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9.1. Secondary Portal Overview and Limitations

HelpSpot's secondary portal system provides the unique ability to create multiple portal instances, all of which feed into a single installation. Secondary portals are ideal for HelpSpot installations that need to support distinct website domains or require custom portals for different departments, groups or brands.

How it Works

All secondary portals are initially based on the primary portal (default, built-in portal), however can be customized to meet the needs of the target customers. As such, Administrators can choose to exclude/include:

• Knowledge Books and Forums
• Public Categories
• Public Custom fields

Because each secondary portal has it's own set of templates, Administrators have full control over giving each their own look and feel.

Limitations

Given the current design of secondary portals, Administrators should be aware of the following limitations / considerations prior to implementing.

* Secondary portals currently all share logins with the primary portal. For departments this is likely fine. If you're using it across websites this may be an issue if you expect customers to use both websites. In that case you could disabling logins or use Black Box logins to enforce your own login logic.

* Secondary portals cannot show requests that were manually created by staff. Only requests created by the customer via email or the secondary portal can be shown to customers when logged in.

* All secondary portals must be on the same server as the main HelpSpot installation or at least available across a network drive. Secondary portals must be able to read files from the main HelpSpot installation.

* Several settings are currently not able to be overridden and default to what the primary portal is set for in Admin->Settings->Portals. Examples include which captcha to use and if the request form should use the simple or detailed format.

* The reCaptcha keys (for installations using reCaptcha) are shared across all portals so a global reCaptcha key must be used.

* Public components (knowledge books and forums) created for secondary portals will be shown on the primary portal. If this is not desired, a secondary portal must be created to override the default primary portal. Details on that process are here.

In the subsequent pages we'll look at the creation process, including file placement, and how to address special considerations.

 

Knowledge Tags

Secondary Portals  /  Brand  /