Your customer portal is the front door to your entire support and feedback ecosystem. It’s where users go to find help articles, submit feature requests, vote on ideas, read your changelog, and track the progress of their conversations. Instead of scattering these resources across different tools and URLs, the portal brings everything together under your brand.

This guide walks you through configuring, customizing, and launching your Heedback customer portal.

Prerequisites

Before setting up your portal, make sure:

You have an active Heedback organization with a Pro plan.
Your account has admin or owner permissions.
You have some content ready to populate the portal — at least a few knowledge base articles or feature board posts. A portal with empty sections doesn’t make a great first impression.
You’ve decided on your preferred user authentication method (magic link, anonymous, or both).

What the Portal Includes

The customer portal is a single, unified hub that can include any combination of these sections:

Knowledge Base: Your help articles organized by collection. Users can search, browse, and read articles without contacting support.
Feature Boards: Public feedback boards where users submit ideas, vote on existing requests, and discuss features with your team and other users.
Changelog: Your published release notes, categorized by labels. Users can subscribe for email notifications.
Roadmap: A Kanban-style view of your product roadmap, connected to feature board posts and user votes.
Conversations: Authenticated users can view and continue their support conversations directly from the portal.

You enable or disable each section independently, so the portal adapts to your needs. A new product might start with just a knowledge base, then add boards and a changelog as the community grows.

Configuring Portal Settings

Navigate to Settings > Portal in your dashboard.
You’ll see toggles for each portal section: Knowledge Base, Feature Boards, Changelog, and Roadmap.
Enable the sections you want to include. Disabled sections won’t appear in the portal navigation.
Set your default locale — this determines the language shown to visitors who haven’t set a preference.
Configure SEO settings: page title, meta description, and social sharing image. These matter for search engine visibility and link previews.
Click Save to apply your configuration.

The portal is live immediately after saving. Share the URL with your team to review before announcing it to customers.

Customizing Branding

A portal that looks like your product feels like a natural extension of your app, not a third-party tool:

Go to Settings > Portal > Branding.
Upload your logo — it appears in the portal header and on the favicon.
Set your primary color — this applies to buttons, links, and accent elements throughout the portal.
Choose a header style: light or dark background, with your logo and navigation links.
Add your company name as it should appear in the portal header.
Preview your changes in the right panel before saving.

The portal’s typography and layout are designed to work well with any brand color. If you need deeper customization, the custom CSS option under advanced settings lets you override specific styles.

Setting Up a Custom Domain

By default, your portal is accessible at yourorg.heedback.com. For a more professional presence, you can use your own domain:

Navigate to Settings > Portal > Custom Domain.
Enter your desired domain — for example, help.yourcompany.com or feedback.yourcompany.com.
Heedback provides a CNAME record to add to your DNS provider.
Add the CNAME record in your DNS settings (Cloudflare, Namecheap, Route 53, etc.).
Return to Heedback and click Verify. DNS propagation can take up to 48 hours, but typically resolves within minutes.
Once verified, Heedback automatically provisions an SSL certificate for your custom domain.

Your portal will be accessible at both the default yourorg.heedback.com URL and your custom domain. The default URL redirects to your custom domain once it’s active.

Configuring User Authentication

The portal supports two authentication modes for end users, configurable under Settings > Portal > Authentication:

Magic Link: Users enter their email address and receive a one-time login link. No passwords to remember, no accounts to create. This is ideal when you want to identify users and let them track their conversations and votes across sessions.
Anonymous: Users can browse and interact with the portal without logging in. They can still submit feedback and vote, but their activity isn’t linked to an identity. Best for public-facing portals where low friction matters more than user tracking.

You can enable both options simultaneously. When both are active, users see a “Sign in” option but can also browse anonymously. Authenticated users get the benefit of tracking their submissions and receiving status notifications.

Enabling Portal Sections Step by Step

For each section you enable, a brief setup checklist:

Knowledge Base: Publish at least 3-5 articles across 2+ collections. An empty knowledge base undermines user confidence.
Feature Boards: Create at least one board with a clear description. Seed it with 2-3 posts from your own backlog so new visitors see activity.
Changelog: Publish your first entry before enabling the section. Even a simple “Welcome to our changelog” post sets the right tone.
Roadmap: Configure your Kanban columns and assign roadmap status to at least a few feature board posts so the board isn’t empty.

Tips and Best Practices

Launch with content. An empty portal is worse than no portal. Prepare your knowledge base articles, seed your boards, and publish at least one changelog entry before sharing the URL.
Promote the portal. Add a link in your app’s navigation, your email footer, and your onboarding flow. A portal nobody knows about helps nobody.
Monitor search queries. The portal tracks what users search for. If a search returns no results, that’s a signal to write a new article.
Use the portal URL in support replies. When an agent links to a portal article instead of typing out an explanation, it saves time and teaches users to check the portal first.
Review monthly. Check which articles get the most views, which board posts have the most votes, and which changelog entries get the most engagement. Let the data guide your content strategy.

Knowledge Base: The articles and collections that power the portal’s help section.
Feature Boards: Public boards where users submit and vote on ideas, visible on the portal.
Changelog: Release notes published to the portal, with subscriber notifications.
Public Roadmap: The Kanban roadmap view on the portal, connected to feature board votes.
Widget: The widget and portal complement each other — the widget lives inside your app, the portal is a standalone destination.