Projects in the portal

What a customer may see and do with a project: tasks, comments, files, milestones, a Gantt chart and feedback.

What a customer may see and do with a project

A project in the portal is a set of tabs, and every one of them is behind a switch. The switches live in two places: the defaults, under Settings → Customer portal → Projects, which every project follows, and each project's own set, on its edit screen, for the projects that need to differ. Nothing is shown to a customer unless a switch says so, and a switch only counts while everything it depends on is on as well — commenting on tasks, for instance, needs reading task comments.

The switches

Setting the defaults

1. Go to Settings → Customer portal and find the Projects card.
2. Tick what customers should be able to see and do on a project by default.
3. Put the tabs in the order you want them, with the arrow buttons, and switch off any tab you never want shown.
4. Decide whether customers may rate their projects, and whether only finished ones.
5. Save. Every project that has not been given its own switches follows this straight away.

A tab is drawn only when it is switched on here and the project allows what it shows. A project that shares nothing simply says so; the customer never meets an empty page of tabs. Opening a tab a project does not share — by typing the address, say — answers "not found", so the switch is enforced on the page, not only in the menu.

One project on its own terms

1. Open the project and choose Edit.
2. In the Customer portal card, turn on Give this project its own switches.
3. The switches start from your defaults; change what this project needs and save.
4. Turning it off again puts the project back on the defaults, whatever they later become.

Tasks from the customer

With Add tasks on, the portal's task list gets an Add a task button. The customer gives a title, details, dates and, if they can see milestones, a milestone. The task is created on the project in your first status that is not a completed one, marked visible to the customer and recorded as theirs — the project page says who added it — and everyone on the project is notified. They can edit their own task afterwards if Edit tasks they added themselves is on; they can never edit yours.

Comments on tasks

Every task now has a comment thread, on the staff page as well as in the portal. Staff can attach files to a comment, and can mark a comment internal: an internal comment, and everything attached to it, stays on the staff side for good and is never sent to the portal, whatever the project's switches say. A comment can be made internal (or shared again) after the event, and its files follow it. A customer's own comment cannot be made internal — they wrote it, and they would still see it.

Files on a project

A project has a Files tab of its own. Upload one or more files, and decide per file whether the customer sees it — the eye button switches that at any time. Files a customer sends arrive here already shared and marked as theirs. Each file has a short comment thread, and a staff comment on a file can be internal in the same way as on a task. Deleting a file removes its comments with it.

In the portal, the Files tab lists what has been shared, lets the customer send files back if Upload files is on, and lets them delete their own uploads if Delete files they uploaded themselves is on. Every upload goes through the allowed types and size limit under Settings → Uploads.

Taking a file back

A customer can also remove a file they attached to a support ticket — until somebody on your side writes after it. Once you have replied, the file is part of an answered conversation and the button is gone. Only their own file, never a colleague's, and the message they wrote stays either way.

The Gantt chart

Projects have a Gantt tab, on the staff side and — where the switch allows — in the portal. Milestones are diamonds on their due date, tasks are bars from start date to due date in their status colour, finished tasks are faded, and today is a red line. It is drawn by the server with no chart library and no script at all, so it prints and works in any browser; a long project scrolls sideways inside its own box. A task with only one date is drawn as that day, and anything with no dates is listed without a bar, which is usually the reminder that it needs one.

The activity feed

The portal's Activity tab is a plain history of the project: tasks added and completed, comments, files shared. It is built from the records the customer can already open rather than from the staff activity log, so it can never leak a rate change or a note that was meant for your own team.

Customer feedback

Switch feedback on under Settings → Customer portal → Projects, and optionally keep it back until a project is finished. Each contact can leave one rating out of five with a comment, and can change it until somebody replies. Your reply is shown to them under their rating, and fixes what they wrote.

Staff see feedback on the project's Feedback tab, with the project's average, and every rating together under Projects → Customer feedback — filtered by stars or by "waiting for a reply", with the workspace average and a breakdown per star. Feedback you remove can be left again by the customer, so removal is for the occasional rating left by mistake rather than for tidying away criticism.

Letting customers ask for a project

With Request a new project on, the portal's project list gets a Request a project button. The customer gives a name, a description and a date they need it by; the project is created against their company as Not started, with nobody on it, and your administrators are notified. The project page says who asked for it and when. Take it up in the usual way: add members, agree the figures, set it to In progress.

Addresses on this page

For reference and for anyone scripting against the panel. Everything here needs a customer contact signed in to the portal; the addresses that open without signing in are marked.