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Note: If you signed up for a Freshdesk or Omnichannel account before March 30, 2022, see the portal settings options and navigation will differ. For details, see Portal Settings.
With Freshdesk portals, you can set up a customer portal with various sections and enable powerful self-service capabilities. The different components or sections of your customer portal include:
- Tickets: Allow your customers to raise support tickets via your portal and help them easily track the ticket status.
- Knowledge Base: Build a scalable Knowledge Base with articles, FAQs, and other content about your product or service to help customers find answers faster.
- Forums: Set up community forums to provide your customers with a platform to interact with each other.
This article provides information about managing different sections of your customer portal. For a general overview of Freshdesk Portals, see Overview of Freshdesk Portals.
User requirements: Ensure you have admin access to edit and customize portals.
This article contains:
Manage Sections
To manage portal sections:
- Log in as an admin.
- Go to Admin > Portals. You can see the list of portals in your account.
- Click on the Edit button next to the portal you want to edit and customize.
- Switch to the Manage sections tab. Here you can customize Tickets, Knowledge Base, and Forums.
- Once you are done with all the customization, click Save. To save and exit the edit window, click Save & Close.
Notes: All sections on the customer portal (Ticket, Knowledge Base, and Forum) are enabled by default. You can choose to disable them.
Manage Ticket section
The Ticket section allows to customize and manage the Ticket creation flow on the customer portal. You can choose the ticket forms to display on the portal for customers to raise tickets, manage ticket creation and view permissions.
The various options available are:
- Add ticket form:
Allow customers to raise tickets from the customer portal using the ticket forms. The Report an issue form is automatically added to your portal as the default ticket form. You can create multiple ticket forms and add them to the portal based on your business requirements. For example, you can create and add ticket forms such as "Ask question", "Enquire status", etc.
If you add multiple ticket forms, you can additionally enter the page title and the drop-down placeholder. Here's an example of how the ticket forms appear on the portal: - Tickets on this portal can be submitted by:
Control who can raise tickets on the portal.- Logged in users: Allow and show the option to raise tickets only if the customer is logged in to your portal. If you select this option, you can also let customers raise tickets for others.
- Everyone: Allow anyone to raise tickets even without logging into your portal. CAPTCHA is enabled by default while raising tickets without signing in. This ensures that they are not bots and simultaneously saves them time from signing up.
- Auto suggest solutions while creating a new ticket
Allow your customers to find answers quickly while raising tickets. Based on the keywords entered by your customers while filling out the ticket form, related articles will be suggested on the right pane.
- Logged in users: Allow and show the option to raise tickets only if the customer is logged in to your portal. If you select this option, you can also let customers raise tickets for others.
- Tickets on this portal can be viewed by
Restrict the visibility of the tickets for customers on the portal.- Logged in users: Allow only logged-in users to view tickets.
- Everyone: Allow anyone to view tickets with the Public Ticket URL.
- Allow users to view tickets that are specific only to this portal:
Control and restrict ticket access specific only to the current portal. - Allow users to filter tickets using selected fields:
With this option, you can allow customers to filter and view tickets on the customer portal based on any ticket field.
To add ticket fields as filters on the customer portal, you must first add ticket fields and associate them with the ticket forms.
Here's an example of ticket view page on the customer portal with fields enabled as filters.
Note: Only Dropdowns and Dependent ticket fields can added as filter options.
Manage Knowledge Base section
Manage and customize different settings of your Knowledge Base articles, such as article visibility, view permissions, and more.
The options are:
- Knowledge base articles on this portal can be viewed by
You can choose to allow everyone or only logged-in users to view the articles. If you allow everyone, CAPTCHA is enabled by default while adding feedback, which lets customers raise tickets without signing in. This ensures that they are not bots and simultaneously saves them time from signing up. You can write to support@freshdesk.com if you want CAPTCHA to be disabled. - Select categories
Choose the Knowledge Base categories to display on the portal. Click Add all to display all categories. - Display author name on this portal
Choose to display or hide the author name on top of the articles - Count agent view on articles
Allows you to track agent views on articles. You can view the number of article views in the Knowledge Base Analytics section.
Manage Forums section
Manage and customize different settings of your Forums such as article visibility, view permissions, and more.
The options are:
- Forums on this portal can be viewed by: You can choose to allow everyone or only logged-in users to view the articles. To avoid spam content in your Community Forums, you can make CAPTCHA compulsory for logged-in users.
- Select categories: Choose the Forum categories to display on the portal. Click Add all to display all categories.
- Display author name on this portal: Choose to display or hide the author name on top of the articles
- Moderate your forums
- Moderate all topics and replies containing external links: Freshdesk automatically marks posts that have third-party links to be sent for approval
Moderate all topics and responses: All posts and replies in your community will be sent for approval
Do not moderate: None of the posts will be sent for your approval
For more information on forum moderation, see Forum moderation and advanced spam protection.
Send moderation approvals and spam notifications to: Select the agent for moderation approvals.
Note: You can make any dropdown or dependent fields filterable. Please ensure these fields are associated with a form if you use multiple ticket forms on the customer portal.