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Set up your portal

Last Update: Sep 2024 • Est. Read Time: 4 MIN
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Organizations can create a branded portal where your customers can log in to view and respond to all conversations they’ve had with your support team. The portal also provides a secure location for internal users to view both internal and public facing knowledge base articles. 

Note: Organizations that have an existing custom knowledge base need to modify their theme in order for the portal to display properly. To do so, please follow these instructions and Upgrade your theme to version 1.0.20

If you created your theme using a Midtown template and did not customize it, you do not need to upgrade. 

By default, the portal is turned off for your organization. Once this setting is turned on, the Login link customers and internal users use to access the portal is available on your knowledge base home page. 

Who can access this feature?
User typesUsers with Content Manager permissions and higher can set up the portal. Agents who are both full-time and collaborator can view articles in the portal.


In this article

Portal for end customers

The portal provides a way for your customers to log in to a secure location and see their conversation history with your organization. To turn the portal on for end customers, go to SettingsKnowledge Base > Configuration. Select the Portal tab and then the Turn on My Conversations toggle. 

Once logged in, customers will see all of their open and closed conversations on the My Conversations page. 

The portal shows conversation history for the following channels:

  • Chat
  • Email
  • Facebook Messenger
  • Forms
  • Instagram (Direct Mentions only)
  • Portal
  • SMS
  • Twitter (Direct Mentions only)
  • WhatsApp

Customers can select a conversation from the list to view all of the messages within it. If the conversation's status is open, they can send a message from directly within the portal. Messages sent through the portal are limited to 10,240 characters. 

Customers can attach a maximum of 6 files to their message. Each file has a maximum size limit of 3MB. Supported file types are XSLX, CSV, DOC, DOCX, XML, PDF, GIF JPG, and PNG.

Notes:

  • Conversations are shown in the portal as they appear in the Kustomer timeline. This includes any modifications an agent may make to the conversation subject, as well as redacted information. 
  • Internal notes are not visible to a customer when viewing a conversation in the portal.
  • You can turn off the customer's ability to reopen a previously closed conversation using the available setting.

Messages sent through this view are sent through the Portal channeland will appear in the customer's timeline where an agent can respond. Customers receive the agent's response via email and can view the message in the portal by reloading the conversation page.

Set up customer authentication

The portal is a secure location where customers can access their conversation history with your organization. Select Portal Authentication to set up authentication for customers logging in to your portal.

The following options are available:

  • Kustomer Session Lifetime is the length of time (hours/days) that your users will stay authenticated within Kustomer before they are prompted to log in again. The default value is 1 day. The minimum length of time a customer can stay authenticated is 1 hour.
  • Custom Sign On allows users to use your site's login process to sign in to the portal. For instructions on how to use this method, see Set up custom sign on for your portal.

Allow customers to reopen conversations

The portal is where customers can access their entire conversation history with your organization. By default, customers can reopen a previously closed conversation from directly within the portal and send a new message. Any message sent after a conversation is reopened will go through the Portal channel, and not the original channel that was used such as, chat or SMS. If you don't want customers to have the ability to reopen a conversation, turn off the Reopen Conversation toggle.

Add attributes to the Conversation Details view

By default, customers viewing a conversation in the portal can always see the conversation's status, channel, and created date. 

You can add additional attributes to the conversation details a customer sees by selecting them from the Add Attribute drop-down menu. When adding an attribute, you have the option of entering a display name either manually or by selecting a snippetfrom the available list.

Portal for agents and admins

Your agents and admins can view both internal and public articles behind a secure portal log in. To turn the portal on for internal users, go to Settings> Knowledge Base > Configuration. Select the Portal tab and go to the Internal (Agents and Admin) section. Then, select the Turn on for Agents and Admins toggle. 

Next, make sure the internal KB is turned on for your org as this is how your users will access article articles in the portal. You can turn this on by going to the Configuration tab and selecting the Internal KB toggle.

Once turned on, authenticated internal users can view an article in the portal from directly within Kustomer by going to the Knowledge Base fly out and selecting Open in a new window.

Notes: 

  • Internal users access the portal using the same authentication settings they use to access the Kustomer app.
  • Agents who are both full-time and collaborator can view articles in the portal.

By default, turning on this feature gives access to view both public and internal articles in the portal. You can change this by selecting the Show only internal articles toggle.

Customize the portal's theme

You can customize the portal's look to match your organization's personal branding using our theme editor.

  1. Go to Settings> Knowledge Base > Theme. Here, you can:
    • Create a new theme using the Midtown template.
    • Select your existing, unmodified theme that was created using a Midtown template. 
    • Select your existing custom theme and follow these instructions to Upgrade your theme to version 1.0.20 and get the portal features. You can confirm if you need to upgrade your theme by hovering ver the Custom Theme label. If you are on a version that requires these updates, you will see the base version you are on.
  2. Select My Conversations or Conversation Detail View from the drop-down menu.
  3. Once you are done modifying your view, select Save and Publish.