Enable or Disable the Customer Portal
Table of Contents
Syncro's Customer Portal is an extension of the main Syncro product that provides a subset of functionality to improve your user's overall service experience.
In their Portal, your Customers/Contacts can do things like submit tickets, see the status of their requests, and communicate back and forth with you.
Depending on how you have permissions and/or integrations set, customers may also be able to take other actions such as:
- View past payments and pay open invoices,
- View and approve estimates,
- View information about and/or run scripts on their Assets,
- And/or view documentation.
Enable the Portal
By default, Syncro's Customer Portal is on and available for use. However, there are a few configuration settings you should know about.
Set Your Branding
In Syncro's account settings, you choose your Business Name and have the ability to change the branding related to your business. The latter includes uploading your logo and changing your color scheme.
At the bottom are two checkboxes related to Portal branding:
You can check one or both boxes. For more information, see Update Your Syncro Account.
Choose Features
There are several settings that control what your customers can see/do in their Portal.
To enable/disable specific features for your customers using the Portal, see About the Customer Portal and Customer Portal Settings Reference.
Tighten Security
In new Syncro accounts, your customers won't need a username or password to access their Portal. You only need to share how customers should access their Portal and they'll be allowed in. This is because there are no Portal Users defined yet.
In general, Customers without any explicitly-created Portal Users automatically belong to the “Non-Portal User Group,” which has few permissions out of the box. You can change this, as well as create Portal Users to gain finer control over Portal security. See Work with Portal Users & Permission Groups for more information.
Syncro users (e.g., Admins and Techs) can also see a customer's Portal.
Enforcing Passwords
You can enforce usernames and passwords for all customers, which Syncro strongly recommends. To do this, follow these steps:
- Navigate to Admin > Customers - Preferences.
- Check the “Secure Customer Portal With Password If Portal Users Exist (Including Unclaimed Invites)” box.
- Click Save.
- Navigate to the Customers tab/module.
- Click boxes next to one or more Customers to check/select them.
Tip: To select all, click the box in the header row. - From the Bulk Actions button menu, select “Bulk Manage Portal Users”:
Syncro displays the Bulk Enable Portal Users pop-up:
- Use the "Apply To" dropdown menu to select "Customers and Contacts."
- Verify the selected “Action” is “Enable.”
- Use the “Portal Permissions Group” dropdown to select a value. See Work with Portal User Permission Groups for more information.
- Use the “Require MFA” dropdown menu to specify “Yes” or “No.”
- Click Update.
- Click OK to have Syncro save your changes and send Portal invitation emails to the selected customers. The email invitation includes a link to set the password for their Portal account.
Portal Password Requirements
Portal passwords must:
- Be 12 to 128 characters long. They cannot be any shorter; this is a security best practice.
- Contain at least 1 uppercase letter, 1 lowercase letter, 1 number, and 1 symbol.
- Not equal the customer's email address in any way (even if wrapped with spaces or mixed lower/upper case).
Disable the Portal
If you don't want any of your customers to use the Portal (e.g., you use a different system for PSA), you can disable it.
To do so, follow these steps:
- Navigate to Admin > Customers - Preferences.
- Scroll to the “Disable Customer Portal and redirect to URL” field at the bottom:
- Enter a URL that includes either http:// or https://.
- Click Save. Syncro will redirect customers to this URL rather than go to the Portal.
Note: If you decide to use the Portal in the future, simply remove the URL and click Save.