Setting Up Community Users


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Allow Customers and Other Non-FogBugz Users to Submit Cases as Community Users

 

 

You can set a project’s permissions so that anyone can create new cases or community users can create cases provided you have enabled community users. A link will appear on the home page to enter a new case, which provides a simplified case entry form. If the user is logged in as a Community User, the email field will be filled in for them.

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We find that public case submission works best for people who are working with a known set of users, such as an internal group within the same corporation. Public case submission doesn’t allow you to require certain fields. If you need certain fields to be required, or if you are working with a large group of external users, you might have better success creating a simple email form and leveraging FogBugz’s email functionality.

Community User Case Submission

After a community user submits a case, the FogBugz will email the customer a confirmation that the case was received:

Initial view

This email includes a URL with an eight-letter password that shows the status of this case, as well as any other cases entered using the same email address. Because this eight-letter password is only emailed to the email address the customer typed, and not shown on the web, if the customer knows the eight-letter password, they have effectively proven that they control that email address, so FogBugz lets them see all the cases associated with it.

When a customer looks at a case, they only see their own correspondence. They see the original case as they entered it, and any email back and forth about the case, but they don’t see internal assignments, edits, and conversations conducted by logged-on users.

Enabling and Disabling the Community Users Feature

To turn on the community user feature, go to Admin (or if you’re using FogBugz On Demand click ) Site Configuration, then the Authentication tab. You can also set whether community users must be created by a FogBugz administrator or they can self-register under “New User Control”.

Once enabled, you may want to configure your permissions.