Invite Contacts to the Service Portal

Contacts > {contact} > Actions > Invite Contact

In some cases, it makes sense to allow Service Desk users to [[Template:HelpDesk:Customizing the Service Desk#self-register|self register]]. For example, if a product is sold through retail channels, customers will come to the service desk through the organization's website, and register for support. In such circumstances, there is rarely a need to invite contacts to the Service Desk (although it can be done).

In other cases, access to the Service Desk is much more restricted. In a B2B setting, for example, only employees of the client company will be eligible to register as service desk users. In those cases, you'll invite contacts.

To invite a single contact to use the Service Desk:

1. Go to the Contacts tab
2. Click on the contact you intend to invite
3. Click Actions > Invite to Portal
   
   • This choice appears only when the contact is not already registered as a Service Desk user
   • When clicked, an email that contains the invitation is sent to the user.
   • The Portal User Welcome Email is used to formulate the email

__TBD: THIS PROCEDURE NEEDS TO BE TESTED AND REFINED
__ To invite multiple contacts to use the Service Desk:

1. Use Import to upload their names and email addresses into Contacts
   • A new Contact entry is created for each person
   • Each Contact entry has a unique ID
2. Select the contacts and use Export to generate a list of names, addresses, and unique IDs
3. Copy the Portal User Welcome Email template
4. Use Excel mail merge functionality to generate emails