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.

The Customer Portal is an optional feature in vWork. You can get an overview of what it is in the article, What is the Customer Portal? To find out more or discuss your needs with one of the vWork team please email us at support@vworkapp.com. We'll be in touch to discuss your requirements.

Customer Portal branding, name and introduction

Although your Customer Portal is hosted by vWork, we recommend that you customize it to make it fit your brand and image.

Portal banner url and intro.png

Branding

You can add your logo to use in all parts of vWork in the General Settings. When you add your logo we will use it in the banner of your Customer Portal.

We recommend you upload your logo before setting up your Customer Portal. You can learn more about how to add your logo to vWork in the help article, Add my logo to vWork.

Customer Portal name and url

When we create your Customer Portal we allocate you a unique URL (web address). We recommend you think of what you might like this to be before setting up your Customer Portal.

The URL that is used for you Customer Portal has this format:

yourcompanyname.vwork.io

We provide the “.vwork.io” portion of this url. You provide the bit before this. This must be a name with no spaces that we can add “.vwork.io” to the end of. It’s a good idea to use something that closely matches your organization name and brand, but also to keep this short so it is easy for a customer to type and remember.

Customer Portal Introduction

In the Portal settings you can add an introductory paragraph to your Customer Portal. This shows in the Customer Portal banner nex to you logo.

The ‘Introduction’ is a good place to explain what your Customer Portal is used for. We provide a default introduction that includes your vWork account name, but you don’t have to use this. You can change this paragraph at any time in the Portal Settings without impacting how your Customer Portal works.

We recommend you prepare your introduction before setting up your Customer Portal.

Make it public or private?

You can choose to set your Customer Portal to have public and unrestricted access or private and controlled access.

Think about who you want signing up to use your Customer Portal. Do you want to control who can sign-up, or is it ok that anyone can sign up to use it?

Public

When the Customer Portal is enabled as a public portal anyone can go to your Customer Portal website and sign up and then log in to use the Customer Portal to engage your services. This is useful when you want your services to be available to everyone and don’t want access to your Customer Portal restricted.

If you choose to make your Customer Portal public, you may want to link to it from your main website. We provide the HTML code for a portal link button in the Portal Settings. Think about where you might want to add the button and what you want written on the button.

Private

When the public portal option is disabled in the Portal Settings your Customer Portal becomes private, allowing you to restrict services to only those customers you choose to grant access. You add these customers as Portal Users through the Portal Settings. Customers are not able to set themselves up as Portal Users - only a vWork Admin can do this.

Temporary access

Regardless of whether you choose to make you Customer Portal public or private, you can also choose to provide some customer with temporary access to your customer portal to track a single job. When the job is completed their access expires. You can learn more about this in the article, Give a customer temporary access to your Customer Portal for one job.

Contact information Portal Users must provide at sign-up

When new users are added to the Customer Portal they must provide basic contact information. This information is used not only to create their Portal User profile, but may also create a Customer record in vWork if the Portal User isn’t manually linked to an existing vWork customer.

Every Portal user must provide the following information:

First name
Last name
Email
Mobile
Password

In addition to this default information, in the Portal Settings you can also make it a requirement for a Portal User to provide:

a phone number
an address.

Think about the information you need from the Portal User at signup. Do you need this extra information, or is the default information enough?

Job types you want Portal Users to access

What job templates will you add to the Customer Portal?

The job templates you add to the Customer Portal are the jobs that your Portal Users are able to select from as the ‘Job type’ when they create jobs through the Customer Portal.

Job templates can be added to the Customer Portal at any time. Think about the job templates you want to add. Do you want all Portal Users to use the same job templates? You can customize the job templates individual Portal Users can use in the Portal Users settings to override the default templates available to all Portal Users.

Information Portal Users add to jobs and that you share with them

Portal Users have different and more restricted access to job steps and fields in a job template from a dispatcher. You set the Portal User default template settings to specify the information a Portal User can see and also enter when they create a job through the Customer Portal.

