Note: 

1. Users with portal access can create, edit, delete notes, attach files, or delete attachments to the notes as part of portal activity. However, they cannot add, view, edit, or delete attachments as a separate related list to the record shared via portals.
   
   

• In a franchise  - Imagine you run a fast food business and have granted others the right to operate the franchise in a few locations. You use Zoho CRM to manage all the business details and to track outlets' performance. The franchise owners can request to view their outlets' performance and their customers' details. You can create exclusive portals for the franchise owners. They will be able to view and edit the relevant records right from the CRM.
  
• In the automobile industry  - For example, you have an automobile shop and want to track your customers' details, your sold vehicles and servicing schedules. To do this, you can create a portal and share it with your clients. The customers can view and edit their details in the portal, and they will be updated in your CRM records. Similarly, if they want to get their vehicle serviced, they can fill in their details using the portal.
  
• In the FMCG industry - As a retail store you can send bulk invitations to all the vendors that supply products to your store to keep track of inventory flow. This way, vendors can access and edit details including pricing, stock availability, contact information, delivery discrepancies, and modify orders.
• In an educational institute  - If you run a school, instead of manually entering every student's details, you can provide parents with access to the portal's. They can add, update, or view their child's details in the portal and share the students' grades and performance scores with the parents through the portal.
  
• For business partners  - You run a software company and use CRM to follow up with your contacts and leads or to track multiple deals that are at different stages. There is a meeting with the partners and you want to discuss all the contacts and the deals that have the highest revenue. Imagine how tedious it would be to share this complex information with individual partners. You can easily manage this situation by creating a portal for the partners, where you give them access to the Contacts module and add a contact lookup in the Deals module in CRM. This will enable them to view the contacts and their associated deals and add or remove details in the modules based on their permissions.
• For employees - You can utilize the enhancement to invite your employees to access the Portal for viewing, editing, and performing specific tasks. This can also be used as a self-update portal if there is a custom module with the database of your employees.

Pricing related to your portal

Actions that a portal user can perform

Specifying field permission

The related modules that you selected in the previous step (Portal Tab Configuration) will be listed under the Field Permission section. You can select the fields that you want the portal users to access. You can also mark the fields that you do not want the customer to edit as Read Only. The mandatory fields inside CRM will also be marked as mandatory in the portal. You can also share subforms with the portal users.

Note: The portal users can view the price of a product only if they have view permission for the "Unit price" field in the Products module.  

To specify field permissions

1. In the Field Permissions page, select the check boxes for the fields that need to be available for the portal users.
   
2. Click the Read Only checkbox, if required.
   
3. Click Save and Next to move to the next layout or module to define field permissions.
   Note: Field permissions are specific to each module. They are not specific to layouts.
   
4. Repeat the above steps for all the modules and layouts.
   You can select a subform too.
5. Click Finish to save all the details.
   

Choosing invitation preference

1. The option for portal users to login with their mobile number and receive SMS notifications will not be available to all users.
   
1. The option mentioned above is currently supported for companies registered in India.
   
2. You can send portal-related SMS from your registered sender IDs to customers in India.  To send invitation to users, mobile number should start with +91.
   
3. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has enforced DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) to ensure only legitimate SMS messages are sent to customers in India. The portal invitation SMS message must be sent via an Indian Sender ID, registered with the DLT.
   
4. This option will be available for organizations throughout the world with our future releases.
   

Alert

1. The option to set invitation preference as Phone will only be available if you've enabled Notification SMS integration. Credits for sending portal-related SMS messages will be consumed from the Notification SMS integration's credits.
   

You can decide the mode (email or phone) by which external users are invited to a portal. Templates can be created for both email and phone invitations:

1. To learn about portal invitation templates for email, see Email templates.
   
2. SMS templates for portal-related messages can be used once they've been DLT-approved and verified by Zoho.
   

To set the invitation preference

1. In the Invitation Preference popup, select the Primary Invitation Mode. The options are Email and Phone.
   
   
2. Select the field that holds the email address or phone number. The portal invitation will be sent to that email address or phone number.
   
3. Click Finish.
   

Note: You cannot be modify the invitation preference once you've invited portal users. To do so, please contact support@zoho.com.

View portal preview

Once the portal configuration is complete, you can preview the portal to see how the customers will see the records.

To view the portal preview

1. Go to Setup > Channels > Portals.
   
2. In the Customer Portal Configuration page, click Preview.
   
3. Select the Portal User Type from the drop-down list to view the preview.
   

Note
You can view the portal summary after the portal configuration is completed. You can edit the  Field Permission and  Portal Tab Configuration in the portal configuration details. You can also add a new portal user type, if required.

