Portal Design Considerations

Consider the following when designing your Portal:

• CSM is highly configurable. As a result, a User's system may vary from the Out-of-the-Box content in our documentation.

• 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. For more information, see User and Customer Security Groups.
• Security rights: Security rights control access to CSM functionality 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, refer to Security Rights in the Security documentation.
• 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. For more information, refer to Anonymous Security Group in the Security documentation.
• 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. For more information, refer to Form Views in the Forms documentation.
• Record ownership: Access to records is controlled through record ownership. Typically, a Customer owns and can access her 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. For more information, refer to Record Ownership in the Security documentation.
• License consumption: A Customer can view, create, and edit her 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, etc.) to a specific Portal Site. For more information, refer to Scope in the Security documentation.
• Startup Site Items: Each Site has a designated Startup Item (ex: 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. For more information, see External Portal Sites.