS before you share the portal: every link in the portal’s emails then points to it. Without one, the sign-in link follows the address the visitor used, for that one email, and the other emails use the address your own people use to reach CompassDocs; links never follow an address a visitor’s browser merely claims. The settings page warns you while the portal is on and no domain is set.

Which request types can be offered

A request type can be offered only if it needs nothing from your directory, because customers aren’t in it. Types that can’t are marked (internal only), with the reason:

• The request type is switched off.
• Only some groups in your organisation can use it.
• Its form asks for a person from your directory.
• Its workflow asks the requester’s manager to approve.
• Its workflow grants access to a space.
• Its workflow reads the requester’s directory entry (an Only if rule), or routes by it.

This is checked again each time a customer raises a request, so a workflow republished with a manager approval stops being offered at once. Answers are never filled in from a directory.

Who can sign in

• Anyone with an email, or
• Approved domains only: list the domains, one per line. clientco.com also lets in eu.clientco.com.

Blocked domains (under Protection) can never sign in, whatever the rule above says.

How customers sign in

From 1.19.4, while the help centre is on, it is the portal’s home and the sign-in form opens from Sign in in the portal’s header (/support?signin=1). Otherwise the sign-in form is the home, as before.

1. At /support the customer enters their email address and chooses Email me a sign-in link. The page always answers the same way, whether or not the address may sign in, so nobody can test which addresses you know.
2. The email (template Helpdesk: customer portal sign-in link) carries a link that works once, for 15 minutes.
3. The link opens Sign in to Acme Support with a Continue button. Only pressing Continue signs them in, so a mail scanner that opens links signs nobody in.

Limits and blocks count per mailbox: sam+orders@clientco.com counts as sam@clientco.com, and a blocked address is blocked with every +tag form of it. Mail still goes to the exact address the customer used.

They stay signed in for 30 days. Each visit checks again that the portal is on, that they aren’t blocked and that the access rule still lets their address in.

An address that also belongs to someone in your workspace can still use the portal, as an outside customer.

What customers see

• Your requests: their own requests only, with each one’s status.
• New request: What is it about? (the request types you offered), Your name (optional), Subject (optional), the type’s own questions, Describe what you need (Anything else? (optional) when the type asks its own questions), and files. Send request.
• A request’s page: the conversation and a reply box. Agents show by first name and team.

Customers never see internal notes, replies waiting for review or returned, system lines, checklists, your directory, or anything else in CompassDocs. Asking for someone else’s request number answers exactly as a number that doesn’t exist.

Files: up to 5 per message, 10 MB each, and 30 files or 100 MB per customer per day. Files are sent with the message.

Merged and closed requests

• Merged: when an agent merges a customer’s request into another, the customer is emailed (Helpdesk: requests joined). The old request shows Joined with #1049 and “This request was joined with #1049 so one person can help with both”, with Open #1049. The customer can read and reply on the kept request and download their files there, and their email replies on the old thread land on it. From 1.19.2 the kept request lists it too: “Your request #1052 was joined with this one, because it was about the same problem. Replies to either go here.”
• Closed: an emailed reply to a closed request opens a new portal request for that customer, which they see in the portal.
• Deleted (1.19.4): a request in the recycle bin disappears from the portal, as if it didn’t exist. An emailed reply to it opens a new portal request, without naming the deleted one.

The satisfaction survey

From 1.19.2, while the satisfaction survey is on (Desk settings → Satisfaction), a solved or closed portal request asks This request is solved. How did we do? on its page: Good, OK or Not good, with Anything to add? (optional), then Send. Afterwards the page says “Thanks for telling us. You rated this request Good.”

The solved email asks the same question, with a link for each answer. A link signs the customer in first if needed, then opens the request with their answer chosen; they still press Send, so a mail scanner that opens links rates nothing.

• Each request is rated once, only by its own customer.
• A request that was joined with another is never asked; the kept one is.
• Blocked customers are never asked.

Answers count in the same satisfaction reports as Get help’s survey: Good as 5, OK as 3 and Not good as 1. The audit log shows a rating as Customer portal (helpdesk.portal.csat, “Rated a request in the customer portal”), never the customer’s address.

In the desk

A portal ticket carries an Outside customer chip, and its messages say in the customer portal. Agents reply, note and solve it like any other ticket. Portal customers have no contact card from the directory.

Email

• Notices go by email only, each with a link back to the portal: request received, replies (including “waiting on you”), solved (with the survey from 1.19.2), requests joined, major incident updates on a linked request (1.19.2), and workflow messages to the requester.
• Email replies from a portal customer thread into their own ticket, even with Accept mail from outside the workspace off. They still have to pass sender authentication.
• New tickets by email from a portal customer follow the Accept mail from outside the workspace setting, like anyone else’s.
• When the portal can’t take them: while the portal is off, or when a customer’s address is in a blocked domain or outside the approved domains, the portal’s email rules stop. Their emailed replies and the desk’s notices then follow the ordinary email rules, including Accept mail from outside the workspace.

Protection

Setting	Default
Sign-in links per email per hour	5 (1 to 20)
New requests per email per hour	5 (1 to 50)
Blocked words	A request or reply holding one is refused. One per line.
Blocked domains	Addresses here can never sign in. One per line.

On top of these, each network address may ask for 10 sign-in links a minute and 30 an hour. These limits are fixed. There is no CAPTCHA.

Blocking a customer

Customers (its own page from 1.19.4) lists everyone who has signed in or raised a request in the portal. Search by email or name, then Block. A blocked customer:

• is signed out everywhere at once, and their unused links stop working;
• can’t sign in, raise a request, reply, or open tickets by email;
• gets no more notices.

Their requests stay in the desk, and they can’t be copied on anyone else’s request (“can’t be copied on requests”). Unblock lets them back in.

Housekeeping

Expired links and sessions are removed automatically, and so are addresses that asked for a link but never signed in, after 7 days.

In the audit log

Action	Shown as
helpdesk.portal.updated	Changed the customer portal
helpdesk.portal.contact_blocked / .contact_unblocked	Blocked / Unblocked a customer portal contact
helpdesk.portal.signin	Signed in to the customer portal (at most once per customer every 10 minutes)
helpdesk.portal.csat	Rated a request in the customer portal (1.19.2; shown as Customer portal)