How to Deactivate or Shutdown the Customer Portal

Admins can deactivate or shut down the customer portal to limit customer access or streamline internal workflows. However, they can hide this portal and enable email-only support or restrict ticket creation via the customer portal. Learn more about How to set up email-only support for customers and hide the customer portal.

Also, if you only want to access the knowledge base and disable ticket creation via the customer portal, use the custom CSS and JS. Learn more about How to Restrict Ticket Creation in Customer Portal for more details.

Deactivating the Customer Portal

1. Navigate to the Admin center >> Brands.
2. On the list, select the brand to deactivate its customer portal and click the more options icon next to it.
3. Choose the Deactivate Customer Portal option.
4. On the confirmation dialogue box, click Yes, Deactivate to shut it down.
5. The brand’s status will read “Customer Portal Deactivated”.

Consequences of Deactivating the Customer Portal

• The brand’s customer portal will be inactive.
• Deactivation of the Customer Portal may take 15 minutes.
• Only private tickets can be created for the brand through the agent portal.
• Emails sent to the brand’s support address will only generate private tickets.
• Agents will still be able to access existing public or private tickets via the agent portal.
• Customers cannot access any existing or new tickets.
• Customers cannot be notified of ticket updates via email.

The portal will display a message as shown in the image below.

How to Activate the Customer Portal

1. Open Brands in the admin module.
2. Click on the more options icon next to the brand you want to activate its customer portal.
3. Choose the Activate Customer Portal option.
4. On the confirmation dialogue box, click Yes, Activate to complete the process.

FAQs

Q1. What does deactivating the customer portal mean in BoldDesk?
Deactivating the customer portal makes it inaccessible to customers for ticket creation or viewing. Customers cannot log in, submit tickets, or receive ticket update notifications. However:

• Agents can still manage tickets via the Agent Portal.
• Emails sent to the brand’s support address will create private tickets only.

Q2. Will existing tickets be deleted when the portal is deactivated?
No. Existing tickets remain in the system and are accessible to agents in the Agent Portal. Customers, however, cannot view or update these tickets.

Q3. Can customers still reply to ticket emails after the portal is deactivated?
If a customer replies to an existing email thread, the update will not be added to the ticket. The system drops these replies once the portal is inactive.

Q4. Is there a way to notify customers before shutting down the portal?
BoldDesk does not automatically send notifications for portal deactivation. Best practice:

• Communicate to your customers via email or announcement banners to avoid confusion.

Related Article

• How to Manage Multiple Brands