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Give a customer temporary access to your Customer Portal for one job

  • Updated

Customer Portals are a great tool to communicate with regular customers and empower them to track and update their jobs. But some organizations may have infrequent repeat or one-time customers. For these customers, you may want them to access their jobs in the Customer Portal in a super simple way. That’s what you can achieve using the Customer Portal Token Link option with your Customer Portal.

What is the Customer Portal Token Link

The Customer Portal Token Link provides your infrequent customers with instant, no fuss, and temporary access to their job in the Customer Portal.  No setup or password is required by the customer; they simply click the shared URL link and enter their email address, mobile number, or the Job ID to access the job. The Customer Portal Token Link is unique to a job and expires when the job is completed, ending the customer’s use of the portal. 

The Customer Portal feature and the Customer Portal Token Link are both optional additions to your vWork account. You can learn more about Customer Portals in the article Customer Self Service Portal. Alternatively, email support@vworkapp.com if you want to add the Customer Portal or the Customer Portal Token Link to your account. One of our team will be in touch to talk through your requirements and help you get up and running.

In this article

This article explains how to enable the Customer Portal Token Link and set it up to share with your customers. 

Topics covered are:

How does the Customer Portal Token Link work?

Once the Customer Portal Token is enabled in the Customer Portal settings, every time a new job is saved a unique Job-specific URL link to the Customer Portal is saved with the job in the job’s Notes field. You can share this link to the job with your customer using an email or SMS alert, or manually.

Once a customer has the unique URL link to their job they click it to open the Customer Portal login page. They can then easily log in using their one-off login details (email address, mobile number, or the job ID) and view their job.  Their customer portal access to the job remains active until the job is complete.

How do I set up the Customer Portal Token Link?

Add the Customer Portal Token Link to your vWork Account

First, make sure the Customer Portal Token Link is added as an option to your account. vWork support can do this for you. Send an email to support@vwork.com and one of our team will be in touch to add this option for you.

Enable Job Notes to provide Customer Portal access

After the Customer Portal Token Link is enabled in your account you need to enable your account to add the Customer Portal Token Link to your templated Jobs. This is done in the Portal Settings.

  1. Go to Settings > Portals > Settings 

  2. Scroll to the Job Creation section and click to add a checkmark next to Include portal access as a job note.

  3. Click Save.

C_Portal_set_up_tokenized_portal_checkbox.png

Create a job with the Customer Portal Token Link

Create jobs based on a template

After you enable Job Notes to include the Customer Portal Token Link in the Portal Settings every job created from a template will include a unique URL link to the customer portal that can be shared with the customer so they can view and, where enabled, edit their job.

As long as a job is based on a template, it doesn’t matter how the job is created. The job can be created: 

  • manually from the Schedule or Jobs tab, 
  • through the API, 
  • as a repeating Job, 
  • from a CSV Job import.

Note: The only situation where a Customer Portal Token Link is not generated is when a job is created without using a template. You can only create a job without using a template when the Mandatory Job Templates option is disabled in your vWork account General Settings.

Create a job

To create a job with the Customer Portal Token Link:

  1. Create a job using a job template. Make sure you include the customer’s email address and mobile phone number.

  2. Save the job. When you next open the job you will see a link to the portal in the Notes field.

    C_Portal_job_with_portal_link_in_notes.png

  3. Send the link to your customer automatically using an alert (either email or SMS) or manually (copy and paste the link from the job into an email). Make sure you tell them what their login details are to enable them to log in to the portal. This is explained below in the topic Customer login to the job in the Customer Portal.

Important contact information to save with the job

When a new job is created, vWork saves the Customer Name and Customer Details as a Customer Record with the contact information saved in the Customer Site Contact fields. 

It is easier to share the Customer Portal Token Link with the customer by email or SMS if you capture the email and mobile number with the job at the time it is created. This saves your team the task of entering this information into the customer record manually from the Job.

Create_job_-_customer_information_for_Portal.png

You can also use the contact details to set up an email Alert, or SMS Alert, to automatically send the Customer Portal Token Link to the customer.

Customer login to the job in the Customer Portal

When the customer receives the customer portal link to their job, either by email or SMS as an Alert or sent manually, they:

  1. Click the link to open a login prompt for the Customer Portal.

  2. Enter one of the following at the login prompt:
    • their email address, or
    • their mobile number, or
    • the Job ID.

    Note: the option presented to the customer depends on what information was saved with the job. They are always presented with an email login field if an email address is saved with the job. Where there is no email address they are presented with a mobile phone login field. If neither email nor mobile phone is saved with the customer they are presented with the Job Id login.

  3. Click Login.

    C_Portal_login_using_email.png

  4. The customer is logged into their Job in the Customer Portal.  Depending on the template and permissions that are set they are able to view and update the job.

    C_Portal_logged_in_as_guest.png

Set an Alert to share a Customer Portal Token Link

If you want, you can set either an email alert or an SMS alert to automatically share the link with your customer. To do this you create an email or SMS alert as you normally would and then add the Portal Access URL token to the message. The process for doing this, for both email and SMS, is described next.

For more help with creating Alerts please see the article: How do I set up an Alert?

Email Alert

To create an email alert to send the Customer Portal Token Link:

  1. Under Who Should we Notify by Email? click the checkbox next to Send to Customer’s Site Contact to select this.

  2. In Customize the Alert Message go to the Message area and enter your email message. 

  3. Put the text cursor in the place where you want to insert the portal link. 

    Alerts_-_Portal_Link_Set_up_email_Alert_Job_Created_Step_1.png

  4. From the menu of tokens, under the heading Customer Details, click the icon for the Portal Access URL token to add it to the body of the message where you have positioned the text cursor. 

    Alerts_-_Portal_Link_Set_up_email_Alert_Job_Created_Step_2.png

    The email Alert looks like this when sent to the customer.

    Alerts_-_Portal_Link_Alert_Job_Created.png

SMS Alert

You will need a little bit of help from our support team to create the SMS Alert message and add the portal link to it. 

To create the SMS Alert:

  1. Set up your SMS Alert. When you reach the section with the title Who Should we Notify by SMS? click to select the checkbox next to Send to Customer’s Site Contact.

  2. Email support@vworkapp.com with a request to customize the body of the SMS Alert and add the Portal Link. We will notify you when we have completed this request and your SMS Alert is ready to use.

 

 

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