One of the really useful features of vTiger is the Customer Portal Module. vTiger Custom Portal Module allows your contacts(customers) to login and see information such as Tickets, Invoices, Quotes, Documents, Contact & Organization information.
vTiger Customer Portal modules does not come standard with the install and requires some skill to install, configure and set it up.
Configure vTiger Customer Portal Module Permissions
The first thing you will need to do is configure permissions. To do so, go to “CRM Settings” > “Other Settings” > “Customer Portal”.
Privileges – The selected role field permissions will be applied to the Customer Portal user. For example, if you setup the Role so it can not modify specific field – the same permissions will be applied to the Customer Portal Users.
Default Assignee – Tickets will be Assigned to the selected Assignee by the default Group/User from the Customer Portal.
Portal URL – The URL which Customer Portal users will be accessing the portal. We will come back to this as we start configuring the backend of the portal.
Moving down to the individual modules, you will be able to specify more detailed permissions as well as the order.
Module Name – The name of the module, you can drag and drop to reorder the sequence.
Enable Module – Module can either be enabled or disabled in the customer portal.
See Records across Organization – Either to allow Customer Portal user to see his organization records or not.
Once the Customer Portal permissions have been configured we can now move on to the Customer Portal Installation and setup for the end user to login.
Download vTiger Customer Portal Module
vTiger Customer Portal Module can be downloaded at official vTiger website. Direct link to the download section is:
https://www.vtiger.com/open-source-downloads/
Under ‘vTiger CRM Extensions‘ you will see the “Customer Portal” module. Download the zip file to your server. In this guide we place the customer portal in /vtigercrm/portal directory.
Configure vTiger Customer Portal Module Links
We’ve downloaded the Customer Portal and placed it into /vtigercrm/portal, now you need to configure customer portal access links.
Open /vtigercrm/portal/PortalConfig.php and adjust the following variables:
$Server_Path =””;
Should be the link to your vTiger. In this case our link to vTiger is “http://demo.vTigerExperts.com/vtigercrm”, so it should look like this:
$Server_Path =”http://demo.vTigerExperts.com/vtigercrm”;
* Make sure NOT to include index.php in the URL.
$Authenticate_Path = “”;
Should be a link to the Authentication file in the vtigercrm/portal/ directory, in this case – it will be:
$Authenticate_Path = “http://demo.vTigerExperts.com/vtigercrm/portal”;
Once those 2 links have been configured, let’s move on and configure the link to the Customer Portal. The link has to be set in vtigercrm/config.inc.php file, so open /vtigercrm/config.inc.php, find:
$PORTAL_URL = ‘http://vtiger.com/customerportal’;
And change it to
$PORTAL_URL = ‘http://demo.vTigerExperts.com/vtigercrm/portal’;
This will be the link that your customers will use to login into the Customer Portal.
Create the Username and Password for your Customer to Login to the Portal
Before you can create the username and password for your customers, you have to make sure that you have configured your Outgoing Email Server. It is necessary to send out the email with the credentials to the contact.
Once that is done, find the contact you would like to enable Customer Portal Access to, open the record and check the “Customer Portal User” checkbox. Specify the from/to date that the customer can access the portal.
Shortly after you save the contact – you(your contact) will receive an email with username, password and link to log in. Follow the instructions to login and you(your contact) should be able to see Tickets, FAQs(Knowledge Base), Invoices, Quotes, Products, Services, Documents, Contacts, Organisation details, Projects & Assets.
Having Trouble Setting it up?
Check out vTiger Customer Portal Troubleshooting and Errors article.
Also be sure to check out vTiger Customer Portal Demo.
If you are still not able to get it running smoothly or would like professional to do the install, setup & configure for you – please contact us at support@VTExperts.com.
Hi!
It´s possible to put in another sub-domain? like support.mydomain.com ?
Yes – you just place the portal on the subdomain and configure config.inc.php and PortalConfig.php
Hi,
I have configured the user portal as it is given over here. Now I am able to access the login page of portal, but after enabling the Portal User checkbox I am not getting any email regarding the login details of the customer. Whereas, my outgoing email server is working perfectly fine as I am able to send invoices to my customers directly from the admin portal.
Kindly guide me if I am making any mistake.
Regards,
Taha Rafi
Taha,
1. Make sure email template is in place(for customer portal user)
2. Make sure workflow is still active for customer portal
3. Make sure cron is setup
Thanks
when installing on crm and portal on separate subdomains, vtiger preferences says portal url: is http://crm.mydomain.com/http://client.mydomain.com
vtiger is installed at http://crm.mydomain.com
portal installed at http://client.mydomain.com
in config.inc.php I set the customer portal url as http://client.mydomain.com
doesn’t work when installing CRM AND PORTAL on two separate subdomains – VTiger assumes the portal directory is under the VTiger CRM directory so get wrong URLs in notification emails like http://crm.domain.com/http://support.domain.com
Hi,
I have installed vTiger and the Customer Portal all working, BUT, when I login with the Portal then the menu is on the left, but on selecting and option from it, everything is crammed up on the right hand side of the page. This happens on IE, Firefox and Chrome.
Any solution to this?
Regards
Make sure you have the latest portal and shoot us an email at support@vtexperts.com, we’ll assist
How do you make the customer portal editable by the customer? Even after giving the portal privileges of Admin user, the option to make the fields editable are not available.
Hi,
I customized some widgets and I need to display them on the customer Portal.
Is it possible to assist me about this? Thank you.
Yes – it will require customization, please contact us via email and we’ll help. support@vtexperts.com
When I open http://localhost/vtigercrm/portal I get:
Warning: gettimeofday(): It is not safe to rely on the system’s timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone ‘UTC’ for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone. in D:\Sources\vtigercrm\portal\nusoap\lib\nusoap.php on line 856
My timezone setting is UTC+8 Beijing
I configured customer portal on a directory ‘portal’ but since there is no ‘index.php’ file, how will it work ?
I downloaded module from official site and on extracting there are two files in it
1. migrate (directory)
2. vtiger6.zip
I extracted vtiger6.zip to /portal
but there is no index.php file and also no ‘PortalConfig.php’
You downloaded migration path instead of customer portal. Please go to their website and try downloading again, you likely clicked on wrong link.
I am able to get to the URL
I am to get the password sent to the user.
I can’t get past the login attempt tho,
keeps throwing ‘Could not connect to server. Please contact the administrator.’
I’ve tried setting the $Server_Path to be
‘localhost’, the local IP, the public IP, and of course tried the domain nam6e with http and even tried https
I’m not sure if this matters but the only main difference from what I can tell is that my vtiger instance isn’t living in the vtigercrm folder I have it living directly in my www
Any help would be appreciated
Here is the solution to ‘Could not connect to server. Please contact the administrator.’
Go to your Vtiger CRM installation Home directory. Open config.inc.php [Vtiger CRM’s main confirg file]
Add
ini_set(‘display_errors’,’Off’);
error_reporting(0);
Unless your webhost restricts php.ini directive override, This will solve your issues.
Good Luck
Miltan Chaudhury
http://openwebsolutions.in/
The CRM Experts