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How to Give a Customer Access to the Customer Portal

A customer can only sign in to the Customer portal after the system administrator has created a sign-in for their email address. Open the menu, choose Customer sign-ins under Administration, and press Add someone on the People tab. You do not type a password: the customer sets their own the first time they come to the portal, or you set one for them afterwards.

How do I create a sign-in for a customer?​

Press Add someone on the People tab of the Customer sign-ins screen, fill in the form headed A new customer sign-in, and press Create the sign-in. The screen goes back to the list and says "Saved" followed by the address.

  1. Open the menu and choose Customer sign-ins under Administration.
  2. Press Add someone, beside Search by name or email.
  3. Type the customer's address in Email. This is what they will sign in with.
  4. Type their name in Name. The office sees this name, and it is recorded against any call they log.
  5. Leave Access granted ticked, so that they can sign in as soon as they have a password (a new sign-in has none yet).
  6. Pick the customer accounts they may see under Customers: search by code, name or address and choose each account.
  7. Check the six boxes under What they may do, and the two sections Call statuses they may see and Call types they may see. Press Copy from defaults if you want the site's usual settings for those.
  8. Press Create the sign-in at the foot of the Customer sign-ins form.

There is no password box on the new sign-in form. Once the sign-in is created, the customer goes to the Customer portal's sign-in page, chooses Set your password and enters the email address you used; or you open their sign-in on the Customer sign-ins screen afterwards and give them one under Set their password. ABM Service sends no email, so tell the customer their sign-in is ready.

Cancel leaves the form without creating anything, and so does leaving the Customer sign-ins screen by the menu, selecting the Defaults tab or reloading the page: the form is not kept, and ABM Service does not ask first. The form starts with See their calls and See the visits on a call ticked, the other four unticked, and both call sections set to As the defaults.

What happens after I create a customer's sign-in?​

After you press Create the sign-in, the customer can go to the Customer portal's sign-in page and set their own password. The form says this too: "No password is set here. Once this is saved, the customer goes to the sign-in page, chooses Set your password and enters this address — or you can set one for them from this screen afterwards."

On the Customer portal's sign-in page the customer:

  1. Chooses Set your password.
  2. Types the email address you entered, their name in Your name, and a password of at least eight characters in New password and Type it again.
  3. Presses Set your password, and is signed straight in.

The name the customer types replaces the name you entered on the Customer sign-ins screen. ABM Service sends no invitation email, so tell the customer their sign-in is ready and which address you used. Until they set a password, their line on the list says Not registered — they have never set a password. You are not told when they do set it: their line on the People tab of the Customer sign-ins screen then changes to Registered, never signed in, or to Last signed in on and a date.

If you would rather give them a password yourself, open their sign-in and use Set their password.

What do the messages on the new sign-in form mean?​

If something on the Customer sign-ins form cannot be saved, a message appears at the top of the form and nothing is created. The messages are:

  • "An email address is what a customer signs in with." — Email is empty.
  • "That does not look like an email address." — the address has no @ in it.
  • "That address is longer than the 100 characters a sign-in can hold."
  • "A name is what the office and the call's audit row will show." — Name is empty.
  • An address followed by "already has a sign-in. Open that one instead of making a second." — two sign-ins cannot share an address. Type the address itself, not the name, into Search by name or email on the People tab: the list draws only its first 200 lines, and the existing sign-in may be under another name. Then open the one that is there instead of making a second. If that line carries a small tag with an old role such as admin, it is one of the old web portal's office logins, which cannot be used on the Customer portal: delete it if it has logged no calls, or change its Email and press Save, and then create the customer's sign-in.
  • "Pick at least one customer account. A sign-in linked to nothing cannot be used, and a blank filter would mean every customer in the database." — you chose An SQL filter and left the filter empty.
  • "The customer filter cannot be run —" followed by a reason, or the same for the call status or call type filter — a hand-written filter breaks one of the rules for filters.

Note: A sign-in saved with Pick the accounts chosen and no accounts picked is created, but the customer is told that no customer account is linked to their sign-in. Pick at least one account.

Can a customer sign up for the portal on their own?​

No. A customer cannot create their own sign-in for the Customer portal: the system administrator has to create it first on the Customer sign-ins screen. If a customer tries Set your password with an address that has no sign-in, the Customer portal tells them "The company has not created a sign-in for that address yet. Ask them to add it."

Once you have created the sign-in, they can set their password themselves as long as Access granted is ticked. If it is unticked, they are told "Access has not been granted for that sign-in. The company has to switch it on."

The Customer portal's sign-in page never lists anybody: a customer always types their own email address. Signing in asks only for that address and a password: customers are never asked for an authenticator code, whatever the Authenticator app setting on the Sign-in screen says, and they cannot sign in with a Microsoft account instead. If they try Set your password a second time, after a password is already set, they are told "That address already has a password. Sign in, or use Forgot password." And when they choose a password it must be at least eight characters, or they are asked to "Choose a password of at least eight characters."

This is why the office creates every sign-in: it is the moment somebody at your company decides which accounts that person may see.