Talking to us

Support tickets, messages to the people who look after you, and asking for an estimate, from the customer portal.

Three pages of the portal are for talking to the business rather than reading documents: Support, Messages and Estimate requests. Each is in the portal's menu when the business offers it and your account is allowed to use it. What you see is always your own company's: a contact never sees another customer's tickets, conversations or requests.

Your company's primary contact can also untick Support tickets, Messages or Estimates for an individual colleague (see Getting into the portal). A contact without one of them does not see the entry, and opening its address says You do not have access to this part of the portal. Your primary contact can give it to you. Estimate requests go with the Estimates permission.

Support tickets

Support lists your company's tickets, whichever of your colleagues opened them, twenty to a page with the most recently active first. Each row shows the subject, the reference (such as #00005), the department and how long ago anything last happened. The badge on the right says where it stands:

• With us — you wrote last; the business owes you an answer.
• Awaiting your reply — the business has answered and is waiting for you.
• The status's own name, such as Resolved or Closed, once the ticket is closed.

A ticket that staff merged into another ticket, or archived, is no longer listed.

Asking something new

Press Ask us something.

Press Send it. The ticket's page opens with Thank you — we have your message. The ticket is always filed against your own company and your own name, taken from your sign-in, never from the form. If the business writes back the moment a ticket arrives (its Acknowledge a new ticket email, see How the desk behaves), you also get an email with the ticket's number and a link back to this page.

A ticket's page

The conversation reads top to bottom. The business's answers are signed with the business's name rather than the person who wrote them. Only what was written for you is shown: staff private notes, and files a member of staff kept back, never appear in the portal.

The Details card on the right shows the Reference, when it was Opened, its Status and its Department, and under it any buttons the business lets you press (see below).

To answer, write in the box under the conversation, add up to five Attachments if you need to, and press Send reply. The page reloads with Reply sent. When the business has switched on voice notes (Formatting and voice notes in comments), a record button appears under the box too, and a recording can be the whole reply.

A closed ticket keeps its conversation. Whether you can still write on it depends on its status: if the status is set to reopen when the customer replies, the reply box stays and your reply moves the ticket back to the business's first open status. Otherwise the box is replaced by This request is closed. Open a new one if you need anything else.

Marking a ticket resolved, and reopening it

The business decides whether you may do this. Under Settings → Customer portal → Tickets it ticks the statuses a customer may set, and each ticked status becomes a button on the Details card:

• a closing status (for example "Resolved" or "Closed") is offered as Mark as Resolved (the status's own name) while the ticket is open;
• an open status (for example "Open") is offered as Reopen once the ticket is closed.

An open status is never offered on a ticket that is already open, so you cannot move a ticket between the business's own working states. With nothing ticked there are no buttons, and a merged or archived ticket never has any. Pressing one asks you to confirm (Mark this request as Resolved? or Reopen this request?).

The change is written into the conversation as a line of its own ("Accounts Team marked this ticket as Resolved."), shown on the staff side with a Status change badge. Whoever looks after the ticket — the assignee, or the department's members when the department notifies its members — is told in the bell. Closing raises the same Ticket closed event as closing it from the staff side, so automations and webhooks written for it run too.

Taking back a file you sent

Sent the wrong file? A file you attached yourself has a red beside it until somebody at the business writes after it — a reply or a private note. Press it and confirm (Remove vat-certificate.pdf?), and the file goes; the text of your message stays. After the business has written, the button is gone, because their answer may be about that file. Files a colleague sent can only be removed by that colleague.

Messages

Messages is for writing to the people who look after your account, and to colleagues at your own company, without opening a ticket. It is there only while the business has switched it on; which people you can write to is the business's choice too (see Messages in the portal settings).

The list shows the conversations you are in, most recent first: the subject, who else is in it (a headset when the business is in it, people when it is only your colleagues), and when the last message arrived. A red 1 new badge counts messages you have not read yet. The same count is on Messages in the menu and on the button in the top bar, which opens this page.

Emails about messages. Unless you say otherwise, each new message for you is also emailed to you (the New message in the customer portal email), with the start of the message and a link; the conversation and its files are read in the portal. The line at the foot of the page says which way it is set: Stop these emails switches them off and Email me about messages switches them back on. It is your own setting and changes nothing for your colleagues.

Writing a new message

Press New message. The button is only there when there is somebody you may write to.

Press Send; the new conversation opens with Message sent. Everybody ticked is in it from then on. Who you may write to is checked again when you send: if even one of the people ticked is not somebody you may write to, the whole message is refused with You cannot write to some of these people. rather than going to fewer people than you think.

A conversation

Messages read top to bottom. Yours are marked You; a member of staff's carry their name and the business's name. In this conversation on the right lists everybody in it. Opening the conversation marks it read.

Write in the box at the foot, add up to five Attachments, and press Send. The others are told: staff in their bell, your colleagues by email unless they have stopped those emails. If the business later switches the kind of conversation off (writing to staff, or writing to colleagues), the box is replaced by Replies to this conversation are switched off. You can still read it.

Estimate requests

Estimate requests lists every request your company has sent, newest first: the subject, its reference (such as ER-00005), the date, who asked, and a status badge. The four stages as shipped are New, In progress, Quoted and Declined; the business can rename them or add its own (Estimate request statuses).

Asking for an estimate

Press Request an estimate.

Press Send request. The request's page opens with Thank you - we have your request and will be in touch., and you are emailed its reference (the Estimate request received email). Your name, email address, phone number and company are taken from your account, not typed in.

A request's page

The description, your answers to the business's own questions, and the files you sent are on the left; the Details card shows the Reference, Status, when it was Sent, who Asked by, and the Budget and Wanted by date if you gave them. Once the business has written an estimate for the request and sent it to you, a green bar says We have sent you estimate EST-000002 for this request. with a View estimate button, which opens it under Estimates to accept, decline or sign. An estimate still being written is not linked.

For the business: where requests go

Staff see requests under Sales → Estimate requests, read through the Estimates permission and its scope ("own" is the requests assigned to them; "own clients" adds requests from customers they manage). From a request:

1. Assign it to a member of staff (needs Estimates → Edit); they are notified in the bell.
2. Set its status; the customer sees it in the portal.
3. Press Create estimate (needs Estimates → Create). The new estimate opens with the customer, the assignee as sales agent, the request's reference, and one line describing what was asked for, priced at the budget if one was given. Saving it links the two and marks the request Quoted.

New requests go to the member of staff chosen under Estimate requests in the portal settings, or else to the customer's account manager; with nobody to give a request to, the administrators are told instead. The staff side is described in full under Estimate requests. People who are not customers yet can ask through the public Request an estimate form.

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.