You can make job steps and custom fields:

Hidden: The step or field is not visible to the Portal User. This is the default setting for all steps and custom fields.
Required: The Portal User must enter information in required fields. This will be a step address for a step and whatever value is normally used in a custom field.
Optional: The Portal user is not required to enter information in optional fields but can do this to supplement other job information if this is needed.
Read only: Read only fields are visible to the Portal User to provide them with information but they can’t add or change information in these fields.

It is important to think about the information you want Portal Users to enter into the job and what information you want them to see that is useful to them.

Make fields and steps 'Hidden' that aren’t informative for a Portal User (such as notes you add to help the worker complete the job).
You are likely to need to make at least one step 'Required' to enable a Portal User to add a geocoded address where the job is to be performed.
If you want your Portal Users to see the job step label without adding an address you will make these 'Read only'.
You can also provide instructions about the information you want by using 'Read only' text fields in the job template.

Default Customer Portal Settings

The default Customer Portal settings apply to all Portal Users and are enabled and disabled in the Portal Settings. They can’t be overridden for an individual Portal User.

The 'Default Settings' configure:

the tabs that show in the Customer Portal (Jobs, Map, Alerts)
if job times requested, when creating a job, are limited to company working hours and how much worker availability there is for a requested job start time (when Portal Users are not prevented from requesting start times by the 'Default User Permissions')
the status assigned to jobs when they are created through the Customer Portal - they may be created as ‘Unassigned’ (or ’Pending’) or as ‘Draft’
alerts the Portal User can set up to notify them of job progress.

What Default Settings do you want to enable?

Answer these questions to identify the Default Settings you will enable in the Portal Settings.

Do you want to show Customer Portal users when potential booking times are available, filling up, or unavailable when they create a job?
- You can enable Portal Users to see if your workers that are 'on shift' have jobs scheduled (they are available when no jobs are scheduled for any worker), some workers have scheduled jobs (some availability) or all workers have scheduled jobs (no availability).
  💡 Tip: You can also prevent users from seeing the booking times as a 'Default User Permission'. Consider if you even want Portal Users to be able to see possible start times.
Do you want to restrict potential booking times to your company working hours?
Do you want Portal Users to see where their job is on a Map in the Customer Portal?
Do you want Portal Users to be able to see where your workers are on a Map in the Customer Portal?
- Portal Users will only be able to view workers on the Map after a job has started.
  💡 Tip: The Map must also be enabled for workers to be viewed on the Map.
Do you want Portal Users to be able to print Job Invoices from the Customer Portal?
- Job Invoices become printable when a job is completed.
Do you want Portal Users to have a column in the Jobs tab that shows what the last completed step for the job was?
Do you want jobs to be created with a status of ‘Draft’ in vWork or do you want them to be created as ‘Unassigned’ (or ‘Pending’ if the’ Accept or Decline Job’ option is enabled)?

💡 Tip: When a Portal User selects a time this is only ever a request. A dispatcher must finalize the planned start-time for a job. The ‘Draft’ status ensures that workers using the vWork mobile app aren’t getting job update notifications as a job is moved around the Schedule when the dispatcher is planning job allocation.
Do you want to enable Alerts for Portal Users that they can set up for themselves?
- You can enable email alerts and, additionally, sms alerts for any or all of these options:
  - Job Scheduled
  - Job Started
  - Job Completed.
If you have chosen to enable alerts for Portal Users, think about the email address you want used if the Portal User replies to an alert. Alerts are always sent from ‘alerts@vworkapp.com’. This can’t be used as a reply email address.

Default Customer Portal User Permissions

Default User Permissions apply to all Portal Users, but these can be overridden for individual Portal Users in the Portal User settings.

The Default User Permissions determine:

If Portal Users are allowed to create jobs through the Customer Portal
If Portal Users can only view the jobs they create or also the jobs created by the dispatcher for customers they are linked to
If Portal Users can create multiple jobs at the same time
If Portal Users can request a job start date and time
When a Portal User is added to vWork as a customer after they are created as a new Portal User - immediately when they click the activation link or only when they create their first job through the Customer Portal.

What Default User Permissions do you want to enable?

Answer these questions to identify the Default User Permissions you will enable in the Portal Settings:

Do you want Portal Users to be able to create jobs?

