Customer Portal

The Customer Portal lets customers submit and follow support requests, read shared knowledge, and use forms and reports available to them. Access follows their company, portal role, and individual tickets they follow.

Managing Portal Users

How Portal Access Works

Portal access is automatic. Every active contact who belongs to a company and has an email address can sign in to see and follow their own tickets — there's nothing to send and no invitation to accept. When a contact receives a ticket email, it includes a link to view that ticket in the portal; they sign in with their email and a one-time code.

Service accounts and shared mailboxes (like no-reply addresses) are automatically excluded.

Removing Access

To stop a contact from signing in, set their contact record to inactive. Inactive contacts can't access the portal; reactivating the contact restores access.

Helpdesk Admins

Contacts can see their own tickets and tickets where staff has added them as followers. To let someone manage all of their company's tickets, open their contact and use the Company Portal Access card to promote them to Helpdesk Admin.

User Permissions

Control what each user can access:

User Roles

Assign portal roles to contacts:

• Customer: View and create their own tickets, participate in tickets they follow, and browse the knowledge base
• Helpdesk Admin: Company-wide access — view all company tickets, manage people and assets, access reports and shared project-hours displays

Role limits for data safety

Company management stays within the user's company. Following a ticket grants access to that ticket's public conversation and public files:

• Helpdesk admin users can manage people and assets for their assigned company only
• Helpdesk admin users can reply to company tickets, attach files to replies, add internal notes, complete tickets, approve or reject pending requests, and update status, priority, and assignment within their company
• When enabled on a company record, helpdesk admins for that company can also set ticket due dates
• When shared from the company Onsite page (Share with helpdesk admins), helpdesk admins can open Onsite in the portal — a read-only calendar of that company's dated visits and office holidays only, never internal staff OOO, on-call, or travel. Undated staff “needs dispatch” queue items are not shown in the portal
• When shared from a project page, specific helpdesk admins can view that project's monthly tracked hours and hour target in the portal
• Helpdesk admins can see the Forms section and submit active forms shared with their company or account
• Standard customer contacts see the Forms section only when staff has given them access to at least one form
• Helpdesk admin replies and completion notes are sent to the ticket requester; the recipient is shown for clarity but cannot be changed from the portal
• Helpdesk admins can read staff internal notes when they are @mentioned. Adding or removing the mention while editing a note updates that access. Other customer portal users cannot read internal notes.
• Helpdesk admin users cannot delete assets
• Portal users cannot delete or archive people
• People/assets that are not associated with a company are not visible in the portal

View as Company or Contact

The view-as feature lets staff members see the portal exactly as a customer would, without needing their login credentials. This is useful for verifying what customers see, troubleshooting issues, and validating data isolation.

Activating View-As Mode

1. Open any Company detail page
2. Click View as company in the header
3. Choose a role:
   • View as Helpdesk Admin — see all company tickets, people, and assets
   • View as Portal User — pick a specific contact to emulate their individual view
4. The portal opens immediately with the selected perspective

You can also activate view-as from the quick actions menu on the Companies list, from a portal-enabled contact's Customer Portal Access card, or from the People actions menu.

While in View-As Mode

• An amber banner at the top shows which company and role you are viewing as
• All data is scoped to that company — you see exactly what the customer sees
• RLS policies enforce the same data boundaries as a real portal user
• Click Exit in the banner to return to the staff view

Session Behavior

• View-as sessions expire automatically after 15 minutes
• Owners, super-admins, and admins can view as a helpdesk admin or as a specific portal user
• Technicians can view as a helpdesk admin (company-wide or a specific helpdesk-admin contact). Viewing as a regular portal user stays limited to owners, super-admins, and admins
• View-as does not affect the customer's actual account or session

Submit and follow tickets

1. Sign in to the portal and open Tickets.
2. Choose New Ticket, describe the request, and complete the available fields.
3. Submit the ticket, then open it from the ticket list to follow its status and conversation.
4. Add a reply and any supported attachments when you have an update.

Standard customers work with their own tickets and tickets they follow. A follower must already be an active contact with portal access. Copied vendor email addresses do not create contact records or grant portal access. Helpdesk admins following another company's ticket get public conversation access for that ticket; their management controls stay within their own company. Sending a reply and adding an internal note have different audiences; check the selected action before saving.

Shared knowledge and forms

Published knowledge articles appear only when their space and article sharing allow portal access. Staff configure that access in the Knowledge Base.

Forms must be active and shared with the relevant company or contact. See Form Builder for the Sharing & access controls.

Assets, reports, and onsite visits

Helpdesk admins can manage the company's people and assets within the role limits above. Shared reports and project-hours displays appear only after staff grants the corresponding access. Shared Onsite schedules show dated company visits and holidays without exposing internal availability.

Check a customer's access

Use View as company or View as Portal User to confirm which tickets and shared resources are available. If something is missing, check the contact's active status and company, then the resource's sharing settings.

See also

• Knowledge Base
• Form Builder
• Managing Tickets