Account Requests in CustomerGate 365

Statuses and views

An account request is New, In Progress, Approved, Rejected or Spam. The list has the views New, In Progress, No Customer Yet, Approved, Unassigned and Needs a Look. The last two carry the same filter as the cues of the same name on the Role Center.

Working on a selection

Approve, Reject, Mark as Spam, Assign to Me and Assign To… work on the rows you select in the list. One confirmation names the number.

• Each row runs in its own transaction. A request that fails does not roll back the ones that succeeded; the summary names the failures by request number.
• Approve asks for the role per request. A request without a customer fails and is named in the summary with its number.
• A bulk rejection asks for the reason once and applies it to the whole selection; no message goes to the requesters.
• An assignment is not a lock: Assigned To says who picked the request up, but anyone may still act on it.

Actions

Select Customer

Links the request to the existing customer the requester belongs to. Search by VAT registration number or by name. Without a customer, the request cannot be approved.

Approve

Asks which role the person gets and creates the portal user for the selected customer. The requester then receives an e-mail that the account is ready. It works on a selection too.

Start Processing

Sets the request to In Progress, so colleagues can see that you are working on it.

Reject

Rejects the request, with a reason from the Rejection Reasons list. If that reason says so, Reject on the card then asks whether the requester gets a message about it; a bulk rejection never does.

Mark as Spam

Sets the request to spam. No more e-mails are sent to that address, and it stays visible how much unwanted traffic comes in.

Assign to Me, Assign To…, My Requests

Record who picked the request up, and filter the list to your own open requests. See Web Requests for how assignment works; it is the same on both worklists.

Create Customer

On the card. Creates a customer from the request through a customer template and links it, for a requester who is not a customer yet.

Screen Again

Looks at the request again for a duplicate and for unwanted traffic. Nothing is refused or deleted.

Resend Confirmation

Sends the message to the requester once more. For an approved request, that is the message that the account is ready.

Show Sent E-mails

On the card. Shows the e-mails that belong to the request.

Portal Users, Customer

Open the portal users and the linked customer.

Export Personal Data, Erase Personal Data

Answer a request for access or erasure for the requester's e-mail address. See Privacy tools.

Buyer or Viewer

Approve asks which role the portal user gets. Job Title on the request helps you choose.

Buyer

Requests quotes on behalf of the customer and can accept or reject released quotes in the portal. A Buyer's quote requests are linked to the customer, a Buyer can choose one of the customer's ship-to addresses, and only a Buyer can invite a colleague.

Viewer

Sees the customer's requests, quotes, orders, shipments and documents, but cannot accept or reject a quote. A Viewer can still send a quote request; it then arrives without a customer, like one from an anonymous visitor.

The role belongs to the link between an address and a customer, not to the person. Somebody who buys for two customers can be a Buyer at one and a Viewer at the other.

The card

General

The number, the status, when the request was received and its language. Messages to the requester are sent in that language.

Requester and Address

Company name, VAT Registration No. (the quickest way to find the customer), contact person, job title, the e-mail address the person will sign in with, phone and address.

Review

Claims to Be Existing Customer and Stated Customer No. are what the requester says: a hint, not proof. Linked Customer is the customer you selected, and Active Portal Users for This Address shows how many active portal users the e-mail address already has. Reviewed By, Reviewed On and Rejection Reason record the decision.

Screening

The result, the score and the signals of the duplicate and spam screening. They work as they do on a web request: nothing is refused, hidden or mailed.

Explanation

The comment the requester sent along.

E-mail

When the confirmation, the notification to inside sales and the message that the account is ready were sent, with the failed attempts and the last error of each.

Origin

The Source, whether the privacy statement was accepted and which version, the IP Hash and Anonymized On.

Invited By, Invited At and Requested Role are on the request itself and can be added to the list with Personalize. They are filled only for an invitation from the portal.

Approving a request

1. Open Account Requests with the view New and open the request.
2. Check who is asking: company, VAT registration number, job title and the comment.
3. Choose Select Customer and find the customer, for example by VAT registration number.
4. Choose Approve and pick Buyer or Viewer.
5. The portal user now appears in Portal Users, and the requester receives the e-mail that the account is ready. It links to Portal Address on CustomerGate Setup; while that is empty, the e-mail says that the portal opens soon.

Invitations from the portal

A portal user with the Buyer role can ask for access for a colleague at the same customer from inside the portal. That produces an ordinary account request, not access: inside sales approves it with the same confirmation as any other.

• The customer is already filled in, the Source is portalInvite, and Invited By records who sent the invitation.
• Requested Role is what the inviter proposed. Whoever approves chooses the role; anything that is not Buyer becomes Viewer.
• The inviter confirms the privacy statement on behalf of the colleague, who is not there to do it. Without a version the invitation is refused.
• Maximum Invitations per Day on CustomerGate Setup limits how many invitations one buyer may send in a day. Zero switches inviting off.
• An address that can already sign in at this customer does not produce a second request. A revoked link is not access, so a colleague who comes back can be invited again.
• The colleague gets the ordinary acknowledgement, with one extra line naming who invited them.

One address for two customers

One e-mail address may belong to several customers, and that is not an exception but the ordinary situation in a holding or a group of companies. A portal user is the pair of e-mail address and customer, so such a person has two links, each with its own role, and signs in once.

• Inside sales makes the second link by hand: Link Another Customer on Portal Users. There is no web service for it; a website cannot arrange access to a second company.
• In the portal, the person switches between the customers they are linked to. Business Central decides on the session which customer a call belongs to, and every attempt to switch is logged.
• So do not give such a person a second e-mail address any more. That was the advice while there was no customer switch.

See Portal Users for making the link, and Portal Customer Switches for the log of the switches.