How to selectively turn off the Customer Portals in CSM?

[Sharon Halpin]

Hello

Tried unsuccessfully a few years back to get CSM to work for our requirements.  
Hoping this time to get it to work.

I like the Customer Experience/Space functions - this I think is new since last time I tried.

• Of the 'Channels' available only Email and Embed (forms on own websites) are required. 
• Basically, we want CSM as a centralized back-end engine to process:
  • ad-hoc enquiries via support email addresses - this seems to be working.
  • ad-hoc enquiries via forms embedded on websites - mega issues with this.
  • customer orders via order email addresses - sort of working but a lot of faff.
• Customer Portals are not required but I don't seem to be able to turn these off, which
  • for Atlassian is consuming unnecessary resources
  • for us, running the risk that potential customers / visitors etc may land on the support portals in mistake for the main websites.

Having issues with the email and form channels - will post separately.

I get that Jira, being for IT and service companies, needs support portals but this doesn't necessarily apply to all businesses - I'm predominately ecommerce. 

So what about a bit of flexibility in CSM to be able to selectively, per workspace/experience, turn off the portals - think of the resources you'd save - and beef up the email and form channels? 

This, IMHO, would open up CSM to non-IT/service businesses.  I use and like Confluence otherwise I wouldn't be trying a second time to get it to work to my requirements.

Thank you.

[Germán Morales _ Hiera]

Hi @Sharon Halpin, there's no switch to turn a Customer Experience's portal off; it's a built-in channel and CSM doesn't expose an on/off for it the way it does for email. What you can do is close it down so it's neither reachable nor useful to the public, which covers your real worry about people landing on it by mistake:

• Restrict the experience's access to specific organizations instead of leaving it open, and turn off customer self-registration. With those set, anyone who isn't an added customer can't get into the portal or create an account to reach it. That's the main lever, documented here: Manage customer access to your channels
• Hide the portal from your customer site and strip its request types, so even if a URL leaks, what's behind it has nothing to submit.
• Remove the portal links from your customer email notifications. Replies to email enquiries are usually how customers end up on the portal unintentionally, so cutting those links closes that path.

The clean thing you're describing, a per-experience toggle to disable the portal outright, isn't there today, so it's worth posting as a feature request since you've already made the case for it well. On the "wasted resources" point, that side is Atlassian's rather than something you can switch off, but locking the portal down as above gets you the practical outcome you're after.