Customer Service Portal Administration

The Customer Service Portal allows customers to access FootPrints and search the Knowledge Base without first logging in. Some available options, such as submitting and viewing Requests, require identification by the customer.  This is a simplified way of providing customer self-service, and it is primarily geared for external customer support.

Note

If this option is enabled for the project, it will supersede all customer roles defined for the Project.  It also means that the customers who are members of the Project where single–frame is defined cannot access other projects through this interface.

Topics include:

• Enabling Customer Service Portal
• Defining Login Type
• Creating a Welcome message
• Defining the Available Options
• Selecting and customizing the icons for the toolbar
• Define the entry point for the portal

Enabling Customer Service Portal

FootPrints is set to the traditional FootPrints interface by default. Enabling the Customer Service Portal is done in the first section of the Customer Options page.

1. Select Administration | Project | Customer Options to get to the Customer Options page.
2. Click the Customer Service Portal radio button to enable the feature for customers of this Project.  Users may also achieve this same result if they clicked the Customer Service Portal button from the final step of the Project Setup Wizard. When you click the Customer Service Portal radio button, the page changes to provide you with the appropriate options.

Define Login Method

You can require customers to log in to the Portal using a unique ID and password, or you can allow them to enter only a unique identifier, such as user ID or email address, with no authentication.  Either:

• select Unique ID and password required to authenticate the customers logging into the Portal
• select Primary key only required with no password if you don't want to authenticate the customers
• select Unique ID and password required

NOTE 

When using web server authentication with the Customer Service Portal, the customer URL provided on the Customer Service Portal setup page will not bypass customer login. If a customer goes to the regular /footprints URL, they bypass the login correctly.

Define the Available Options

Under Available Options you can select which options your customers can access.  The Potential Options drop-down lists the available options from which to choose, and the Current Toolbar drop-down lists the options that have been selected to appear on the customer Homepage.  Once options are selected, click Add to add the option to the Current Toolbar drop-down.  Once the icons have been selected in the Toolbar list, the order can be rearranged using the and buttons. The Potential Options list includes:

• Project Logo-Displays the project logo that is shown in the upper left-hand corner of the internal homepage for this project.
• Home-When selected by the customer, displays the homepage of the Customer Service Portal.
• Global Issues-When selected by the customer, displays a pop-up window listing the project's active Global Issues and allows the customer to subscribe to each of the issues.
• Search Knowledge Base-When selected by the customer, displays the search page for the Knowledge Base.
• Submit Request-When selected, displays the customer version of the create Issue page, allowing customers to submit their own Issues.
• View Request-When selected, displays all of the Issues that the customer has submitted previously.
• Reports-When selected, displays options for the customer to print pre-defined reports.
• Log in/Log out-Logs the customer out or displays the login page.
• Help-Displays a context-sensitive help page.

 Define the Initial Content

Select what you want the customer to see by default in the main frame.   You can select one option from the following drop-down menu:

• Search Knowledge Base-When the customer logs in, the Search Knowledge Base is the first one displayed in the main area.
• Submit Request-When the customer logs in, the customer version of the create Issue page is the first one displayed in the main area.
• Customer's Requests-When the customer logs in, a list of the customer's previously submitted requests is the first page displayed in the main area.

Create a Welcome Message

1. Click the Show Welcome Message on Homepage checkbox.  Note that if the Customer Service Portal is not enabled, the welcome message associated with the customer role is displayed instead.
2. Create a Welcome message using the WYSIWYG editor
3. If you want to include Project information in the message, click on the Insert Variable Text hyperlink under the WYSIWIG editor and use the pop–up menu to insert fields into the message

Switch Project Menu

If a project menu was inserted into the customer's Welcome Message using the "_PROJMENU_" keyword, you can choose which projects appear in this menu from the list of other Customer Service Portal projects. When a customer logs in using a User ID, the list displays all of the projects to which the customer belongs. To select the projects that may be displayed to the customer, highlight them in the multi-select field. Use the CTRL key to highlight multiple projects.

Editing Requests

If the Customer Edit license has been purchased, you can optionally allow customers to edit and close their requests.  

To allow customers to edit and close their requests, check the box that says:  Allow customers to edit and close their requests.

Color

You can customize the colors displayed on the Customer Service Portal.

Note 

To get maximum value from the Color Editor, make sure your browser can display all of the colors at your disposal.  To change your color palette, go to Start | Settings | Control Panel, choose Display and go to Settings to make sure your monitor can display more than 256 colors (Windows only).

To change colors:

1. Click the link in the Color section of the Customer Options page after the Customer Service Portal is enabled.
2. Select one of the following choices by clicking its radio button:
• Body Background—Background color of FootPrints (defaults to off-white).
• Table—All tables throughout FootPrints (defaults to light green).
• Highlighted Text—Any highlighted text throughout FootPrints (defaults to red).
• Page Header Text—All header and title text (defaults to dark blue).
• Dialog Heading—Heading bars of most FootPrints pages.
• Dialog Heading Text—All header text that appears in the dialog heading bars (defaults to light blue).
• Home page List 1—One of two alternating colors for the Homepage list of Issues (defaults to light blue).
• Home page List 2—One of two alternating colors for the Homepage list of Issues (defaults to light green).
• Home page Text 1—One of two text colors use throughout FootPrints pages, including the Toolbar text (defaults to dark blue).
• Home page Text 2—The other of two text colors use throughout FootPrints pages, including the Toolbar text (defaults to dark green).

3. Either:
4. Select a color in the Color Palette or
5. Type the hex value of a color (in hex code format, i.e., 000000-FFFFFF) in the Hex color value field, then click Apply.

A box is displayed below the Color Palette showing the old and new colors.

4. You can adjust the color choice at any time before you click the Finalize Change button to implement the color change.  You can continue to change other colors on this page
5. When you are satisfied with all of your changes, click Finalize Changes to apply them.
6. To restore all colors to their default values, click the Restore button.

To insure proper functionality, you may have to clear out your browser’s cache, refresh the screen, and/or close and re-open the browser to see all of the new colors correctly.

Define the Entry Point for the Customer Service Portal

The entry point is the URL that customers use to access this Project's customer interface.  FootPrints generates an HTML file that redirects the customer to a more complicated URL, which they shouldn't have to type in themselves.  Enter the name to be used for this file following the /footprints/ portion of the URL.

To simplify access even further, create either a Web Alias or Virtual Directory, depending on the platform that can be detected in Perl.  IIS uses Virtual Directories and Apache uses Aliases that bring the customer directly to this file.  Move the file to a new directory and rename the file so that it matches the default document name used by your web server (usually index.html or default.html).

Hide or Show the FootPrints Logo

By default, the "Powered by FootPrints" logo appears on the Customer Service Portal. If you wish to remove the logo from the Customer Service Portal, click the Hide radio button. To restore it, click the Show radio button.