View the portal as a buyer
When a buyer asks about a price, a missing product or an order, the quickest answer is to see the portal exactly as they do. View portal as opens the real Customer Portal, signed in as that buyer, in a new tab. It's read-only: you can browse everything, but you can't place orders, change the cart, accept quotes or edit anything.
Before you begin
- You need permission to manage the Customer Portal.
- The customer is on the portal, and the buyer isn't disabled.
Open the portal as a buyer
- Go to Contacts → Customers and open the customer.
- Open the Dealer portal section.
- Under Buyers, click the View portal as icon on the buyer's row. Hover over it first to see which buyer it opens.
The portal opens in a new tab. An orange banner across the top says Viewing as the buyer's name, that it's a read-only staff view, and who opened it.
While you're viewing
- Browse like the buyer. The catalog, prices, special orders, quotes, orders, invoices and returns all show what this buyer sees.
- Dropship is read-only too. On an account with dropship turned on, you see the buyer's Dropship pages (orders, uploads, batches, the feed and API keys), but SKU.io refuses any change made from them: you can't cancel an order, upload orders, or create or revoke a key. See How dropship works on the portal.
- Show margins. If you can see costs, the banner has a Show margins switch that adds your margin at each price level. Turn it off before you share your screen with a customer. Alt+M turns it on and off.
- Exit. Click Exit in the banner when you're done. Closing the tab ends the view too.
How long a view lasts
A view stays open while you use it. It ends:
- after an hour without activity, or
- 8 hours after you opened it, however busy you've been.
Five minutes before a view ends, the banner shows Ends in … min and a Keep viewing button. Click it to keep the view open for another hour. Near the 8-hour limit the banner says so instead, and you open a new view to keep looking.
When a view has ended, the tab says why: it expired after an hour without activity, it reached the 8-hour limit, you exited, or it was revoked or replaced by a newer view of the same buyer. Click Start a new staff view to go back to the customer's page and open another one.
See who viewed the portal
Recent Staff Views, in the customer's Dealer portal section, lists every staff view of the customer's buyers: the Staff member, who they Viewed as, when it Started and Ended, and its Status. Click Revoke to end an open view straight away.