Purchasing portal users

When you want to create an additional portal user aside from the default client portal user type, you'll need to purchase portal users. You can purchase from the Portal configuration page as well as Manage Subscriptions page.

To purchase portal users from within the portal configuration page

1. Go to Setup > Channels > Portals.
   
2. Click Create User Type.
   
3. Enter the number of Portal Users in the Add Portal Users popup.
   
4. Click Make Payment.
   

To purchase portal users from manage subscription page

1. Click your Profile icon and select Manage Subscription.
   
2. Click Upgrade User / Add-Ons in the Subscription page.
   
3. Select the number of portal users and click Proceed.
   
4. Click Make Payment.
   

Working with portals

Invite users individually to a portal

Once you have created the portal, you can start inviting the customers. The email invitations will contain the portal URL details. Once the users accept the invitation, they will be prompted to set a password. In the portal, the customer must first set basic information like their preferred language, time format, time zone, and country. By default, these will be filled based on the locale information of the CRM user who sent the invite. The exceptions are the country and language details, which will be based on the portal user's browser information. They will then be redirected to the module page that they have been given access to.

1. Go to a module (Leads, Contacts, Custom module) and select a record.
   
2. In the Record Detail page, click the More icon, and click Send Portal Invitation.
   
   
3. Select the portal user type.
   
   
4. Choose the template language to be used for the invitation email.
   
5. Click Invite.
   
   

1. Customize templates specific to a language: Admins can edit and save templates in different languages.
   
   While inviting users, admins will be prompted to select the language for the invitation email. The template saved for that language will be used to send the email.
   
   
2. Set default from and to addresses: You can set a default email address for sending invitation emails—e.g., zylker@portal-support.com (From)—and select an email address to redirect the reply emails—e.g., pattrick-jones@portal-support.com (To).
   
   

1. Use customized email subject, or merge fields.
   
2. Use merge fields in the email body: You can insert merge fields into the body of an email to fetch the exact field values.
   
3. Format email text: All the basic text customization options, like font, size, style, color, background, alignment, etc., are available in the template customization window. You can also add images or hyperlinks in the email body.
   
4. Set a button or link for accepting invitations: You can either provide a button or a link to accept the invitation.
   
   

NOTES:

1. Changing the language while sending invitation email will automatically translate only the default system provided content of the email. The customized contents need to be translated for the particular language.
2. You can remove the portal link. However, doing so will result in an error while saving the template. You can retrieve the original link and the content by clicking the reset to default link.
   
3. In case of confirm email address email, Confirm Email button will be available instead of the Accept Invite button.
   

To customize templates for invitation and confirm email address emails 

1. Go to Setup > Channels > Portals.
   
2. Select the portal user type from the list of options.
   
3. Click the Configuration tab.
   
4. Click the Customize Email templates button. 
   
   Select whether you want to customize accept invitation email or confirm email address email.

SMS templates

This option is currently supported for companies registered in India. See the points to remember section below for more details.

The following customization options are available for SMS templates:

1. You can set the template for three kinds of SMS messages: Portal invitation SMS messages, verification SMS messages, and Forgot Password SMS messages.
   
2. You can insert merge fields into the body of an SMS message to fetch the exact field values.
   

Points to remember

1. This is currently supported for companies registered in India.
   
2. You can send portal-related SMS from your registered sender IDs to customers in India.
   
3. This option will be available for organizations throughout the world with our future releases.
   
4. Please ensure that you have sufficient credits for the sending SMS messages.
   
5. You need to append the term "- Company name" in each template and copy the content to get DLT approval. To learn more about template guidelines, see Template guidelines.
   
6. Templates need to be DLT-approved before they can be used.
   
7. Ensure that the CTA in your template is whitelisted. Please read more about it here: Important TRAI mandate on URL whitelisting for Indian CRM customers.
   
8. Based on your CRM's DC, you'll need to whitelist one of the following domains:
   
1. in.zcrm.to - IN
   
2. ca.zcrm.to - CA
   
3. us.zcrm.to - US
   
4. eu.zcrm.to - EU
   
5. au.zcrm.to - AU
   
6. cn.zcrm.to - CN
   
7. jp.zcrm.to - JP
   
9. If you modify a template, the previously approved template will still be used until the modified template is approved.
   Once the modified template is approved, the previous template will be deleted automatically.
10. In case you change the phone number of the user in the CRM, the user will be re-invited to the portal via the new phone number.
    

1. SMS templates are NOT specific to individual portal user types. Changes to templates will be reflected in SMS for all portal user types with invitation preference set as Phone.
   
