Customers and organisations

A portal customer is an external user. Customers belong to customer organisations. Organisations group the contacts and requests for one client or department.

Portal customers

A portal customer has these fields:

Field	Description
Name	The contact name.
Email	The contact address. It is unique across portal customers.
Phone	An optional phone number.
Organisation	The customer organisation the contact belongs to.
Contact roles	One or more contact levels.
Primary contact	A flag that marks the main contact for the organisation.
Custom fields	Extra fields that apply to portal customers.

A customer gains access to a portal through a channel grant. The grant controls which portals the customer can open.

Contact roles

A contact role is a contact level, such as technical lead or billing contact. A global administrator manages the list of roles. A customer can hold more than one role.

Contact roles are also the audience for shared requests. See Request sharing.

Customer organisations

A customer organisation has these fields:

Field	Description
Name	The organisation name. Required.
Email	A contact address.
Description	Notes about the organisation.
Active	Inactive organisations stay in reports and stay hidden from new selections.
Avatar	A logo or image for the organisation.
Custom fields	Extra fields that apply to organisations.
Settings	The request sharing settings.

An organisation can have managers and members. A manager can manage the organisation and view its related data. A global administrator assigns the first manager.

Create a contact level

Open Admin and select Contact levels.
Select Create level.
Enter a name and a description.
Enter an order value.
Select Create.

Create an organisation

Open Time Tracking and select Organizations.
Select Add Organization.
Enter the organisation name.
Enter the email, the contact person, and the description. These steps are optional.
Upload an avatar. This step is optional.
Save the organisation.

Add a portal customer

Open Customers.
Select Add Customer.
Enter the name, the email, and the phone.
Select the customer organisation.
Complete the customer custom fields.
Select Create Customer.

Assign contact levels

Open the contact in Customers.
Select edit.
Select the Contact levels.
Save the contact.

Deactivate or restore access

Open the contact in Customers.
Select Deactivate Access to sign the customer out and block sign-in.
Select Restore Access to allow sign-in again.

Portal customer accounts are separate from internal user accounts. Customers sign in to submit a request and follow it. They cannot access the internal workspace.

A customer signs in with:

A magic link sent to the email address.
A passkey, after the customer enrols one.

The portal has two registration modes:

Mode	Description
Open	Any visitor whose email matches the allowed domains can sign in.
Manual	Only portal customers that an administrator added and granted access can sign in.

The allowed email domains limit both modes. An empty list allows any domain.

Customer data lifecycle

Windshift supports the data requests a customer can make under the GDPR:

Action	Description
Export	Produce the customer data for an Article 15 or Article 20 request.
Erasure	Erase the customer data for an Article 17 request. Erasure is retention-aware and records the evidence.
Deactivation	Cut portal access for a customer. Every portal sign-in path rejects a deactivated customer. Reactivation is an explicit administrator action.

Auto-created customers record their creation provenance, such as email-intake or ticket-import. Review the provenance and clean up unused customers in bulk.

Background jobs remove expired portal sessions, consumed magic links, and expired knowledge base events. See the retention settings in Email intake.

Asset reports

An asset report shows portal assets, such as software or hardware, to a customer. A row action can prefill a request type with the asset details, so the customer starts a request with the correct context.