Using the Customer Sign-ins Screen
The Customer sign-ins screen is where the system administrator decides which of your company's customers may sign in to the Customer portal over the web, which accounts each of them reaches and what they may do there. Open the menu with Menu (or Navigation menu on the Calls, Customers and Scheduler screens) and choose Customer sign-ins under Administration. Only ABM user number 1, the system administrator, has this entry.
Where do I find the Customer sign-ins screen?
Open the menu with Menu on the Home screen, or Navigation menu at the top of the filters panel on the Calls, Customers or Scheduler screen, then choose Customer sign-ins in the Administration section, below Database and Sign-in. The call screen and the customer screen have no menu of their own. The screen opens on its People tab.
The heading reads Customer sign-ins, and the line under it says "The customers who may sign in to" followed by your company's name, "over the web". The screen has two tabs:
- People — every customer sign-in, one line each, with a search box and Add someone. This is where you create, change, switch off and delete sign-ins.
- Defaults — the site-wide settings: what a sign-in gets when it is left "as the defaults", and the date before which no customer sees any call.
The screen works the same way in the browser and in the ABM Service desktop app. A change made in the desktop app reaches a customer signed in over the web within a minute.
The customer sign-ins and the Defaults tab belong to the ABM company named under the heading. A site with two companies sets up each one on its own, and nothing is copied between them: a customer who should reach both companies' Customer portals needs a sign-in in each.
Who can open the Customer sign-ins screen?
Only ABM user number 1, the system administrator, can open the Customer sign-ins screen, and only user 1 sees the Customer sign-ins entry in the menu. Anybody else who reaches the screen sees the heading This page is for the system administrator and the sentence "Who may sign in from outside is set by user 1, the system administrator on every site, and the Customer sign-ins entry is only in their menu." Nothing about your customers is shown to them.
If a colleague needs a customer's access changed, they have to ask whoever signs in as user 1. There is no way in this version to give another ABM user this screen.
The Customer sign-ins screen keeps no record of who changed a sign-in or when, and none of what a customer did on the Customer portal. What it does show is the last day each customer signed in, on their line on the People tab; calls a customer logs are on the Calls list in ABM Service.
User 1 can open Customer sign-ins in the browser or in the ABM Service desktop app; the Administration section of the menu is the same in both. That section also holds Database and Sign-in, the other two screens only the system administrator uses.
Everything you change on the Customer sign-ins screen is about the Customer portal, where your customers sign in with their email address and a password of their own. It does not change how your office staff sign in to ABM Service.
What does each line on the People tab tell me?
Each line on the People tab of the Customer sign-ins screen is one sign-in: the person's name in bold, their email address, a line saying where their sign-in stands, a line saying which customer accounts it reaches, and an Open button that opens the sign-in for editing. The list is in order of name, then email address. A sign-in whose access is switched off is drawn faded.
The line about where the sign-in stands reads one of these:
- Not registered — they have never set a password — the sign-in exists but the customer has not yet chosen a password, and nobody has set one for them, so they cannot sign in yet. Either tell them to choose Set your password on the Customer portal's sign-in page with that email address, or open the sign-in, type a password in New password and And again under Set their password, press Set the password, and tell them what it is. This line shows even when Access granted is unticked, so open the sign-in to check the tick.
- Inactive — password was reset on a date — Access granted is unticked and the password was reset on that date. Usually the customer used Forgot password on the Customer portal's sign-in page, which switches their access off until you tick Access granted again. The same line appears when somebody set a password with Set their password on this screen, or once did so, and access is now switched off.
- Access is switched off — somebody unticked Access granted on a sign-in whose password has never been reset.
- Registered, never signed in — they have a password but have not used it yet.
- Last signed in on a date — the last day they signed in.
The line about accounts names the first two customer accounts the sign-in reaches, with "+" and a number when there are more. It says Linked by an SQL filter when the accounts are chosen by a filter rather than picked one by one (for example, a customer group brought over from the old web portal), and also when Every customer is chosen. It says No customer account when the sign-in reaches nothing, and just a number of customer accounts, such as "3 customer accounts", when the names cannot be shown.
How do I find one person on the Customer sign-ins list?
Type part of their name or email address into Search by name or email at the top of the People tab on the Customer sign-ins screen. The list narrows as you type. If nobody matches, the screen says "Nobody on this list matches that."
The search on the Customer sign-ins screen matches only the sign-in's own Name and Email, the person, not the customer accounts shown under each line. You cannot find a sign-in by the customer's company name or account code: search for the person's name, or for the part of the email address after the @ sign, which often finds everybody from one company.
The list shows at most 200 lines at a time. When more match, the line under the list says "…and" the number of others, followed by "more — narrow the search."
If your site has a very large number of linked accounts, the screen may say "There are too many linked accounts across this list to name them all here. Open a row to see what it reaches." Each line then gives only the number of accounts its sign-in reaches, and opening a sign-in shows their names.
When nobody has a sign-in yet, the screen says "Nobody outside the company has a sign-in yet."
The Customer sign-ins list cannot be exported, printed or sent to a spreadsheet, and there is no import: new sign-ins are made one at a time with Add someone. If your company used the old web portal, its sign-ins were brought over automatically when the database was updated, so they are already on the list.
Why are there office staff on the customer sign-ins list?
The Customer sign-ins list shows everyone the old web portal knew, brought over when the database was updated for this version, and that includes the office logins the old portal used for its own staff. The screen says so under the search box: "Everyone the old web portal knew is here, brought over when this database was updated — including the office logins it used to have, which no longer open anything."
Those lines carry a small label, or tag, with their old role, such as admin. Opening one shows: "This row is" followed by the role, "and cannot open the customer door — the old web portal used it for office staff, who sign in to this application with their ABM name now. It is shown so you can see it is there." Office staff now sign in to ABM Service with their ABM name, so these rows open nothing. You can leave them, or delete them if they never logged a call.
Office staff's own sign-ins to ABM Service are never added, changed or given passwords on the Customer sign-ins screen. Office staff are ABM users, kept in ABM's own user list by whoever looks after ABM at your company.
Is what I typed on a customer sign-in kept if I leave the screen?
No. On the Customer sign-ins screen, nothing you type on a sign-in's form is kept until you press Save (or Create the sign-in for a new one). The one exception is a password: Set the password under Set their password saves the new password at once, on its own. If you leave the form another way, ABM Service does not remind you or ask first, and what you typed is lost: opening the menu and choosing another screen, selecting the Defaults tab, reloading the page and closing the window or tab all throw the form away.
This is different from the call screen, where unsaved changes to a call are remembered while you look at something else. The Customer sign-ins screen always opens fresh, showing the sign-ins as they are in the database at that moment, so finish and save one sign-in before you go elsewhere. Cancel on the form also leaves without saving anything.