A vWork-hosted Customer Portal is a branded self-service website tailored for your business that enables your customers to book and track their own jobs in vWork with ease.

To use the Customer Portal your customers must be set up in vWork as 'Portal Users'. Portal Users are added to your Customer Portal after you have it set it up with its own, unique URL.

In this article

In this article, we provide an overview of the process to get your Customer's up and running as Portal Users so they can log in to your Customer Portal and start creating and tracking their jobs in vWork. We have more detailed information on the steps involved in the articles, Plan your Customer Portal and Set up the Customer Portal.

Topics include:

• The process to create a Portal User
• Public access
• Private access
• The difference between Customers and Portal Users in vWork

Click the link from the topic list above to go to that topic. You can return to this topic list by clicking this icon:

The process to create a Portal User

A Portal User needs to know your Customer Portal web address (URL) to sign up and log in to your Customer Portal. You create this at the time you set up your Customer Portal in the Portal Settings.

The process to add a customer as a Portal User is a two step process. To enable a Portal User to log in to the Customer Portal they must:

1. be added to the Customer Portal as a Portal User, and
2. activate their Portal User profile (or 'Account') from an email sent to the email address used to create their Portal User profile in vWork .

During this process, they add their own Portal User contact information and create a password through a form in the Customer Portal - when they do this depends on whether the Customer Portal is enabled as 'public' or 'private'.

• A 'Public' Customer Portal can have anyone sign up to use it through a link on the 'Login' page, or
• A 'Private' Customer Portal only gives access to the customers that you choose to manually set up as Portal Users and invite to use it.

Customer Portal access can also be temporarily provided to customers. In this instance the Portal User does not become permanently added to vWork with their own Portal User profile - instead they are given temporary access to a single job through the Customer Portal. Their portal access expires when the job is completed. You can read more about this in the article, Give a customer temporary access to your Customer Portal for one job.

Public access

How a customer signs up as a Portal User

1. New customers sign-up to use the Customer Portal through a sign-up link on the 'Login' page. When they click this they enter their contact information into a 'Signup' form and create their own password.
2. The completion of the 'Signup' form adds them as a Portal User to vWork with their contact information. An automatically generated email is then sent to their email address that includes an activation link.
3. When they click the activation link they are logged in to the Customer Portal for the first time and their Portal User profile becomes active in vWork.

Share your Customer Portal URL

When you enable your Customer Portal as Public, you can share your Customer Portal URL with anyone in anyway that suits you.

To make it easier to share your Customer Portal URL we have instructions and code that you can use to add a Customer Portal Link button to your marketing website. Instructions for how to set this up in the article, Set up the Customer Portal.

After a Portal user is activated they can also log in to the Customer Portal through the same email sent to them to activate their Customer Portal. The activation link changes to a login link.

Private access

How a Customer is signed up as a Portal User

When you enable your Customer Portal as private you manually add Portal Users to the Portal Users settings.

1. Add the Portal Users email to the Portal Users page in the Portal Settings. All you require is an email address for them.
2. This generates an automatic email that is sent to the email used to set up the Portal User. The email includes a link. 
3. They click the Activation link in the email. This opens a form where they add their contact information and create a password. 
4. When they finalise the form they become activated as a Portal User and they are automatically logged in to the Customer Portal.

Share your Customer Portal URL

After a Portal user is activated they can log in to the Customer Portal through the same email sent to them to activate their Customer Portal. The activation link changes to a login link. They can also enter the Customer Portal URL in their browser to go to the Customer Portal and log in.

The difference between Customers and Portal Users in vWork

Customers and Portal users both have profiles in vWork. A Customer needs both of these to use the Customer Portal.

A Portal User often has the same name as a Customer saved in vWork and shares the same contact information but this is not necessary. Portal Users and Customers are linked in the Portal Settings to enable Portal Users to manage jobs for Customers through the Customer Portal.

Customers

• Customers details are viewed through the Customers page in vWork.
• Customers have jobs created for them in vWork.

Portal Users 

• Portal Users have a profile in the Portal Users page in the Portal Settings.
• Portal Users self-serve through the Customer Portal to perform some of the functions of a dispatcher. Depending on their Portal User Permissions they can create jobs, edit jobs, delete jobs and track jobs in vWork through the Customer Portal.
• Portal Users have their Portal User profile linked to a Customer in vWork to self-manage jobs for that Customer.