Allow Customers to send email requests to a project, without the project being visible on the portal

[Andrew Pinson]

I'm currently having an issue regarding customer permissions within a service desk.  I have a service desk, where the only request type is email requests.  This is the triage point for any and all email requests, regardless of the request type.  The goal of this is so that (internal) customers only have to know 1 email address to send an email to in order to receive help/service.  The issue is that I don't want this triage point showing up as an option on the customer portal.  The "Triage" Project is currently set to "Anyone can send a request via the portal or <email>@<company>.atlassian.net".

I know that having this turned on adds any of our current customers to the list of customers, which then gives them access to a blank project on the portal.  Not ideal, and it looks incomplete.  But if I change the Customer Permission to "Customers my team adds to the project" it blocks all incoming requests...

Is there a way to make it so that this Triage project can receive emails from all of our internal customers, without it having to be visible in their portal?  

Thank you!

[Angélica Luz · Accepted solution]

Hello Andrew,

Thank you for reaching out to Atlassian Community!

When we add customers to a project, they will have access to see the project in the portal, but as in your case, there is only one request type on this project for them to create the request via email, the option you can use is to hide this request type from the portal.

Customers will still be able to access the portal, but if they don't have access to any other project, they will see the message "You don't have access to any portals".

To hide the request type from the portal, please go to Project settings > Request types > Click on "Edit groups" for the request type associated with the email and uncheck the checkboxes. After that, it will show the "Hidden from portal" group.

Hope this helps!

Regards,
Angélica

[Andrew Pinson]

@Angélica Luz Does this apply for Next-Gen projects?  The current project in question is a Next-Gen Service Desk Project.  I don't see the setting you are mentioning when I navigate following the steps you provided.  The url I end up at is: is https://<company>.atlassian.net/projects/OSD/settings/issuetypes/<issueKey>

But I see no "Edit Groups" option on this project, and any other of my projects.  The only request available inside the Project is the default Email Request type.

[Angélica Luz]

This applies only to Classic projects because on next-gen, the Email request is hidden from the project by default.

In this case, it will show the option to click on the project, so you can add a message for them to send requests via email only.

You can change this message on Project settings > Channels > Customer portal > Service Desk information.

[Andrew Pinson]

I see, but a Project that only takes email requests is still visible on the Portal?  Is there a way to disable this?  It seems silly to have it visible where a customer can click on it, only to be greeted with a "Please send us an email" message.

[Angélica Luz]

Thank you for your feedback. I tested here using a classic and next-gen project and the behavior is the same. I believe it has to do with the recent changes in the customer portal.

Based on your request, I created a bug for our dev team to check:

• Project still appears in the portal even if all request types are hidden

Please, click on “This affects my team” and also watch to receive updates.

Regarding disabling the portal, this option is not available at the moment:

• Possibility to disable customer portal

[Andrew Pinson]

Angélica,  Thank you for all of your help and information.  I appreciate you creating the bug, and will continue to follow the status of the two links you provided.

We will work with what is currently in place.