Customer portal help centre
Enterprise feature (new in 1.19.4,
helpdesk). See the Helpdesk overview.
A customer with a question often only needs the right article. Turn on the help centre and the customer portal opens on a page where people search your chosen documents, browse them by category and read them, with no sign-in. When nothing answers their question, Still need help? takes them to a new request, and the request form suggests articles as they type the subject.
Turning it on
Section titled “Turning it on”Desk settings → Customer portal now has three pages: Settings (the portal as before), Help centre and Customers (the customer list and blocking, which used to sit under the settings). They need the desk capability Helpdesk settings (Admins, out of the box).
On Help centre:
- Turn on Show a help centre: “Customers search these articles before raising a request, and see suggestions as they type.”
- Under What’s public, choose where the articles come from (see below).
- Check the Categories.
- Save help centre.
The help centre shows only while the portal itself is on. If it is off, the page says “The customer portal is off, so nobody sees the help centre yet. Turn the portal on in the Settings tab.”
With the help centre on, it becomes the portal’s home (/support)
for everyone, signed in or not. Sign in moves to the portal’s header,
next to Help centre · Your requests, and the sign-in form opens at
/support?signin=1. Links that ask someone to sign in (an expired link’s
Ask for a new link, a page that needs sign-in) still reach it. With
the help centre off, the portal’s home is the sign-in as before.
What’s public
Section titled “What’s public”What’s public has two choices, and you can tick either or both:
- Documents in chosen spaces: “Only published documents. Drafts, private spaces, handbook-only policies and internal notes are never shown.” Add spaces with + Space. Private spaces aren’t offered.
- Documents tagged
public: “From any space except private ones.”
Never public
Section titled “Never public”Whatever you choose, a document is never public when it, or any page above it, is:
- in the trash, a draft, or a draft branch of another document;
- in a private space, even when the space is chosen or the document
is tagged
public(a private space that is still chosen shows as a red chip: “Private spaces are never public. Remove it.”); - handbook-only;
- a policy people must confirm they have read, or a retired one;
- a live training deck.
A document in a hidden category isn’t public either.
What an article shows is fixed: its title, summary, when it was updated, its category and its body. Never its author, an editor’s or commenter’s email, comments, version history, tags or the space’s own settings. In the body:
- HTML comments (an author’s notes to themselves) are removed;
- images and files are served by the help centre, and only when the document they belong to is public; videos play, posters included;
- a link to another public document opens its article; a link to a document that isn’t public keeps only its text;
- any other address into your workspace is dropped;
- links to other sites stay as written.
The article is drawn by the same sanitising renderer as the rest of CompassDocs.
Categories
Section titled “Categories”Categories come from the spaces’ folders. A space’s documents that sit in no folder show under the space’s name. The card says how many articles are public, in how many categories.
- Reorder: drag a category by its grip, or click the grip (or press Enter on it) for Move up and Move down. Alt+Arrow moves the focused category at once.
- Hide: the eye button hides a category (“Hidden: its articles aren’t public. Show it.”). Hiding a category takes its articles out of the help centre entirely, search included.
Nothing public yet shows “Nothing is public yet. Choose a space with published documents, or tag documents public.”
What customers see
Section titled “What customers see”- The home: “How can we help?” with a search box, then the categories as cards with their article counts (“8 articles”), then Still need help? “Raise a request and we’ll get back to you by email.” with New request. Still need help? shows only when there is something they can raise.
- Search: suggestions appear under the box from two typed characters, up to six; arrow keys move through them and Escape closes them. Pressing Enter opens the results page, up to 30 articles. Articles holding every word come first, then those holding any of them. Search reads only what customers can read: the title, the summary and the body, never tags or comments.
- A category: its articles, each with a two-line summary. A category past 300 articles says “Showing the first 300 of 412. Search to find the others.”
- An article (
/support/articles/1203-exporting-reports): the breadcrumb “Help centre / Category”, the title, “Updated 4 Nov 2026”, the summary, the body, its files, then Still need help?.
Reading needs no sign-in. Anyone who can reach the portal can read the help centre while the portal and the help centre are on. Who may sign in, and blocked domains, apply only to raising and following requests.
Suggestions on the request form
Section titled “Suggestions on the request form”On New request, once the subject has three characters, These articles might answer it lists up to three matching articles. Each opens in a new tab, so nothing typed in the form is lost. Nothing shows when nothing matches. The subject is sent to the server only to find suggestions, and is never stored or counted as a search.
Stats: the last 30 days
Section titled “Stats: the last 30 days”The Last 30 days card shows:
| Stat | What it counts |
|---|---|
| Searches | Searches made from the help centre’s own pages. A link to the results page from elsewhere, or the request form’s subject, isn’t counted. |
| Answered without a request | “Of the visits that searched or opened an article, the share that opened one and raised no request within 30 minutes.” |
| Top search | The most common search. |
“Not enough yet” shows until there is data.
They are counted without personal data: no names, addresses, sign-ins or network addresses. Typed email addresses and long numbers are blanked before a search is kept. A visit is a random id for one browser tab. If someone signs in from the portal to raise a request, the sign-in link carries that id, so the visit counts as ending in a request, not as answered. Both tables are trimmed to 90 days as they are written, so retention, anonymising and the data export have nothing to cover.
The stats are best effort:
- the 30-minute window means today’s numbers settle later;
- browsers send the header that tells a search came from the help centre
only over HTTPS or on
localhost, so a portal served over plain HTTP counts no searches.
Search engines
Section titled “Search engines”By default every help centre page asks search engines not to list it.
Turn on Let search engines index the help centre (“Off: the help
centre asks search engines not to list it. Your requests and sign-in are
never indexed.”) to let them index its home, categories and articles;
robots.txt then allows exactly those paths while the help centre is
open. Search results pages, requests and sign-in are never indexed.
Limits
Section titled “Limits”| What | Limit |
|---|---|
| Searches (and suggestions) | 40 a minute per network address; an IPv6 /64 counts as one address. Over it: “Too many searches right now. Wait a moment and try again.” |
| Chosen spaces | 100 |
| Suggestions as you type | 6 |
| Suggestions on the request form | 3 |
| Search results | 30 |
| Articles a category lists | 300 |
In the audit log
Section titled “In the audit log”| Action | Shown as |
|---|---|
helpdesk.portal.help_centre_updated |
Changed the customer portal help centre (what changed, and the new on/off, spaces, tagged, indexing and hidden values) |
Troubleshooting
Section titled “Troubleshooting”| Symptom | What to check |
|---|---|
| The portal still opens on the sign-in form | Show a help centre is off, or the portal itself is off. |
| A document doesn’t show | It is a draft, in a private space, handbook-only, a policy people must confirm, under a page that is one of those, or in a hidden category. Or it isn’t in a chosen space and isn’t tagged public while that choice is on. |
| A link in an article is plain text | It points to a document that isn’t public. |
| A picture is missing | It points somewhere else in your workspace, or to a file of a document that isn’t public. |
| Searches stays at 0 | The portal is served over plain HTTP. |
| A space is missing from + Space | It is private. |