How to Set the Customer Portal Defaults
The Defaults tab of the Customer sign-ins screen holds the Customer portal settings for the whole site. Open the menu, choose Customer sign-ins under Administration, and select the Defaults tab. What you set here is live for every customer who inherits it, so saving it signs every customer out of the portal.
What does the Defaults tab on Customer sign-ins control?
The Defaults tab, headed What a sign-in gets when it does not say, controls four things for every Customer portal sign-in on your site:
- Call statuses and Call types — what a sign-in sees when its own Call statuses they may see or Call types they may see is left at As the defaults. A change here reaches every such sign-in.
- What a new sign-in may do — the six permissions that Copy from defaults puts on a sign-in, and that a sign-in with no permissions of its own takes (some sign-ins brought over from the old web portal are like this).
- Do not show calls logged before — a date that applies to every customer, whatever their own settings say.
- Customers — a customer section like the one on each sign-in. It reaches nobody: no sign-in falls back to it, and Copy from defaults does not copy it, so every sign-in needs its own customer accounts.
The screen explains: "A sign-in whose call statuses or call types are left as the defaults takes them from here, and the date below applies to everybody. Saving this signs every customer out — they are reading what these say, so the change has to reach them rather than wait for their session to end."
On a new site, both call sections start at All of them. A site that used the old web portal starts with that portal's own defaults.
The Defaults tab has no setting for the Customer portal's name, logo, colours or welcome wording, and no switch that closes the portal for everybody: its menu always calls it Customer portal, and customers are kept out one sign-in at a time by unticking Access granted on the People tab.
How do I change the Customer portal defaults?
Select the Defaults tab on the Customer sign-ins screen, change what you need, and press Save the defaults. The line beside the button says "Saving…", then "Saved. Every customer signed in just now has to sign in again."
- Open the menu and choose Customer sign-ins under Administration.
- Select the Defaults tab.
- Change the call statuses, call types, permissions or date.
- Press Save the defaults.
The call sections offer the same four options as on a sign-in: As the defaults, All of them, Choose and An SQL filter. On the Defaults tab, As the defaults means every status or every type, because there is nothing further to fall back on. Under Choose, nothing ticked means none, so every sign-in left at the defaults would see no calls.
If a filter breaks one of the rules for filters, the save is refused with a message such as "The default call status filter cannot be run —" followed by the reason. Saving checks those rules but does not run the filter, and a call status or call type filter has no Preview. So a hand-written filter can save and still fail when a customer signs in, for example because it names a column your database does not have. Every customer whose sign-in is left at As the defaults for it then cannot sign in until you correct it. Saving also signs every customer out, so they meet the fault as soon as they sign in again.
The Defaults tab is also the nearest thing to changing many sign-ins at once: there is no way to tick several sign-ins on the People tab and change them together, but a change here reaches every sign-in whose call statuses or call types are left at As the defaults, every sign-in with no permissions of its own, and, for the date, every customer. There is no undo either. To go back, set the old values and press Save the defaults again, which signs every customer out a second time.
Warning: Save the defaults signs every customer out of the Customer portal, not only those who inherit the settings (within a minute when you save from the ABM Service desktop app). Save at a quiet time where you can.
How do I hide old calls from every customer?
Set a date in Do not show calls logged before on the Defaults tab of the Customer sign-ins screen, and press Save the defaults. From then on no customer sees a call logged before that date, whatever their own sign-in allows, and they cannot open one either.
The screen says: "Leave it empty and a customer can see every call on their account, however old. It applies to everybody, whatever their own filters say." This is useful when your older calls were recorded differently, or when you only want customers looking at recent work. To show every call again, clear the date and save.
Like every save on the Defaults tab, setting or clearing the date signs every customer out of the Customer portal; they see the change when they sign in again.
What do Copy from defaults and What a new sign-in may do mean?
What a new sign-in may do, on the Defaults tab of the Customer sign-ins screen, is the set of six permissions that Copy from defaults puts on a sign-in. Copy from defaults is a button on each sign-in's form: it fills in that sign-in's six permissions and its two call sections from the Defaults tab, and you then press Save or Create the sign-in to keep them.
The copy becomes the sign-in's own. A later change on the Defaults tab does not reach it, except where its call sections were copied as As the defaults.
A sign-in created with Add someone does not take the Defaults by itself: its form starts with See their calls and See the visits on a call ticked and the rest unticked, until you press Copy from defaults.
The Customers section on the Defaults tab lets nobody sign in. On a new site it is set to Every customer and shows that choice's warning about 2,000 accounts; like the rest of the section, the setting reaches no customer. With Pick the accounts chosen and nothing picked it says "No accounts picked. Nobody signs in with this — it is what Copy from defaults puts on a new sign-in." In this version, Copy from defaults leaves a sign-in's Customers section as it is, so pick each customer's accounts on their own sign-in.