Using the Customer Portal Menu
The Customer portal menu runs down the left of every page on a computer and along the bottom of the screen on a phone. It takes you to the pages for the account you are looking at: Home, Account, Account history, Calls and Visits. Your service provider decides which of these your sign-in may use, so your menu may show fewer.
What is in the Customer portal menu?
The Customer portal menu has up to five pages for the account on screen, plus the account's name at the top and your own name with Sign out at the bottom. The page you are on is marked in the menu.
- Home — your account at a glance: visits booked, your latest call, calls logged this month and the balance due, then the next visits and the latest calls.
- Account — the details your service provider keeps about your account, the balance due and a map of where they come to.
- Account history — your invoices, credit notes and payments, with the documents to download.
- Calls — every call on your account that your sign-in may see, to search and open.
- Visits — the engineer visits booked for your site, coming up and earlier.
At the top of the menu, under Customer portal, is the name and code of the account you are looking at. If your sign-in has several accounts, select it to switch to another. At the bottom is your name, with the Sign out button beside it.
When you open a call from Calls, Home or Visits, or log or change a call, the menu keeps Calls marked, because the call belongs to your calls list.
Why is a page or a button missing from my Customer portal menu?
Your service provider decides what each Customer portal sign-in may see and do, so some pages and buttons only appear when they have allowed them for you. Nothing is wrong with your sign-in when one is missing; ask your service provider if you need it.
- Account history appears only if your sign-in may see the account history. Without it, the page says Your sign-in does not include account history. The office can switch it on for you.
- Visits, the Visits booked figure and the Coming to your site list on Home appear only if your sign-in may see visits.
- The Balance due figure on Home and the Balance due card on Account appear only if your sign-in may see balances.
- Log a call, at the top of Home, Account and Calls, appears only if your sign-in may log calls.
Home, Account and Calls are always in the menu once you have chosen an account. Which calls you see in Calls also depends on your sign-in: your service provider may show you only calls of certain statuses or types.
If your sign-in is linked to several accounts, the menu lists no pages on Choose an account until you pick one; on a computer screen, your name and Sign out are still at the bottom.
If your service provider tells you they have allowed something and it is still missing, reload the page with your browser's reload button or F5. A page that is already open does not change by itself, and after a change to your sign-in the Customer portal may ask you to sign in again first; once you have, the new menu item or button appears.
Can I change my name or email address in the Customer portal?
No, not yourself: the Customer portal has no profile or settings page, and its menu has only Home, Account, Account history, Calls and Visits. Your service provider can change both for you, so contact them with the correct spelling of your name or the new email address.
- Your name — the name at the bottom of the Customer portal menu is the one typed in Your name when your password was first set, or the one your service provider entered for you. The portal uses it to greet you on Home, fills it into Who to ask for on a new call, and stamps it on each Note you add to a call's details, so a misspelling shows up in all three places. For a single call, you can still type the right name in Who to ask for on the Log a call form.
- Your email address — the address you sign in with is set by your service provider when they create your sign-in. They can change it; afterwards, sign in with the new address and your existing password.
When your service provider changes your sign-in, the Customer portal may sign you out; sign in again to see the change. Forgot password changes only your password, not your name or email address, and it switches your sign-in off until your service provider switches it back on.
Can I bookmark a Customer portal page, such as my Calls list, to go straight to it?
Yes. Every page of the Customer portal has an address of its own, including Home, Account, Account history, Calls, Visits and each single call, so you can bookmark any of them in your browser while it is open and go straight back to it next time.
The address of a Customer portal page includes the account you were looking at. So if your sign-in has several accounts, a bookmark of Calls always opens that one account's calls, whichever account you looked at last; make one bookmark for each account you check often.
If you are signed out when you open a bookmark, the Customer portal first shows its sign-in page, headed Sign in to see your calls, and once you have signed in it takes you on to the page you bookmarked.
A bookmark of Calls normally opens the list in its usual starting view, 25 calls a page, newest first, on All with every status; a search or a status you had chosen is not part of the bookmark. The one exception is a bookmark made after you opened Calls by selecting Logged this month on Home: that bookmark opens on This month instead, even if you had selected All before bookmarking it. Select All to see older calls, or bookmark Calls from the menu instead.
If your service provider later changes what your sign-in reaches, an old bookmark may say That customer account is not one this sign-in reaches. or That call is not one this sign-in reaches. Use the link in the message to go back to your own accounts, and bookmark the page again from there.
An old or mistyped Customer portal address that matches no page does not show an error: it opens your account's Home, or Choose an account if your sign-in has several accounts.
Can I send a message to my service provider from the Customer portal?
No. The Customer portal has no messages, chat, contact form or help page, and its menu has only Home, Account, Account history, Calls and Visits. It does not show your service provider's own phone number or email address either; contact them the way you normally do.
- To report a fault or ask for an engineer, use Log a call at the top of Home, Account or Calls, if your service provider has let your sign-in log calls.
- To ask about a call you already have, ring or email your service provider and quote the call number shown on the call's page.
- To know who looks after your account, open Account: Your account manager gives their name where your service provider has recorded one, though not a phone number or email address.
How does the Customer portal menu work on a phone?
On a phone, or any narrow window, the Customer portal menu becomes a row of buttons along the bottom of the screen, with the same five pages. To leave room for them, the account name, your name and Sign out are not shown there; the account's name is still at the top of most pages.
If you need to sign out or switch accounts on a phone, turn the phone sideways: on a screen that is wide enough, the full menu, with your name and Sign out, appears down the side. To switch accounts on a phone that is still too narrow, open the Customer portal address your service provider gave you again: while you are signed in, it takes you straight to Choose an account. On a computer screen, the full menu is always there.
There is no separate Customer portal app to install on a phone: the Customer portal is a web page, so open its address in your phone's browser and save it as a bookmark, or add it to your home screen if your browser offers that.
Can I change how the Customer portal looks, such as its colours or the size of the text?
No, not in the Customer portal itself: it has no settings page, so there is no choice of colours, of a light or dark background, or of text size. The Customer portal always shows its dark background, even when your computer or phone is set to a light appearance, and there is no way to switch it to a light one.
To make everything larger or smaller, use your web browser's own zoom. On a computer, press Ctrl and the plus key together (Ctrl++) to make the Customer portal larger, Ctrl and the minus key (Ctrl+-) to make it smaller, and Ctrl and 0 (Ctrl+0) to go back to the normal size. On a phone or tablet, spread two fingers apart on the screen to zoom in.
If you zoom in a long way on a computer, the Customer portal may switch to the layout it uses on a phone, with the menu as a row of buttons along the bottom of the screen and without your name and Sign out. Zoom out again, with Ctrl+-, to bring the full menu back down the side.
What does "The server did not answer" mean on a Customer portal page?
The message The server did not answer. Check your connection and try again. in place of a Customer portal page, such as Home, Account, Account history or Choose an account, means the portal could not reach your service provider's system when the page opened, usually because your internet connection dropped. Nothing about your account has changed. Check your connection, then reload the page with your browser's reload button or by pressing F5.
Other things you may see in place of a Customer portal page:
- Loading… — the page is on its way. It normally takes a moment.
- A message beginning This site's database is on version, or This site's database is being checked — your service provider's system is being brought up to date. Wait a minute and reload the page. If the message says it could not be brought up to date, contact your service provider and read them the message.
- That customer account is not one this sign-in reaches. — the page belongs to an account your sign-in is not linked to. Select Choose another account in the message.
- The sign-in page, headed Sign in to see your calls — your sign-in has ended. Sign in again, and you are taken back to the page you were on.