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12.1. Homepage

The portal is the Customer-facing site for HelpSpot. It's designed to enable self-service and provide Customers with a centralize location for all support-related information/activities. From the portal Customers can:

• Use the web form to submit an inquiry,
• Check the status of an inquiry (or login to check status of multiple inquiries),
• Search and browse knowledge books to find solutions.

While this manual uses one of the available default portal styles, it's important to note that HelpSpot's portal is fully customized; allowing consistency with the look of any company's website/intranet.

HelpSpot can support multiple (secondary) portals. This is used when separate customer facing support areas are needed. Configuration is done through the Administration area of the installation.

Given portal functionality is consistent across primary and secondary portals, the balance of this chapter will focus on the use of one, the primary, portal only.

Lay of the Land

When Customers enter the portal they'll see three distinct areas on the homepage

• Header and Search. Allows Customers to search forums or knowledge books.
• The Left Navigation. Links for submitting/checking/updating requests as well as links to any knowledge books (if public).
• Center of page. Grouped lists of links to items that were highlighted by editors (knowledge books), flagged by readers as most helpful (knowledge books), and the knowledge tag cloud.