How to Set What a Customer May Do on the Customer Portal
Each Customer portal sign-in has six permissions, set with the boxes under What they may do when you open the sign-in on the Customer sign-ins screen (menu, then Administration). They decide whether the customer can see visits, log and edit calls, and see their invoices and balances. A change takes effect when you press Save, and signs the customer out so that they meet it when they sign in again.
How do I change what a customer may do on the portal?
Open the customer's sign-in on the Customer sign-ins screen, tick or untick the boxes under What they may do, and press Save.
- Open the menu and choose Customer sign-ins under Administration.
- Search for the customer in Search by name or email and press Open on their line.
- Tick or untick the boxes under What they may do.
- Press Save at the foot of the Customer sign-ins form.
The screen goes back to the list and says "Saved" followed by the address. Saving signs the customer out of the Customer portal at once (within a minute from the ABM Service desktop app); they sign in again with the same password and see the change.
To give a sign-in the site's usual settings, press Copy from defaults on the form. It fills in the six boxes and the two call sections from the Defaults tab; the customer's accounts and Access granted are left as they are. Nothing is kept until you press Save.
The six boxes under What they may do are for customers on the Customer portal only. They change nothing for anybody in the office: ABM Service has no permissions for office staff, apart from the Administration screens that only user 1 has. A call a customer logs arrives on the Calls list in ABM Service like any other new call; nobody is sent an email about it.
What does each of the six permissions allow?
The six boxes under What they may do on a Customer sign-ins form each open one part of the Customer portal. Each box's own description is quoted after its name:
- See their calls — "The list of calls on the accounts above." In this version the box is stored but does not hide anything: every customer has the Calls list. Which calls appear on it is decided by the accounts, the call statuses and types the sign-in may see, and the date on the Defaults tab.
- See the visits on a call — "When an engineer is booked, how the visit stands, and who is coming." Without it the customer has no Visits page and sees no visits on a call or on their Home page.
- Log a call — "A form with the call type, a comment and the details. They never schedule anybody." Without it the customer has no Log a call button anywhere on the portal. The form asks for more than this, but never an engineer or a date.
- Edit their calls — "The type, the one line, the PO number and the details, until the office closes the call. Never the status and never what was done." A customer can change the call type, the one-line description, the purchase order (PO) number and the details. The Edit button disappears once a call is Closed, Matched or Cancelled.
- See account history — "The invoices, credit notes and payments on these accounts. This account's own, never the head office's." Without it the customer has no Account history page.
- See balances — "What is owed, by age, and the last receipt. From the account it is billed to, where there is one." Without it the customer sees no Balance due on their Home page or on the Account page. It does not hide the Account history page: if See account history is still ticked, the customer can still read the Total and Outstanding amount of each invoice, credit note and payment there, so untick both if they should see no money owed at all.
Note: A customer who may log a call only sees that new call on their list if its status is one of the call statuses their sign-in may see. If it is not, the portal tells them the call is logged, gives them its number, and says it will not appear on their list.
What can a customer with Log a call fill in, and can they book an engineer?
A customer whose sign-in has Log a call ticked under What they may do on the Customer sign-ins screen gets a Log a call form on the Customer portal, but they cannot book an engineer, choose a date or time for a visit, or set the call's status or priority. The office schedules the visit, as for any other new call.
The portal's Log a call form asks for:
- What is it about — the call type, from the call types their sign-in may see.
- In one line — a one-line description of the problem, which they must fill in.
- Who to ask for, Phone and E-mail — who your office should contact about the call.
- PO number — their purchase order (PO) number, if they use one.
- Your reference — their own reference for the call.
- Anything else we should know — the details of the call, in their own words, with simple formatting.
There is nothing else on the form, and ABM Service takes no engineer, date, status or priority from a customer in any other way either. The call arrives on the Calls list in ABM Service unscheduled, and nobody is sent an email about it. If the customer's sign-in also has See the visits on a call ticked, they can see on the portal when an engineer has been booked and who is coming.
The box's own description on the Customer sign-ins form, "A form with the call type, a comment and the details", names only the main parts of the same form.
What does "These come from the site's Defaults" mean on a sign-in?
When a sign-in has no permissions of its own, the Customer sign-ins form shows the six boxes as the Defaults tab sets them, with the note: "These come from the site’s Defaults, where this sign-in has none of its own — so a change there reaches them. Tick or untick any of the six and this sign-in keeps its own from then on."
This happens with sign-ins brought over from the old web portal that never had permissions set. For such a sign-in, a change to What a new sign-in may do on the Defaults tab changes what that customer may do.
You can save other changes to such a sign-in, such as a new name, and it stays linked to the Defaults. As soon as you tick or untick any of the six boxes, or press Copy from defaults, the sign-in keeps its own six from then on, and later changes on the Defaults tab no longer reach it.
A sign-in you create with Add someone always has its own six, starting from the boxes the form shows you.
Why can't my customer see the Edit button on a call?
A customer sees Edit on a call in the Customer portal only when both of these are true: Edit their calls is ticked on their sign-in on the Customer sign-ins screen, and the call is not finished. Once the office sets a call to Closed, Matched or Cancelled, the customer can no longer change it, whatever their sign-in allows. A company's own extra statuses, such as one for waiting on parts, do not count as finished.
If the box is ticked and the call is open, check that the customer signed in again after you saved: saving signs them out, and the new permission applies from their next sign-in.
The customer also has to be able to see the call at all. A call whose status or type is not among those their sign-in may see is not on their list and cannot be opened, so it can never be edited either.
If the office closes a call while the customer is part-way through editing it, the customer's save is refused and the portal keeps what they typed, so they can copy it into a phone call or a new call rather than lose it.