CustomerGate 365: manual

How it fits together

CustomerGate 365 is the Business Central half of a connection. The forms and the customer portal your customers see belong to your website, and that website calls the app's web services as two Microsoft Entra applications: one for requests and the portal, one for the catalog. What comes in lands in Web Requests and Account Requests for inside sales; what customers see comes straight from Business Central, and which items those are is decided by the web catalog.

Four job queue entries do the work that does not hang on a screen: sending the e-mails, cleaning up personal data after the retention period, recomputing every night which items belong on the website, and delivering the queued webhooks. All four are installed on hold; the last one stays there until somebody switches on the first webhook subscription.

The app usually waits for the website to ask something, but not always. Two things it does on its own initiative: a webhook to an address of your website as soon as something has happened, and a portal notification to a customer who asked for it. See What the app does on its own below.

Before you start

The setup guide walks through the configuration step by step. This is what it needs:

• Business Central online, version 28.0 or later.
• A website that uses the web services of CustomerGate 365, built by Van Oosten Software or by another developer.
• Two Microsoft Entra app registrations: one the website uses for requests and the customer portal, and one for the catalog synchronization.
• An e-mail account in Business Central to send from.
• The SUPER permission set for whoever installs the app and runs Repair Permissions.
• Optional: iFacto Steel 365. Without Steel 365 the app works with the standard quantities of Business Central.

The customer portal

Customers sign in on your website with a one-time code by e-mail; there are no passwords. Business Central decides which customer a session belongs to; the website never says so. The settings are in the Customer Portal group on CustomerGate Setup, and who has access is on Portal Users.

Once signed in, a customer sees their own requests, quotes, orders, shipments and document lines, and downloads PDFs. Besides that they can:

• re-order from an earlier request, because the portal hands back its lines, including those of a request that already became an order, or since 1.0.44 from a line of an earlier quote or order, with Steel 365 including a one-off size;
• give their own purchase order number and requested delivery date when accepting a quote (Buyer role only);
• decline a quote with a reason and a remark, without the quote being cancelled by it;
• follow a shipment, when it carries a shipping agent and a package number;
• switch between the customers their address is linked to;
• switch on themselves what they want to be e-mailed about;
• invite a colleague at the same customer, which produces an account request that inside sales still approves (Buyer role only).

E-mail

The app sends its e-mails through the standard e-mail accounts of Business Central, in five scenarios you can give a sender of their own. More kinds of message go through them than five:

• the confirmation to the requester of a quote request, in their own language and without prices, and the notification to inside sales;
• the confirmation of an account request, the message that the portal account is ready, and the notification to inside sales;
• the sign-in code for the portal;
• the confirmation of a quote acceptance to the customer, and the notification of it to inside sales;
• a notice to inside sales that an e-mail keeps failing;
• the optional message on a rejection, when the chosen reason says so and somebody confirms it;
• the portal notifications a customer asked for themselves.

A job queue entry sends them every five minutes; only the sign-in code goes straight away, because somebody is waiting for it. There is no fallback to a built-in account: a default account must exist. A reply inside sales sends from a request does not go through this job but through the e-mail editor, and only when somebody presses send. The settings are in the E-mail group on CustomerGate Setup.

What the app does on its own

Twice, CustomerGate 365 calls out without anybody asking it to, and both are off after installation.

• Webhooks: Business Central calls an address of your website as soon as a quote is released or accepted, an order is created, a shipment or invoice is posted, an account is approved or rejected, or a request is converted or rejected. Such a message carries no personal data. They do nothing until somebody creates a subscription and the environment allows outgoing calls.
• Portal notifications: an e-mail to a customer about their own quote, order, shipment, invoice or request. Those only go once the company switches on the master switch and the customer ticks in the portal what they want mail about.

Need help

Start at Diagnostics and at the status lines on CustomerGate Setup, and at the troubleshooting page. If that does not solve it, send an e-mail to info@van-oosten.nl; the support page lists what to send along.