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Customer Options

Workspace-wide options for Customers are configured on the Customer Options page.  These options affect all Customers in the current Workspace.

Define Login Method 

You can require customers to log in to the Portal using a unique ID and password, or you can allow them to enter only a unique identifier, such as user ID or email address, with no authentication.  Either:

• Select Unique ID and password required to authenticate the customers logging into the Portal
• Select Primary key only required with no password if you don't want to authenticate the customers

NOTE 

When using web server authentication with the Customer Service Portal, the customer URL provided on the Customer Service Portal setup page will not bypass customer login. If a customer goes to the regular /footprints URL, they bypass the login correctly.

Enable Browse Mode

Browse mode allows users to browse the Knowledge Base without logging in. Additional options are displayed when Browse Mode is enabled, as follows:

• Navigation Toolbar
• Create a Welcome Message
• Workspace Menu

Navigation Toolbar

Under Available Options you can select which options your customers can access.  The Potential Options drop-down lists the available options from which to choose, and the Current Toolbar drop-down lists the options that have been selected to appear on the customer Homepage.  Once options are selected, click Add to add the option to the Current Toolbar drop-down.  If browse mode is enabled, customers must log in if they select one of these additional options. The Potential Options list includes:

• Home-When selected by the customer, displays the homepage of the Customer Service Portal.
• Global Issues-When selected by the customer, displays a pop-up window listing the workspace's active Global Issues and allows the customer to subscribe to each of the issues.
• Submit Request-When selected, displays the customer version of the create Issue page, allowing customers to submit their own Issues.
• Password Reset-Submits a Password Reset request.
• Service Catalog-Displays the Service Catalog (only available with the Configuration Management add-on module).
• Reports-When selected, displays options for the customer to print pre-defined reports.
• Instant Talk-Initiates an Instant Talk chat session.
• Knowledge Base-Displays the Knowledge Base search page.

Create a Welcome Message

1. Click the Show Welcome Message on Homepage checkbox.  If the Customer Service Portal is not enabled, the welcome message associated with the customer role is displayed instead.
2. Create a Welcome message using the WYSIWYG editor.
3. Click on the Insert Variable Text hyperlink under the WYSIWIG editor and use the pop–up menu to insert fields into the message

Workspace Menu 

Insert a workspace menu into the customer's Welcome Message using the "_PROJMENU_" keyword. Select which workspaces appear in this menu from the list of other Customer Service Portal workspaces. When a customer logs in using a User ID, the list displays all of the workspaces to which the customer belongs. To select the workspaces that may be displayed to the customer, highlight them in the multi-select field. Use the CTRL key to highlight multiple workspaces.

Colors

You can customize the colors displayed on the Customer Service Portal.

Note 

To get maximum value from the Color Editor, make sure your browser can display all of the colors at your disposal.  To change your color palette, go to Start | Settings | Control Panel, choose Display and go to Settings to make sure your monitor can display more than 256 colors (Windows only).

To change colors:

1. Click the link in the Color section of the Customer Options page after the Customer Service Portal is enabled.
2. Select one of the following choices by clicking its radio button:
• Body Background—Background color of FootPrints (defaults to off-white).
• Table—All tables throughout FootPrints (defaults to light green).
• Highlighted Text—Any highlighted text throughout FootPrints (defaults to red).
• Page Header Text—All header and title text (defaults to dark blue).
• Dialog Heading—Heading bars of most FootPrints pages.
• Dialog Heading Text—All header text that appears in the dialog heading bars (defaults to light blue).
• Home page List 1—One of two alternating colors for the Homepage list of Issues (defaults to light blue).
• Home page List 2—One of two alternating colors for the Homepage list of Issues (defaults to light green).
• Home page Text 1—One of two text colors use throughout FootPrints pages, including the Toolbar text (defaults to dark blue).
• Home page Text 2—The other of two text colors use throughout FootPrints pages, including the Toolbar text (defaults to dark green).

