Configuring Customer Portal Settings

This article was developed to describe the settings associated with FORTH's Customer Portal. This article includes the following topics:

• Overview
• Access and Permissions
• Navigating to Portal Settings
• Understanding the Domains Page
• How to Edit A Domain Configuration
• Configuring the Portal Domains Tab
• Look and Feel
• Onboarding Flow Settings
• Email Settings
• Modules
• Visibility and Access (formerly Permissions)
• Terminology
• Assign Portal Domains Tab

Overview

The Customer Portal Settings page allows administrators to configure all settings for the customer-facing portal. This includes managing system and custom domains, adjusting the "look and feel" (logos and colors), setting up onboarding requirements, managing email templates, and controlling feature visibility.

Access and Permissions

Access to the Customer Portal Settings page depends on your user role.

• Controlling Company Admins: Users with Edit System Settings permissions have full access. They can configure custom domains (not system domains), set module visibility, and assign specific domains to sub-companies.
• Sub-Company Users: Users from a sub-company have read-only access. They can view the portal configurations assigned to their company, but cannot make any changes.

Definition of System vs. Custom Domains:

• System Domains: Default, out-of-the-box domains. Their configurations are locked and read-only for all users.
• Custom Domains: Domains you have set up for your account. Admins can fully customize their settings, including logos, colors, and features.

Navigating to Portal Settings

1. Log in to the FORTH CRM.
2. Select the Admin tab.
3. Click Settings in the main navigation bar.
   
4. On the Settings page, click Customer Portal Settings.

Understanding the Domains Page

You will land on the Customer Portal Settings page. The view here depends on your setup:

• If you have custom domains: You will see two (2) tabs:
  * Configure Portal Domains (Default): Lists all available system and custom domains. This is where you select a domain to edit its specific settings (branding, modules, etc.).
  * Assign Portal Domains: Allows you to assign a default domain to your sub-companies for each file type.
  
   
• If you DO NOT have custom domains: You will see a single list of the read-only system domains.

How to Edit A Domain Configuration

1. From the Configure Portal Domains tab, find the custom domain you wish to edit.
2. Click the right-facing arrow in the View Portal Configuration column.
3. The page will reload, but the screen will not change. A new menu (Look & Feel, Onboarding, etc.) will now be active in the left-hand panel. You must click one of these options to begin configuring the selected domain.

4. The Portal Configuration Page for the Domain Name you selected will then open. Select the appropriate domain for the type of debt. In the example shown below, "beta.xxxxxxx.com" was selected by clicking the right-facing arrow next to xxxxxxx.com in the image shown above. 
   
   IMPORTANT: On each of the Portal Setting options, once you complete making any changes, click Save Settings on the top right of each page. 
   
   If you select a domain that is a system domain, you will see a warning banner like the one shown below at the top of the page. We have restricted the creation and editing of system domain configurations to ensure that the system remains secure and consistent.
   

   NOTE: Once you select a domain, the screen won't change. You must select an option 
   in the left-hand panel to configure the settings and notifications.

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Configuring the Portal Domains Tab

For custom domains, all default selected options on domain configurations (described below) should be inherited from the system default domain associated with the same file type. A controlling company admin can choose to change these settings.
 

Look and Feel

On the Look and Feel page, a Change button is available for the domain logo, login images (the image that appears when the user is on the login page), and dashboard header image, enabling users to upload new images. You may select an existing image, upload an image, or click "x" to delete an image.

This section also incorporates a website favicon upload option, enabling users to upload a favicon to be displayed in their browser.

For the Brand Color option, select a color for the company name, icons, tabs, and links. This offers a hex code entry box, enabling users to enter the hex code for the desired color.

NOTE: Some items, such as "Domain Logo" and "Brand Color" are only editable if modifying a custom domain. If you use our default domains, these and other settings will be locked and a small white "x" with a red background will appear indicating that editing that setting is not available.

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Onboarding

The Onboarding page controls what users experience the first time they log in.

• Request Document Uploads: Check the box "Do you want users to be requested to upload documents the first time they log in?" to enable this feature. When this is activated, you will be able to assign the documents required to be uploaded upon first login.
• Identity Verification: This section also controls identity verification settings. Note that this feature's availability is based on the domain's file type (e.g., it is not visible for Business Loan / CTX file types since this file type does not have ID Verification enabled).
• Syndicate Credits: For certain file types, transaction-level visibility for Syndicate Credits can also be controlled here.. 

Click Save Settings when finished.

NOTE: Confirmation that settings have been saved appears at the bottom of the screen.

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Email Settings

Note: Email settings can only be configured for custom domains. System domains use default templates and cannot be changed here.

This Email Settings page connects your portal's automated emails (e.g., password resets, welcome emails) to your E-marketing templates from the CRM.

