Practical Advice for Configuring your Hornbill Portals
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Introduction
The Configuration of the Hornbill Portals is a simple task, however there are a few points worth noting that will make the configuration that little bit easier.
Images
- The image needs to be web facing and the URL specified in the relevant Configuration fields in the Admin Tool. The links must also use https (eg. https: //www.mycompany.com/images/mycompanylogo.png). The image needs to be either a .png or .jpg type. The URL referenced must point directly to the image, i.e. the image has to be hosted in such a way that the URL only presents the image, not an entire web page.
A possible solution is to create a new directory in the same location to where your company website images are hosted. The advantage here is that the location is already publicly available and in creating a new suitably-named directory, this should indicate what the images are used for.
- The images must be of type .png or .jpg
- For best results, the Background Image dimensions should be around 1024x768.
- The Company Logo dimensions can be adjusted to provide the best fit for the image that is provided. As a guide, the default Hornbill logo is 300 pixels in width and 30 pixels in height. If the height needs to be increased, this can be performed using an application setting found in the Manage Portals -> Application Settings menu bar:
- For the Service Portal the setting is: guest.anonymous.servicePortal.core.style.image.logo.height
- For the Customer Portal the setting is: guest.anonymous.portal.core.style.image.logo.height
Setting Specific to My Services & Hornbill Today
The following settings will have no bearing on the configuration for the Service or Customer Portal images but are relevant to the preview of My Services and Hornbill Today
- Home Page Image Height - This is the number of pixels for the home page image, default to 0
- Home Page Image Placement - This is for the placement of the Home Image:
- Automatically Fit - This will ignore the Home Page Image Height setting and will fit the image to the default size of the image banner
- Expand Height to fit - This will increase the size of the image banner based on the pixels specified in the Home Page image height field
- Overlap Behind Content - This will place the home image behind the content on the view and will be sized based on the Home Page Image Height field
- Home Page Image Repeat - This will control the image horizontally in the banner space
- Stretch Image - This will stretch the image to fill the banner horizontally
- Repeat Image - This will repeat the image horizontally if the chosen image is too small to fill the banner width
- No-repeat Image - This will leave the image as is and will not stretch or repeat to fill the width
- Home Page Image Vertical Alignment - This will align the image vertically based on the Top, Centre or Bottom of the image
- Home Page Image Background Colour - The colour which will fill the background under the image
Allow portal users to login via Single Sign-On or using Hornbill credentials
It is possible to allow portal users to choose whether to login via SSO or via the standard Hornbill login screen, this can be done with the following settings:
- guest.anonymous.saml.user.allowhornbilllogin this will allow users/co-workers/internal users to choose the authentication method
- guest.anonymous.saml.guest.allowhornbilllogin this will allow customers/contacts/external users to choose the authentication method
- if the setting is enabled the portal user will be presented with a screen allowing them to select their identity provider (either one of the configured SAML options) or Hornbill. The Hornbill option can be renamed using guest.anonymous.saml.hornbilllogin.name setting
Not displaying social or other field information
If you do not wish to publish contact information, social links, or text in specific text fields, simply insert a 0 into those fields you wish to hide. This will remove any content and if applicable any label from the Service Portal for that field.
Reviewing Changes as an Administrator
At times you may wish to review your Portal Configuration changes while working in the Admin Tool. Logging into the Admin Tool creates a User session, and when navigating to customer.hornbill.com/instance name/ you may encounter an error. This is due to the Customer Portal detecting your active Admin Tool session, and trying to immediately log you in. In the case of the Service Portal, service.hornbill.com/instance name/, you won't receive an error however it will log you in using your existing Admin Tool session.
To avoid this, it is best practice to view any changes to either Portal in a Private Browsing window (sometimes called Incognito Mode) while you are logged into the Admin Tool. This will prevent the Portals from detecting your active Admin Tool session.
Supported Browsers
When using the Hornbill Portals, it is required that you use a Hornbill-Compatible browser. Our list of supported browsers can be found here: Getting Started