A portal is an application data presentation, with a dashboard and a customized working environment, with the ability to configure access rights for users and user groups.

Instead of creating your own authentication and security services, you can use QuintaDB customer portals. Your web-users will be able register on your portal instead of signing up with QuintaDB's account.

Your clients can log into your dedicated web-portal, access modules (tables, forms, reports, charts, maps, calendars, files or newsletters) shared to them, add data, and most importantly, view and modify only those records which they submitted (if you using 'Access only own records' option, otherwise they will see all data).

Here are some examples of Portal:

The Property Portal

Job Search Portal

Expenses Portal

 

A Customer Portal provides you with an excellent opportunity to present your database with a brand identity personal to your company or organization.

So, you have the database and want to allow web-users to signup to access it, activate account and reset password if needed. If so, please, follow the steps below.

 

1. Create portal

2. Configure portal

3. Portal's menu

4. Users & Permissions

5. Access rights

  5.1 Search form

6. Another options

7. How to link table records and portal user accounts

 

1. Create portal

Create an application in any way convenient for you:

- Create a new application.

- Use application template.

- Import data from Excel or CSV.

On the QuintaDB service, the Portal is created along with the application. Let's create a simple application with two tables:

Click on the "Open Portal" link in the upper right corner or use the leftside menu to open the portal:

In the Portals module, you can create many portals for one application. All Portals will use the general data from the application database. Any changes to the database in one portal will change the data in other portals.

 

2. Configure portal

 

The created portal has the same name as the application by default. You can rename it in the Portals module.

Created application tables and forms was added to the Portal menu. If your application uses other modules, such as charts, maps, calendars, etc., they will also be added to the Portal menu:

You can disable this option in the Application Settings menu. Follow the link "Edit application" and select "Settings":

If you don't want to add modules to the portal automatically, disable the option "Add each newly created module to the application's 'Default Portal'":

In the "App's modules" section you can choose which Portal to open by default with the application.

Return to the Portal using the "Open Portal" link to customize the Portal menu.

 

3. Portal's menu

Open the "Portal" menu and select the "Menu" item:

Here you can add new menu items and modify existing ones. In addition, you can select the start page of your portal and activate the Dashboard.

You can create a new item or add a submenu to an existing item.

You need to specify a name and select an icon (optionally).

Next, you need to select a widget. It can be:

• Open a submenu;
• Table or Report;
• Form;
• Calendar;
• Chart;
• Files;
• Newsletters;
• Map;
• URL link
• HTML page.

After you've customized the Portal's menu, you can select a theme.

Open the "Portal" menu and select "Theme":

Using the "Theme" menu, you can change the menu items arrangement and color scheme for your portal.

The portal's themes:

Standard

Professional

Professional opened

Professional wide

Classic

Read here how to set up a portal with the Classic theme.

 

4. Users & Permissions

The Portal is created with enabled authorization by default, which means that registration and login to the portal is required for user access.
Open the "Portal" menu, "Users" item to add or view users registered in the portal.

You can add new group. Using user's groups, it will not be necessary to assign access rights for new users each time. It will be enough to add them to the group with the established rights.

On the 'Add new group' page you need to choose which tables and reports will be available to the users:


Choose user's role. It can be:

• Read only
• Read and edit
• Read and write
• Read, edit and delete records
• Read, write and delete records.

Select which features will be available for users, such as:

• Data export
• Import
• Clone
• Print
• Edit records
• Update multiple records
• Delete all table records in one click
• Search
• Grouping.

The most important option is 'Access to only own records'. Users will only see records that they added. 

You can configure access to various modules for users. For example, Maps, Charts, Calendars, Dashboard widgets and more. Please note: only the modules that are used in the application are displayed here:

Now you can add users to this group. Click on the user's group tile and click on the 'Add users to the group' tile on the next page.

In order to add users, just specify their emails or login(one per line). You can edit invite email template.

