How do I hide a portal but still allow a user to open an account

[Patrick Windsor]

I am a managed service provider looking to migrate from FreshService to JIRA support desk. Currently I have multiple customers each with their own support portal in FreshService and each portal has its own unique URL. I see the setting where I can make a customer portal "private" but as I understand the setting, if I enable "Customers who are added to the project" then my support staff has to open an account for each user? So if a person emails a support ticket in, I assume it gets rejected if they are not in the system?

On the other hand, if I enable "Anyone can email the service desk or raise a request in the portal" then any user can open a ticket, but their portal will be visible to other customers. 

Is there anyway for me to hide a portal to only that customer, but still allow users to create customer accounts bu emailing into the system or by going to the portal and self registering?

In FreshService each portal is its own and has its own unique URL so there is no way a customer can go to their URL and then browse or see another portal. Now having said that, if they find out the URL to another customer they could access it and self sub-scribe to that portal. I find this acceptable, it seems though that JIRA is using a single portal for all customers. Am I correct with this?

[Jack Brickey · Accepted solution]

Hi Patrick,

let me see if I can help with your questions...

Q: ...if I enable "Customers who are added to the project" then my support staff has to open an account for each user?

A: Correct

Q: So if a person emails a support ticket in, I assume it gets rejected if they are not in the system?

A: Correct, your team would need to monitor the email logs for those failures and decide whether to add the customer.

Q: hiding Portal...

A: while customers may be able to access the portal you can control what issues they can see. You can have it so that they only see their own or can share with their Organization. Note, while you can’t hide a portal you can hide all request types by Putting them in the Hidden Group under project settings > request types. When this is done the customers (only those associated with the project) could see the project-card in the Help center but could not actually open issues via the portal.