💡 Tip: You must allow Portal Users to see the status of jobs they create as a minimum requirement for them to have access to the Customer Portal. If you answered 'no' - Portal Users will only be able to view job progress through the Customer Portal based on the Default Settings and the Job Templates you select for the Customer Portal.
If you do want Portal Users to create jobs, is there a reason they may need to create multiple jobs of the same type at the same time?
Which jobs do you want Portal Users to view through the Customer Portal. You can choose for them to view:
- only jobs they create
  (Only 'view status' permission for jobs they create through the Customer Portal).
- all jobs created by themselves or the dispatcher
  (Both 'view status' permissions are enabled.)
- no jobs
  (No 'view status' user permissions enabled.)
  
  💡 Tip: If you only want them to create jobs wihtout viewing them then you must give them 'create job' permissions but must not give them 'view job' permissions.
Do you want Portal Users to be able to view and request a start date and time when they create a job?
- We enable Portal Users to request a start date and time as the default. They can select their preferred date and time block from a calendar tool in the Customer Portal. The date and time are selected at the same time and can't be selected independently of each other.
- In addition to allowing customers to select a start date and time, you can also optionally enable them to see when start dates and times might be available (your workers have no jobs scheduled) if you enable the ‘Show availability’ Default Setting in the Portal Settings.
- You can prevent Portal Users from seeing start dates and times in the Customer Portal, thereby preventing them from requesting this, by adding a checkmark to the option 'Prevent customers from requesting a time'. When you do this the start date and time is automatically assigned as the time they create the job. This still needs to be finalized by the dispatcher.
  
  💡 Tip: Portal Users can only ever 'request' a start date and time. A dispatcher is required to finalize this when they assign the job. Consider how you want Portal Users notified that a job has been scheduled to start and about job progress. We have alert options for Portal Users in the Default Settings. You can also create alerts for your customers through the Alerts tab for jobs created through the Customer Portal by linking the alert to the Job template.
Portal Users are created in Work as ‘Customers’ if they are not linked to an existing customer after their Portal User profile is created.
- A Portal User’s related Customer profile can be automatically created at the time they create their first job through the Customer Portal (this is the default) or at the time they sign-up to use the Customer Portal.
- Consider when you want Portal Users to be created as Customers in vWork. If you want to have them created as Customers in vWork as soon as they sign-up then you must enable this in the Default User Permissions in the Portal Settings.
Do you want some Portal Users to have different permissions from the Default User Permissions?
- You are able to override the Default User Permissions for individual Portal Users in the Portal User settings.
- You can add and remove job templates from a Portal User Profile to change the types of jobs they can create.

Next steps

Now that you have planned how you want your Customer Portal to look and feel, and what Portal Users will be able to do through it, the next step is to open the Portal Settings and start setting up your Customer Portal. Use the information you have gathered in this planning process to help you with the setup. Instructions for setting up the Customer Portal are included in the article, Set up the Customer Portal.

To learn more about setting up your customer portal, please take a look at these articles:

What is the Customer Portal? provides an overview of what the Customer Portal can do.
Set up the Customer Portal: this article explains how to set the defaults and user user permissions, enable public or private access and add job templates.
Sign up and activate a Portal User, guides you through creating and activating Portal Users so they can use your Customer Portal. You are shown both the Portal User and the vWork Admin views of this process.
Customize Portal User permissions and template access, explains how to manage Portal User links to Customers in vWork and the templates a Portal User has access to in the Customer Portal.

To learn more about how to use the Customer Portal as a Portal User, please take a look at these articles:

Using the Customer Portal: provides an overview of the main activities a Portal User can do through the Customer Portal. This links to other articles that provide more detailed instructions for each of these activities.
Create and view a Job in the Customer Portal: describes what a Portal User can see and do in the in Customer Portal ‘Jobs' tab.
Using the Map in the Customer Portal: explains how a Portal User can use the Map tab to view their jobs.
Set up a Job Alert in the Customer Portal: explains how a Portal User can set up a Job Alert to be notified of progress on their job by email or sms.

Plan your Customer Portal

In this article