Please notice, that the user’s password is matched with the email or login by default. You can edit portal user’s account in the group. 

Click on the user's tile. Press on the 'Account' button on the next page.

You can change password, enter name, contacts and upload avatar on the user's account page.

At the bottom of the page, you will find the user's sign-ins log.

 

5. Access rights

You can set the default permissions for new user. Open the "Default permissions for the new user" tab:

You can edit default permissions for all modules. This way, you can control access level for newly registered portal users. Default permissions can also be set per Table or Report. Notice that you can also control Field level access.

You can modify permissions and access rights for user's group. Just open the user's group and open on the 'Settings' tab.
On this page you can edit tables and reports permissions for the group. Click on 'Edit' button.

Select the table or report:

Press on the 'Give group '...' access to the table or report' button, if you need to add new table/report access for group. 

You can change settings and access rights for certain table.

Click on the 'Field level access' link (as shown in the screenshot). 

Here you can set up which fields the users will see on the form when adding a record, as well as which columns the users will see while viewing a records and table or report.

5.1 Search Form

To customize the search form for users and users groups, click on the search link:

On this page, you can configure Standard Search for a group: select which fields will be available for search and which search criteria will be available for these fields:

Or you can use your own search form:

How to create a Custom search form you can read by this link.

To enable your search form for the Portal Owner, open the Portal menu and select the Settings:

On the next page, open the "Settings" tab and select "Search Form" from the drop-down list. Select "My search form" for table or report:

6. Another options

Open the Portal and select "Settings" from the "Portal" menu:

You can choose which authentication type to use on your portal:

• No authentication. Any web user will be able to access it.
• Basic HTTP authentication. Set one pair of login and password to password-protect portal.
• Sign-in required. User should be registered in portal in order to be able to login and access it.

The default type is "Sign-in required".

In the dropdown, you can select the portal's language and specify the fields for authorization (for the registration form and login to the portal).

You can customize the Login form fields:

For the "Company" field you can enter a list of companies and this field will be shown on the registration form as a drop-down list.

At least one authorization field should be enabled in order to use Login or Signup forms.

Email, Phone number or Login field will automatically understand what exactly user enter and will assign it to login, email or phone fields in Account.

You can disable this field and instead enable one (or all) of the Login, Email and Phone fields. For Signup form also Address fields available such as: Street address, City, State and Zip code.

Also, you can upload a logo that will be displayed at the top left of the portal, select the view for tables and reports in the portal: regular Table or Tile.

On the Integration tab you'll be able to get JavaScript code to integrate the whole portal as widget on your own web page. You can use direct link to share it with your customers only.

If you'll choose 'Sign-in required' authentication, you'll see such pages.

 Log in page

 Sign up page

 Restore password page

In the "Notifications" tab, you can edit templates of email and SMS notifications that will be received by registered users to activate and restore access.

You can also specify whether you want to receive notifications about new account registering.

7. How to link table records and portal user accounts

 

Let’s assume you’ve already created and configured a web portal and added users to it (or possibly the users registered themselves). Your customers  will see only those records that they added themselves. 

But what if you already have records in your tables or in your CSV or Excel files which you want to assign to specific portal accounts?

There are two ways to achieve this.

1. You can go to the Records page, select some records and click into the 'Actions' dropdown's 'Change record owner' option. 

 

After that you just have to decide who will become the new records owner. Like shown on the screenshot below:

 

 

2. The second way is to use Import from CSV or Excel file. But first you have to enable 'Added by' column in the "Columns" menu.

Once enabled, you will see the new ‘Added by’ column on the ‘Records’ page. 

Now you can use your portal user's names in your CSV or Excel file in order to assign imported records.

Just make sure you have an 'Added by' column in your file and that it contains proper user names (same as you see on Records page).

So by using either of the methods, you’ll achieve the same result, that is, your portal users will see new records once they sign-in to your portal.