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Restricting Who Sees a Portal Link with Custom Criteria
Restricting Who Sees a Portal Link with Custom Criteria

The portal navigation allows you to set custom criteria on who can view it.

Updated over a week ago

Within the Portal is a navigation bar with links as shown in the image below.

You are able to set up criteria on a navigation link so that only certain contacts will be able to see it in the nav bar. This can only be done for contacts, so fields you are filtering on must be in the contacts table.

In order to do this, you will need a user with administrative permissions.

Note: This article is intended to be used by advanced users who are familiar with looking at the html source code and customization of Method:CRM. The example given will use the Chrome browser as an example. The process would be different on a different browser, but the concept is the same. 

Step 1: Create a Snapshot

The filters used can be captured by creating a temporary snapshot in an app. Manage an app you have permission to create a snapshot in. You will not be able to do this in a stock app, so you need to do this in custom app. 

1. On a custom app, navigate Manage > Snapshots > Create Snapshot

2. For the Table, you must choose Contacts. Put in any field, for that won't matter.

3. Click Add Filtering and create a filter, but don't save it yet! In the below example, we only want to show the link to Contacts tagged as VIP.

Step 2: Inspect What Happens When you Save the Snapshot

1. While creating the snapshot, open the Developer tools in the browser. In this example, we are using the Chrome browser on a Mac.

2. Select Network and then click the clear icon to start fresh.

3. Now Save your snapshot in Method:CRM. The Network tab will show a number of things. The first item with the strange numbers is the post action that saved the data.

4. Click the first item, then select Headers.

5. Scroll down until you find Request Payload. Then select View Source.

6. Select All and Copy everything that appears in the source. Paste this into a text editor of your choice.

7. This will be the most difficult part. You need to find a subset of text within this source code. Search for "criteria": and after the colon, copy and paste everything from the first left square bracket to the the right square bracket, ie. the text is enclosed and includes these: [ ].   

Step 3: Select or Create a Portal Link

You got the code needed. Now to create the link.

1. Within Method:CRM, navigate to the link you wish to customize:  Account Settings > Portal > Navigation & Sign In As.

2. Create a New Link, or select a link from the Links grid.

3. Change Visible To to Custom. This will show a Custom Filter input field.

4. Now paste the short snippet of text you copied from the previous step. 

5. Save this! If you get an error when you saved, then the code is incorrect. Make sure you include the square brackets and have the right snippet of text.

You will get the below error if it's incorrect:

And you are done! To test it, use the Sign In As button to impersonate an existing contact to verify the filtering is working!

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