1. Configure Email Templates: Use the dropdown menus to assign one of your existing e-marketing templates to each portal action. These actions include: Password Changed, Password Reset, Welcome/Onboarding, and Send a Message. 
2. Outbound Email Sender: Select an existing e-marketing sender profile (the "From" name and email address) these emails should be sent from.
3. Centralized Inbound Email Delivery: By default, replies to portal emails are sent to the externally assigned company. To override this, toggle this switch to Active and enter a single email address to capture all replies.
4. Click Save Settings.

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Modules

The Modules page features all available options that can be added or removed from the Consumer Portal. It is separated into different sub-pages.

Home
This section, titled "Home", provides you a list of Quick Actions that you can assign as available to clients at the bottom of their client dashboard.
 

If you click the small question mark icon next to the title "Quick Actions", a popup will appear explaining the Quick Action options and what will appear on the bottom of their client dashboard after specific selections are made. 

In the settings shown above, all quick actions are selected, so all are showing on the dashboard of the customer portal (see example below).

Document Library

On the Documentation Library page, you can select the types of documents that the user will be allowed to upload into the Document Library by activating the corresponding checkbox.

If you have enabled the Consumer Actions permissions, a user can access their Document Library, which contains a list of uploaded documents, their creation date, type, and description.

Financials

On the Financials page, there are several components available, determined by the file type associated with the domain being configured:

• If the domain is Debt Settlement, Debt Validation, or Business Loans, a "Debts" subsection will be present and accessible.
• If the domain is the Business Loans file type, an "Advances" subsection will be present and acccessible.
• The "Transactions" subsection may have Syndicate Credits transactions as a configurable transaction type for Business Loans file type domains.
  
  Here is the list of options available:
•  
  • Debt Custom Field Visibility - sets the visibility of debt field options for the contact or consumer. 
  • Debt Statuses - Check the appropriate checkboxes to display the status of each debt.
    • Custom Status: You can also display a value from a CRM custom field as a custom status. To do this, click the Use a Custom Debt Account Status toggle switch to active and select the desired custom field from the dropdown menu.
    • Note: If you use this option, a status will only appear for debts that have a value in that selected field.
  • Transaction Type Visibility - sets the visibility of transaction types for the contact/consumer. This pulls from types we have in the system. What you select here appears on the Upcoming Transactions page.

  • Transaction Grid Columns - sets which column headers will be displayed in the transactions table.

    NOTE: These fields appear in the Consumer Portal on the Debts page.

Support

This page offers two subsections: Contact Information and Frequently Asked Questions.

• Contact Information - pull information from the external company information on the client's file, including name, logo, etc. This section of the page allows you to override what would normally display with the company information you provide here by clicking the toggle in this section (NOTE: Displays under Help in the Consumer Portal).
• The Create & Manage FAQs section is designed to provide a space for users to submit questions and answers that will help them navigate the portal. To add a new question and answer, click Add FAQ. This is displayed under FAQ in the Consumer Portal.  FAQs can be reordered or edited by users without needing to be deleted and recreated. In addition, the order of the FAQs displayed on the Admin page is now reflected in the Portal.  NOTE: This impacts all consumers.

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Visibility and Access (formerly Permissions)

NOTE: Any module/page enabled in the "Visibility and Access" page of settings will appear for portal end-users for the domain being configured.

The Visibility and Access (formerly Permissions) page contains a Clixsign section and Student Loans section (only appears for student loan file type domains) and an Advances page (only appears for business loans file type domains, and is added to "Modules").

There are two groups of settings, one for Agents and one for Consumers. Within those groups, there are two (2) sets of options: View and Action.

• Action - allows you to decide what actions are available (download, open, send).
• View - allows the agent or consumer to view something in the Portal, but not complete any actions.

NOTE: An Agent is if someone "logs in as" the contact from their client dashboard. A Consumer is if someone logs in with the contact's username/password from the customer portal's login page).

IMPORTANT
If you clear the checkbox for Document Library for the Agent under the Action 
column, when you go to the Module Settings page, that section will NOT appear.

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Terminology

This page allows you to rename the default labels, such as Transaction, which can be replaced with Payment.

Before leaving this page, to save your changes, click Save Settings in the top right corner.

Assign Portal Domains Tab

This tab on the Customer Portal Settings page is available to controlling company users and lists all sub-companies in the account. When a company visits this page for the first time, the system's default domain will be automatically selected as their default choice.

Use this page to assign a default custom portal domain to your sub-companies. The assignment is managed by file type. For example, you can set the custom domain "debtfreeportal.com" as the default for all sub-companies with the "Debt Settlement" file type.

This selection controls what portal and configuration your sub-companies will use.