How to Publish Attachments, Proposals, Invoices, Inspection and Service Reports to the Customer Portal

Understanding Customer Portal Settings

Before uploading anything to the portal, several settings must be enabled in Customer Portal Settings. First and foremost, “Enable Customer Portal” must be turned on. This allows basic access to the Customer Portal. 

Once the Customer Portal has been enabled, publishing settings need to be configured for Inspection Reports, Service Reports, Proposals, and Invoices. By default, these documents need to be published manually to the portal. However, automatic publishing can be turned on for each document using the toggles below:

In the example above, all Inspection Reports will be published to the Customer Portal upon creation. The other three documents - Service Reports, Proposals, and Invoices - all need to be manually published. You can choose the publishing option that makes the most sense for your business.

In addition to the documents previously mentioned, building attachments can also be published to the Customer Portal. Some examples of attachments are pictures, blueprints, owner’s manuals, and other documents not necessarily linked to an inspection, work order, invoice, or proposal. 

How to Publish Documents to the Portal

To publish documents to the portal, visit the listing screen for the document(s) you want to publish. From here, click either the “Select All” checkbox, or the checkbox next to one or several individual documents. The “Select All” option defaults to selecting just the first page of documents. To select every record, click the “Select all (number of items) records entirely” link next to the checkbox. 

Once you’ve made your selections, click the “Publish to Customer Portal” button. You’ll seea prompt asking you to confirm your selections. Click “Yes,” and you’ll see a green message indicating the upload has been successful.

Note: The “Publish to Customer Portal” button is only available on screens where manual publishing has been selected in your Customer Portal Settings. 

In the previous example, Inspection Reports were set to automatic publishing, so the “Publish to Customer Portal” button didn’t appear. 

However, if we turn manual publishing on, “Publish to Customer Portal” will reappear on the Inspection Reports screen.

How to Publish Attachments to the Portal

To publish attachments to the Customer Portal, navigate to your desired building and click into the “Attachments” tab. 

To publish a new attachment, click the “+ New Attachment” button. 

Here, upload and name your file, and check the “Publish to Customer Portal” checkbox. 

You can also assign the file to a category. These categories are created in the Attachment Categories settings.

Here you can add new attachment categories. Existing categories will display in the grid.

These categories will now appear in the “Assign Category” dropdown when you edit an attachment.

With all your options selected, attachments will now be visible in the Customer Portal. 

What is Displayed in the Customer Portal

We’ll now turn to how these documents and other assets are displayed in the portal, beginning with buildings.

Buildings 

To view your list of buildings, click the Buildings tab on the left side of the screen. Here, you will see details about each building, including address, territory, and building number.

Click on the building name to see all inspection reports, service reports, invoices, and proposals associated with each building. 

Attachments 

To view your attachments, click on the “Files” button on the right side of the building screen.

Click this button to display all your attachments at this building. 

The button on the right allows you to download each attachment. 

Inspection Reports, Invoices, Proposals, and Service Reports are all accessible via their respective tabs on the left side of the screen. 

In the Inspection Reports tab, each report is listed and grouped by building. The name under the Report column is set in the office view of Inspect Point. To learn more about setting display names, check out this article (How to Set Inspection Report Display Names).

Like with building attachments, Inspection Reports can be downloaded with the button on the right side of the screen.

Filters for Inspection Type and Building are available on this screen as well.

Invoices 

Click the Invoices tab to view invoices in the portal. 

Here you will see each invoice and its associated information.

Clicking on the invoice number will open a web view of the invoice. 

Proposals 

Proposals are accessible via the Proposals tab on the left side of the screen. Additionally, you can download the proposal with the icon on the right of the screen.

Like with Invoices, clicking the Proposal Number will open a web view of the proposal. 

Service Reports 

Service Reports are accessible via the Service Reports tab on the left side of the screen. Again, you have the ability to download these reports with the icon to the right.

Filters available here are Work Order Type and Building. 

Payment Options

Users have the ability to make either Invoice or Pay Now payments on the Customer Portal if this feature is enabled in the office. 

Once enabled in the backend, these features appear on the left side of the screen in the Customer Portal.

Clicking this button opens a Pay Now link in another tab on your web browser. Here, you can enter your information and make a payment.

Customers also have the ability to make a payment on an invoice in the Customer Portal. This requires Enable Invoice Features to be turned on in Payment Settings.

Once enabled, navigate to the desired invoice, and click the invoice number to open it in the web view. Here you will see a green button at the bottom of the screen where you can make a payment.

Unlike the previous Pay Now link that wasn’t tied to an invoice, making a payment directly from an invoice in the Customer Portal will not require any manual reconciliation, as it is tied directly to an invoice.

Using the “Contact Us” Form

The “Contact Us” feature in the Customer Portal allows your customers to reach out to you when they require your services, or if they have a question.

You can turn on the “Contact Us” features in your Customer Portal settings:

First, toggle on “Enable Customer Portal.”

Next, add service type and an associated email address. Note, “service type” will show up as a dropdown in the Contact Us form that the customer can select from as the subject that they are reaching out about.

This is customizable, so you can set it up in whichever way will work best for your company. For example, you could add Inspection, Service, Emergency Service, etc., or include categories such as Invoicing/Billing, Scheduling. It's configurable based on the structure of your company. 

You can add multiple email addresses for each service type, separated by commas. These email addresses will receive a notification and message when a customer submits the Contact Form.

What the Customer Will See

The Customer Portal must be enabled within your instance, and a contact must be added to the Customer Portal, to use the Contact Form.

Then, the Contact Form will appear on the Customer Portal dashboard:

Your customer can select the reason (A.K.A. “service type”), building, and enter a message, which will send to the email address associated with that service type in the back-end. The email you receive will include their selections in the form along with their contact information.