Portal Design Considerations

Use these tips when designing a Portal.

  • Customer Security Groups: Users (Service Desk professionals working in CSM) and customers (end-users using the CSM Portal to conduct self-service activities) perform different functions in CSM and, therefore, require different security.
  • Security rights: Security rights control access to CSMfunctionality and data. For example, to create a dashboard, you must have security rights to access the Dashboard Manager (functionality). To view, add, edit, or delete the Description field in an Incident record, you must have security rights to access the Incident Business Object and the Description field (data). For more information, see Security rights.
  • Anonymous Access (allow customers to access Portal data without logging in):CSM provides an Anonymous Security Group for customers who need to access the Portal without logging in. The Portal Client uses this Anonymous Security Group to define security rights for those anonymous customers.
  • Portal Views: Use a Portal form view to create customer-specific versions of your forms. A Portal view allows you to expose data to customers in a more secure and customer-friendly way.
  • Record ownership: Access to records is controlled through record ownership. Typically, customers own and can access their own records. However, record ownership rights can be extended to managers, workgroups, and Workgroup managers so that customers can update records that are owned by another customer.
  • License consumption: Customers can view, create, and edit their own records without consuming a license. With security rights, a customer can also view, and in some cases, edit (through a One-Step Action) another customer's records without consuming a license. For more information, see Portal license consumption.
  • Site scope:CSM provides a site scope, which allows you to limit CSM Items (dashboards, reports, One-Step Actions) to a specific Portal site.
  • Startup Site Items: Each site has a designated Startup Item (example: a dashboard) which is displayed by default when the site is first accessed. If desired, a different Startup Item can be displayed upon login so that information can be more securely or appropriately filtered based on credentials. For more information, see Site items.
  • External Sites: The Portal can link to external websites using a simple link to a URL.