2. For portal user types with invitation preference set as Phone, you can invite portal users only when all the templates are approved. Till then, those portal user types will be disabled.
   
   

To customize the SMS templates for a portal

1. Navigate to Setup > Channels > Portals.
   
2. Select the portal user type.
   
3. Click the Ellipsis (•••) button and select Customise SMS Templates.
   
   
4. In the Customise SMS Templates popup, click the edit icon against each template to modify it and click Save.
   
   
5. Copy the template content and submit it for DLT approval.
   
   For guidelines related to sender ID, see: Sender ID requirements.
   
   For guidelines on the content, please see: Template guidelines.
   For guidelines on whitelisting CTA, please see: URL Whitelisting for Indian customers.
   Based on your CRM's DC, you'll need to whitelist one of the following domains:

   1. in.zcrm.to - IN
      
   2. ca.zcrm.to - CA
      
   3. us.zcrm.to - US
      
   4. eu.zcrm.to - EU
      
   5. au.zcrm.to - AU
      
   6. cn.zcrm.to - CN
      
   7. jp.zcrm.to - JP
   
6. Once the template content has been DLT approved,  click Submit DLT Files.
   If you closed the Customise SMS Templates popup, repeat steps 1, 2, and 3 to access it.
7. In the Submit DLT Files popup, click Upload file and select the DLT file.
   
8. Click Next.
   
9. In the CRM Template Mapping popup, map the DLT approved templates with the CRM templates.
   
   
10. Click Save.
    Zoho will verify these templates.
11. After verification, you'll see a notification saying the same. After you've enabled the portal user type, you can start inviting your portal users.
    
    
    
    

Invite users in bulk to the portal

You can send bulk invitations to leads, contacts or others from the module for which a portal is created. For example, if you create a portal for the leads module you can invite your leads to access the portal.

Bulk invitations can be sent from the Users tab in the portal configuration page. Once clicked, a list of users who are not invited to any portal and have a valid email address will be displayed from where you can select multiple users. 

To send bulk invitation to users

1. Go to Setup > Channels > Portal.
   
2. Click on a portal and go to the User tab.
   
3. Click Invite users.
   
4. Select users from the list of users displayed and click Send Invitation.
   
5. In Are you sure you want to send portal invitation to the selected records, click Send invitation.
   

Once sent, the Portal action status dialog box shows you the number of users that have received or not received the invitation.

Note

1. You can send an email invitation to the customers from the Record detail page. The send invite option will be available only if the email address is present. 
   
2. The invitation email will be valid for 7 days only.
   
3. A portal user cannot be assigned as the record owner even if they create a record.
   For example: Russell Brown is a CRM user who invites Sage Weiser to access portal with the permission to create contacts and deals. When Sage creates a contact through the portal, it will be added to the CRM database and Russell Brown will be the owner of the new contact.
   

View reason for portal invitation failure

There are several reasons for a failure in sending portal invitation to the users. Once the invitation is sent, a message will pop in your CRM account showing the number of successful or failed invitations.

By clicking on the View failed invitees, one can see the users who failed to receive an invitation and the reason for the same. 

There can be following reasons for a failed invitation:

1. Record is waiting for approval -  If the record is awaiting approval from any approval process, then the invitation will not be sent as the record will be locked during this period.
   
2. Record is waiting for review - If the record is part of the review process then a portal invitation will not be sent to the record.
   
3. Record has not got the consent - If a user has enabled consent as part of the GDPR process, then portal invitation will not be sent.
   
4. Email address has unsupported characters -  Uppercase and lowercase letters in English (A-Z, a-z) , Digits from 0 to 9 and special characters such as @ . - _ + are supported in the email address. If the email address is not in the above format portal invitation will fail.
   
5. Email address is anonymous - If the particular email domain is spammed, then you cannot send an invitation.
   
6. Reached the maximum limit of user licenses for the portal - If the org has reached the maximum number of users that can be invited for a portal.
   
7. Portal user already exists - If the user is already part of a portal user type, then you cannot send another invitation.
   
8. No record exist - If a record is already deleted from CRM and due to any reason if an invitation is sent to the record it will be declined.
   
9. You don't have the permission for the module - If the CRM user doesn't have the permission for a module he is sending then the invitation will be declined.
   
10. You don't have the permission for the record - If the CRM admin doesn't have the permission for a particular module, then they will be restricted from sending invitations from that module.
    
11. Record is in recycle bin - If the record of the user to whom the invitation is sent is moved to the recycle bin due to any reason then the  portal invitation will not be sent.
    

Update a portal user's email address or phone number