3. Either:
4. Select a color in the Color Palette or
5. Type the hex value of a color (in hex code format, i.e., 000000-FFFFFF) in the Hex color value field, then click Apply.

A box is displayed below the Color Palette showing the old and new colors.

4. You can adjust the color choice at any time before you click the Finish button to implement the color change.  You can continue to change other colors on this page
5. When you are satisfied with all of your changes, click Finish to apply them.
6. To restore all colors to their default values, click the Restore button.

To insure proper functionality, you may have to clear out your browser’s cache, refresh the screen, and/or close and re-open the browser to see all of the new colors correctly.

Hide or Show the FootPrints Logo

By default, the "Powered by BMC" logo appears on the Customer Service Portal. If you wish to remove the logo from the Customer Service Portal, click the Hide radio button. To restore it, click the Show radio button.

Define the Entry Point for the Customer Service Portal

The entry point is the URL that customers use to access this workspace's customer interface.  FootPrints generates an HTML file that redirects the customer to a more complicated URL, which they shouldn't have to type in themselves.  Enter the name to be used for this file following the /footprints/ portion of the URL.

To simplify access even further, create either a Web Alias or Virtual Directory, depending on the platform that can be detected in Perl.  IIS uses Virtual Directories and Apache uses Aliases that bring the customer directly to this file.  Move the file to a new directory and rename the file so that it matches the default document name used by your web server (usually index.html or default.html).

Hide or Show Workspace Menu 

When customers log into FootPrints, if they belong to multiple Workspaces, they can be presented with a drop-down menu to choose the Workspace to enter (of their available Workspaces). This option must be enabled in a Customer's default Workspace for the drop-down menu to appear.  Consequently, it is recommended that you enable this option in all workspaces to which Customers belong.  Customers who only belong to one workspace are not affected.

This dialog is used to choose the columns to display for customers in the current Workspace, as well as the order of the columns.  These columns apply to all Solution and Request lists available to the customer.

To use this dialog:

1. Select the Type of Field to choose from.  The three categories are FootPrints Fields (status, title, priority, etc.), Issue Information (public fields only), and Contact Information fields (public only).
2. Under Available Fields, select a field.
3. Click Add Field.  The field is listed in the Displayed Fields field.
4. To change the order of fields to be displayed, highlight a field in the Displayed Fields field and click the up or down arrow to move it.
5. To delete a field from the display, highlight the field in the Displayed Fields field and click Delete.

Note

Issue number is not available in the dialog, but it is automatically displayed as the first field in all lists.  Title is also mandatory, but the placement can be selected in the Displayed Fields field.

While the columns chosen here apply to both Solution and Request lists for Customers, there are some exceptions.  If Status is chosen, that column is displayed in Request lists, but not in any Solution lists.  This is because all Solutions available to Customers have the special status of Public Solution.  If Popularity is chosen, that column is displayed in Solution lists, but not in the View Mine Request list because that field does not apply to Requests.

Note

The names of many of the fields in FootPrints can be changed by the administrator (e.g., Title, Priority, Status, Description, etc.). For clarity, this manual always uses the default names for these fields.

Primary Key Options

If Email address is the primary key for the Address Book associated with the current Workspace, the administrator can determine whether a complete address (including “@” and domain name) is required.  There are three options:

• Require full address—Only email addresses which include an @ sign and domain address are accepted, e.g., [email protected].
• Require user name only—Only email addresses without an @ sign and domain address are accepted, e.g., jsmith.  In this case, the default domain (defined by the System Administrator) is appended to the user’s ID name for email notification.
• Allow either format—Both formats are allowed.

If this option is required, Customers can only login if their unique key is found in the Address Book.  This option only applies to shared Customer accounts.  Unique Customer accounts are allowed into the system based on whether they are in the password file, i.e., they were added to the system with a unique ID and password by the Administrator or were auto-added via the Auto-Add feature.

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