Zoho CRM customer portal: what it is and what to know first

What a portal is

Per Zoho, portals let administrators give contacts, vendors, partners and users of custom modules access to CRM, where they can view, create, edit and add notes to the records they have access to, plus view associated products, invoices and notes. Zoho's portals page describes self-service portals for customers, partners or vendors, where you decide what each can see and do, invite them, and they set up credentials and log in.

Source: Zoho Help: Setting up portals and inviting users, Zoho CRM: Self-service portals

Setting one up, per Zoho

• Users with the Manage Portal Profile permission can create a portal and invite customers.
• Go to Setup, Channels, Portals, click Get Started Now, and confirm or edit the portal name (the default is the company name), then click Configure Now.
• Create a user group: name, primary module, related modules, invitation preference and related field; then configure the portal module and field permissions and click Finish.
• Preview from Setup, Channels, Portals, Preview, choosing a group.

Source: Zoho Help: Setting up portals and inviting users

User groups and editions

Zoho says up to five user groups can be configured and the first must be a customer group. Zoho's page says a number of portal users across all groups are included and that additional portal user licences are charged beyond that; check Zoho's page for the current allowance and licence terms. For trials, Zoho says Enterprise and Ultimate trial users get a 30-day trial with a Contacts group capped at 10 users and no new groups. Zoho's page does not otherwise state which CRM editions include portals; check feature availability for your edition.

Source: Zoho Help: Setting up portals and inviting users

Permissions and fields

• Record permissions are Create, Edit, View, Delete and Edit (Shared); Edit (Shared) lets portal users edit records CRM users added.
• Field permissions are set per module, not per layout, and subform permissions are set separately from the parent module.
• Fields can be marked Read Only; mandatory CRM fields stay mandatory in the portal.
• Portal users cannot be record owners; records they create are owned by the inviting CRM user.
• Zoho says products must be shared for portal users to link products to inventory records.

Source: Zoho Help: Setting up portals and inviting users

Invitations

Zoho says invitations go by email or phone, with phone supported only for companies registered in India. Email invitations expire after 7 days. Invitations can be sent one at a time from a record, in bulk from the Users tab, or automatically through Auto-Invite. Zoho lists reasons an invitation can fail, including pending approval, no GDPR consent, a license limit reached, no module or record permission, and a user already in a group.

Source: Zoho Help: Setting up portals and inviting users

What cannot be undone

• Zoho says that once a portal is configured it cannot be deleted.
• The invitation preference cannot be changed after users are added or a portal form is created; Zoho says to contact support.
• The Client Portal group cannot be deleted, only turned off and on.
• A group with users can be deleted only after transferring them to another group for the same module.

Source: Zoho Help: Setting up portals and inviting users

Before you launch (practical advice)

This section is advice from experience, not vendor documentation.

• Decide what a customer actually needs to see or do, and start with the smallest set of modules and fields.
• Check the portal user allowance and licence terms for your edition before inviting a large list.
• Test with a handful of real invitations and the Preview before bulk invites.
• Review field and record permissions as a customer would, since a portal exposes CRM data outside your team.
• Because configuration is hard to reverse, write the design down and agree it before clicking Configure Now.

Want a portal designed around your customers?

Skyfall Labs designs portal structure, permissions and the CRM data behind it. Because we are a Zoho Partner, treat our view with the interest we have disclosed.